By Simon Forbes

Simon is an independent advisor to the Metropolitan Police on the LGBT Advisory Group, but the views are his own and the article is written in a personal capacity. It was late afternoon on the 30th of April 1999. It was a warm, sunny day. Many people were starting their weekend by having a quiet drink in a pub after work.

A young man with sunglasses carrying a Nike holdall was walking casually down Old Compton Street. He walked into the Admiral Duncan pub shortly before six. There seemed nothing remarkable about him to those inside. At about quarter past six the young man turned to someone and asked, “Is there a bank nearby?” He was given directions and then left the pub, leaving the bag behind him. Less then twenty minutes later at 6.37pm this bag exploded showering those inside with nails. Three people were killed and dozens of others suffered horrific injuries.

This is all well known, but according to source who has spoken to Peter Tatchell, minutes after Copeland had entered the pub the local police station received a disturbing phone call. As he says, "an officer at West End Central Police Station told me they had received an agitated phone call at around 6pm on the day of the bombing. It was allegedly from a member of a police surveillance team who had been trailing a suspect fitting David Copeland's description. The caller said they had lost him near Broadwick Street, and requested assistance from local police to help find him".

It has been five years since that day, the day for many of us the unthinkable happened. It is something many in the community would prefer to forget about. After all when we go to a pub or nightclub we don’t want to keep thinking about whether we are going to be blown up or not. Since the trial most interest in the case has been in non-mainstream anti-fascist publications such as ‘Red Action,’ ‘Fighting Talk’ and ‘Notes From the Borderland.’ The third of these has published three articles on the case, including one in the most recent issue.

The Soho gay bar bomb came after blasts targeting the Black community in Brixton and the Asian community in Brick Lane. There was widespread concern about the adequacy of the warnings by the Met Police to the Asian community before the Brick Lane bombing and the LGBT community prior to the Soho bombing. Critics included Peter Tatchell and Outrage! Peter says now, "a week before the Soho blast, the police and security services began to speculate that lesbian and gay venues might be the next target. But officers issued no warnings to the gay community via the mainstream national media. Although a warning letter was eventually sent to the gay rights group Stonewall, it was posted second class and only arrived on the morning of the bombing - too late for Stonewall to alert the wider gay community. No other gay groups were notified, largely because the police had failed to heed the repeated requests of OutRage! and the Lesbian & Gay Policing Initiative to set up a "rapid response" data base of addresses and phone numbers. These requests had been made five years previously - in 1994 - following the poor police liaison with lesbian and gay organisations at the time of the multiple murder of gay men by serial killer Colin Ireland."

Partly to address such concerns, some of the “trusted” in our community, as they were described in the invitation letter, were invited to a confidential briefing on the 1st of June 2000 at the University of London Union, four days before Copeland’s trial. This was hosted by the LGBT Advisory Group, of which I later became a member. The press were expressly excluded from that meeting.
Founder member of Outrage!, John Beeson, recollects that at that briefing a Chief Superintendent while addressing the meeting made the somewhat laconic statement "we were tracking him [Copeland], unfortunately he gave us the slip" before the bomb went off. John first told me this in May 2002 and has confirmed his recollection of the wording this week. Others I spoke to at the time John first told me this, also recalled such a remark. It is said the audience were told the information was in confidence, and he then changed the subject.

However this week, New Scotland Yard denied to Pink Paper that anybody from the Met Police said this. We would of course be happy to publish any correction and clarification of what was said at that briefing and what was meant by what was said.
The press were given the impression that contrary to widespread rumours, it was “absolutely untrue,” to quote the Guardian [1/7/2000], that Copeland had been under surveillance before the bomb went off.

At first the Met Police claimed they only knew of Copeland’s name when Paul Mifsud, a work colleague identified him three quarters of an hour before the bomb went off. Just after the trial it was disclosed that ‘Searchlight,’ an anti-fascist magazine, had identified Copeland to the police by midday that day, but the information was not passed on to investigating officers until the following Monday.

Only three advisors in either the race or LGBT groups were ever given more details about such aspects of the case. This was at a special “hush hush” briefing about the same time at New Scotland Yard. At a taped LGBT advisory group meeting at New Scotland Yard in July 2002 there was an exchange of views about the case between one of those three advisors and myself. That person denied a number of allegations I raised at that time, including the one Peter has raised about the phone call to the local station before the bomb went off.

However, the wording of the alleged Chief Superintendent’s quote was not specifically disputed. They also did at least give me the impression that there was an element of truth in my earlier allegations, including that Copeland was already a known suspect, albeit not a strong one, before Searchlight passed on his name to the police and the impression that he was under some kind of surveillance, including CCTV surveillance, on the day. Surveillance does not necessarily involve actual “following.” Unfortunately this advisor declined to clarify the details of all this, in spite of later requests, so it was clear what was being suggested at that meeting.
Those who arrested him were not told he was a serious suspect and went to his home unarmed. Weapons were found in his room.
New Scotland Yard insisted that Copeland worked on his own. They claimed a man who could not even mend a bike puncture, and had to be shown how to flick a simple switch to turn on the electricity in a flat he had rented, built these devices without any help other than from a couple of seemingly inadequate and inaccurate bomb-making “manuals” he had downloaded from the internet.
They also insisted that he had no connection with a number of other arrests for terrorist offences about the same time in Hounslow, Ipswich and Sheffield. It is claimed by ‘Searchlight’ that these incidents also involved the far right.

