POLICE spied on the partner of a protester killed by officers in order to stay “one step ahead” of her campaign for justice, a public inquiry heard yesterday.

Celia Stubbs was spied on for 20 years following the death of her partner Blair Peach at a protest against the National Front in Southall in 1979. 

His death at the hands of riot officers prompted one of the most notorious police cover-ups in modern policing history. In the 42 years since his death, no officer has ever been charged. 

Speaking to the undercover policing inquiry, Ms Stubbs said that the officers involved may have escaped justice as a result of police spying on her campaign to hold the force to account.

“The police I think wanted to keep one step ahead  of our campaign,” she told the inquiry. 

“The fact that Blair’s killers have never been brought to justice perhaps speaks to how effective the efforts to protect them were.

“The surveillance on me and the campaign I was part of may have contributed to how effectively they have been shielded from answering for what they did to Blair.”

The public inquiry is investigating the conduct of officers serving in two secret police units that infiltrated more than 1,000 protest groups over 40 years. 

Documents disclosed to the inquiry revealed that undercover officers spied on meetings of the Friends of Blair Peach campaign, gathering information on its members and aims. 

Officers even attended Peach’s funeral and gathered intelligence on mourners (https://mstar.link/33nwlI5). Surveillance continued up until 1998, 20 years after his death. 

Throughout Ms Stubb’s campaign for justice, the police were sitting on a report by Met commander John Cass, which found that Peach was “almost certainly killed” by officers in the Met’s riot police unit, the Special Patrol Group (SPG). 

Despite campaigners requesting this report repeatedly, it was only released in 2010.

Ms Stubbs told the inquiry that their campaign unearthed embarrassing facts about the SPG officers involved, including that they had hidden unauthorised weapons in their lockers at Barnes police station. One officer also had Nazi regalia in his home.

After discovering she had been subjected to police spying, Ms Stubbs said she felt her distress was “criminalised.”

“It is hard to describe how violating this is,” she said. 

She told the inquiry that she did not understand why she had been spied on. “They abused their surveillance powers,” she said. “They deployed them not to protect the public from harm but to protect themselves from facing justice.”

Ms Stubb’s campaign is believed to be the first family justice campaign subjected to police surveillance. Later on officers in the same unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, reported on the family of Stephen Lawrence, a teenager murdered by racists in 1993. 

The inquiry continues.