The relatives of dead children whose identities were stolen by undercover police officers have launched legal action against the Metropolitan police over their resulting trauma.
The bereaved families were devastated after discovering police spies who infiltrated political groups had used the identities of their young relatives without consulting or informing them.
The victims include a boy who died at birth, a five-year-old who was killed in a plane crash, a severely disabled boy who died at the age of six, and a teenager who drowned at sea.
Four families have started legal action against the Met, saying they are appalled and angered at the conduct of the undercover officers. Their legal action, which has been submitted in a formal claim to Scotland Yard, alleges the Met misused private information and intruded on their personal grief, causing them distress and damaging their mental health.
In a tactic that was used routinely for more than three decades, at least 42 undercover officers created fake personas based on the details of dead children.
Before the start of their deployments, the officers spent hours trawling through birth and death certificates in official archives to select suitable candidates. They were then issued with fabricated identity records, such as driving licences and passports, in the name of the dead child.
To make their fake identities more credible, the officers visited the neighbourhoods where the children had lived and even visited their graves. To familiarise themselves with the identity they were adopting, the spies also researched the children’s family members, including parents and siblings.
A declassified handbook, written by one of the spies, referred to the undercover officers “assuming squatters’ rights over the unfortunate’s identity for the next four years” – the typical length of a deployment.
The tactic was described by MPs as “ghoulish and disrespectful” after it was first exposed by the Guardian in 2013.
Those taking legal action include Frank Bennett and Honor Robson, whose 18-year-old brother, Michael Hartley, died on his first trip working on a trawler. His body was never found but they believe he fell overboard in 1968. They believe that the loss led to his mother’s depression and subsequent suicide in 1977.
Recently they discovered that an undercover officer had used Hartley’s identity to infiltrate two leftwing organisations, the Socialist Workers party and the Revolutionary Communist Group, between 1982 and 1985. Bennett said he was “totally disgusted” by the police’s conduct, adding that he never believed the English police would stoop to such depths.
The family of Kevin Crossland, who died in a plane crash at the age of five in 1966, are also part of the legal action. Kevin’s sister and mother were also killed when the plane crashed in Yugoslavia on their holiday flight from Luton. The family said his father, Malcolm, survived with multiple injuries, severe burns and “enormous guilt that he was not able to save his family”.
Mark Crossland said he felt “immediate devastation, fear and confusion” when he discovered his half-brother’s identity had been stolen. Mark’s mother, Liisa, who married Malcolm after the crash, was struggling to cope with the discovery.
Malcolm died of cancer in 2001. At that time, Kevin’s identity was being used by an undercover officer, James Straven, who infiltrated animal rights groups for five years.
Faith Mason, 72, gave birth to her first son, Neil, in 1963 at the age of 16. Neil developed a series of physical disabilities and died at the age of six. At the time of his death, her husband had left her with three small children to look after.
Last year, she discovered an undercover officer had used Neil’s name to infiltrate the Revolutionary Communist party and the anarchist group Class War between 1989 and 1993. She said the discovery brought back the trauma of losing her son.
The last undercover officer known to have used a dead child’s identity was Rod Richardson, who pretended to be an anti-capitalist protester between 2000 and 2003 in radical groups in London and Nottingham.
The real Rod Richardson had been born in a south London hospital on 5 January 1973 but died two days later.
His mother, Barbara Shaw, has said that discovering the police had used Rod’s name caused her to mourn his death a second time. “He is still my baby. I’ll never forget him.”
The fake Richardson was unmasked following investigations by the Guardian and the campaigners he spied on. The other families were informed in recent years that the police had appropriated their relatives’ identities by a judge-led public inquiry that is examining the undercover infiltration of more than 1,000 political groups since 1968.
The police are said to have informally called the process of searching for a dead child’s identity “doing the Jackal run” – a reference to Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel, The Day of the Jackal, in which the technique was described.
In a statement, the Met police said: “The claims relate to the historical use of deceased children’s identities by undercover officers. The Metropolitan police is investigating the claims and is unable to comment further at this time.”