I am aware that this is just one of a string of blundered terrorist cases in the 1990s for which MI5 and the Met Police had joint responsibility. One also involved the far right, specifically Combat 18 (C18), and an attempt to send letter bombs disguised as videos from Denmark to this country. Those involved in Denmark were convicted and imprisoned. Those said to be involved here were never even charged for these offences, even though some of their names are widely publicised, including on the web. One C18 publication ‘Strikeforce No1’ (below left) admitted the organisation’s involvement. Some question whether the handling of such cases does not go beyond incompetence.

Less well known is a report that when the homes of two C18 members were raided in January 1995, it is alleged the police discovered a bomb plot, with a list of 10 people, including Peter Tatchell. They were believed to be priority targets for assassination. The police did not contact Peter to warn him about this and he got the information from journalists. There were no known prosecutions for the serious offences that would be involved here if the report were true.

Responsibility for all three of Copeland’s bombings was claimed in the name of C18. We must bear in mind that, given the hatreds and vendettas on the far right, a rival group may well have been trying to ‘set them up,’ perhaps to deflect from their own involvement. There had been two recent splits among C18 supporters in 1997 and 1998. Copeland had recently joined a rival group called the National Socialist Movement as a full ‘member.’ However, he had told his mother the previous year that he had ‘joined Combat 18,’ which has a policy of infiltrating rival groups. If he did join it would have been as an ‘official supporter’ not as part of the select group of full ‘members.’ He admitted keying in C-1-8 into a telephone pad after planting the Brick Lane bomb. However, the suggestion that he did join the organisation has not been corroborated.

Publicly, New Scotland Yard claimed that all claims of responsibility were hoaxes and had no connection with the bombings. They also said he was not a ‘member’ of the groups that were named in such claims.
‘Searchlight’ also repeatedly dismissed the possibility of C18 involvement. However, Anti-Fascist Action questioned this as they were aware of a long running ‘sting’ by C18 in which members would pose as informers in order to plant stories in ‘Searchlight’ for their own purposes. It is unclear if this ‘sting’ was still going on at the time of the nail-bombings.

Claims for each bombing were also made in the name of the ‘White Wolves.’ My own subsequent research indicated that this was not a different organisation at all, as was widely claimed at the time. It was used as an alternative or supplementary name for C18, particularly when more violent activities are involved. On remand Copeland made a claim, later retracted, that he was acting on ‘orders’ from the White Wolves.

More recently C18 supporters have used the name ‘Racial Volunteer Force’ (RVF) in a similar manner. This is clearly named after the Ulster terror group, the Loyalist Volunteer Force. The RVF web site, which was closed down recently, promoted violence. It openly praised David Copeland and his actions. Officially the police and MI5 still play down the possibility of far right terrorist incidents in this country. Nobody would of course dispute that the threat of groups like Al Qa’ida is far greater. Another satellite group of C18 forms the core of the White Nationalist Party, which runs candidates under the ‘England First’ label. This satellite also runs the official C18 ‘Skrewdriver’ and the infamous ‘Redwatch’ web sites. The ‘Skrewdriver’ site contains a picture of Copeland in an on-line manual, which gives detailed advice about how to avoid detection for violent crime.
‘Redwatch’ and the C18 guest book are increasingly being used to target LGBT people, especially those with corporal punishment interests, which they seem to equate with paedophilia. Some have had their home addresses published. One man recently set up a bogus ‘gaydar’ profile to gather information for these web sites.

The police repeatedly maintain it is extremely difficult to do anything about these web sites. However the alleged administrator of the RVF web site was arrested last year and that site has since been closed. There were other arrests related to RVF activity at the same time, but after more than a year no prosecutions. It may well be that improvements have been made in the policing of terrorism and lessons have been learned from the mistakes of the past, particularly since September 11th 2001.
That does not mean, however, that we should not continue to press for greater transparency about past mistakes. True community confidence can only be built on honesty and not on spin doctoring. The police and MI5 should not be allowed to hide behind spin and the word ‘inevitable’ if things go wrong in the future.

People are entitled to make mistakes. It is easy to be wise after the event, but if things do go wrong, then the community and public at large are entitled to know the reasons. Such information should not be restricted to the favoured few.
My comments are not in any way criticism of the Met Police as a whole, let alone those who worked closely with the community and victims after the bombing. I had previously hesitated about ‘going public’ about the case, partly because I felt I might cause distress to surviving victims and friends and families of those who were killed. However in the current climate and especially after the awful events in Madrid and the way that was handled, I felt I had an over-riding duty to speak out.