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FIRST WITNESS STATEMENT of CHRISTABEL GURNEY Date Signed: 2.3.21

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FIRST WITNESS STATEMENT of CHRISTABEL GURNEY Date Signed: 2.3.21 Undercover Policing Inquiry Response to Rule 9 Request FIRST WITNESS STATEMENT OF CHRISTABEL GURNEY Date signed: 2.3.21 1. Statement 2. I, Christabel Gurney, was an activist in the Anti-Apartheid Movement ('RAM') from 1969 until 1994. I was a member of the AAM Executive Committee and the editor of the RAM's monthly newspaper Anti-Apartheid News from 1970 to 1980. I am currently the secretary of the AAM Archives Committee and a member of the Advisory Council of ACTSA (Action for Southern Africa). In 2014 I received an OBE "for political service, particularly to human rights" as a result of my work with the AAM. 3. I am providing this witness statement in response to the Rule 9 request from the Inquiry dated 4.2.21 sent to me by the Undercover Policing Inquiry. I have been asked 18 mainly focused, closed questions by the Inquiry based on the material provided to me. I seek to answer these below. 4. This statement describes, so far as I am able to, my interaction, as a campaigner and activist, with the following undercover police officers (UC0s). It principally Page 1 of 55 UCPI0000034326/1 covers the periods and events identified by the Inquiry from the documents provided to me by the Inquiry: a. Mike Ferguson (HN135) b. Jill Mosdell (HN346) c. 'Stewart Goodman' / 'Stuart Goodman'(HN339) d. 'Douglas Edwards (HN326) e. 'Michael Scott'(HN 298). Personal details 5. My name is Christabel Barbara Gurney and my date of birth is 24.8.43. 6. I have never used an alias in relation to my political activity. I am asked my racial origin (I am white) and my gender (I am female). 7. I am currently the Secretary of the AAM Archives Committee. When the ARM dissolved itself in 1995, it set up this committee with the remit of ensuring the cataloguing and conservation of its archives. The archive is now held at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. A selection of documents is accessible online on the AAM archival website www.aamarchives.org. 8. I am the author of several books and articles on the ARM published in academic journalsl. Books. First, Ruth; Steele, Jonathan; Gurney, Christabel (1972). The South African connection: Western investment in Apartheid. London: Maurice Temple Smith. Gurney, Christabel (2008). 'In the Heart of the Beast: The British Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1959-94', Chapter 4 in The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Vol. 3, International Solidarity. Pretoria: SADET. Articles. Gurney, Christabel (June 1999).'When the Boycott Began to Bite'. History Today. 49(6): 32-34. Gurney, Christabel (March 2000). 'A Great Cause: The Origins of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, June 1959— March 1960'. Journal of Southern African Studies. 26 (1) Gurney, Christabel (June 2009). 'The 1970s: The Anti-Apartheid Movement's Difficult Decade'. Journal of Southern African Studies. 35 (2): 471-487. Page 2 of 55 UCPI0000034326/2 Introduction — the context 9. The ARM was set up in 1959 as the Boycott Movement. In the following year it changed its name to the Anti-Apartheid Movement. It campaigned against the white minority regimes in Southern Africa and especially against apartheid in South Africa. It was central to the movement of international solidarity with organisations inside South Africa calling for democratic government. At its height the AAM had broad-based support from hundreds of thousands of people in Britain. It was not affiliated to any political party. 10. Although other core participants in the Inquiry were involved in the broader anti- apartheid movement, I believe I am the principal voice of the formal organisation, the Anti-Apartheid Movement, in the Inquiry. Many of my contemporaries are no longer in good health or alive. Indeed, some of the people I worked with from the South African liberation movements were attacked and murdered by the South African government. Some of them were spied on by British undercover police officers and are named in the Inquiry's evidence. I feel an obligation to speak for them. 1 1. There is an important general point about the anti-apartheid campaigners that I would like to emphasise, because it reveals how misguided and intensely politicised the use of undercover policing was. Given that some of the events the Inquiry is examining took place over 50 years ago, it is easy to forget how different the world was then. Southern Africa was governed by totalitarian and repressive regimes. Some were colonial; some, including South Africa, were constitutionally racist, with white supremacy and mistreatment of African people at their heart. Page 3 of 55 UCPI0000034326/3 12. The ARM and the wider movement sought to challenge this by espousing conventional campaign tactics and civil disobedience. It seems many have forgotten how our campaigns for basic human rights and equality for people in Southern Africa were vilified and attacked by both state and private interests in the Southern African region and in the West. It is also important to remember that the British government itself was often a vocal opponent of our goals and of our support for African leaders like Nelson Mandela. It deployed the tools of the state, including policing, against us. This was a wrong and politicised misuse of the tools of the state, and it is something I hope this Inquiry will examine and condemn. 13. Western nations, including successive UK governments, supported the status quo in Southern Africa. International companies traded with these regimes, banks funded them, commercial interests profited from them. In the Cold War era, the AAM was (wrongly and deliberately) portrayed by its opponents as dominated by communists as a means to discredit it. 14. Propaganda and disruption were tools in a concerted campaign to undermine our morale, effectiveness and credibility. Surveillance, infiltration, intelligence- gathering and intelligence-sharing were an essential part of this strategy. Obviously, much of this was done covertly. 15. This Inquiry would be naive to assume that undercover policing by Special Branch ('SB') was unconnected with this wider and powerful campaign against us. It would be failing in its duty, under its terms of reference as well as its moral and professional responsibility, if it were not thoroughly, fearlessly and openly to investigate what happened. Page 4 of 55 UCPI0000034326/4 16. This is important, not just for uncovering the truth of what happened in the past, but also to learn and apply lessons for the future. For as many malign and powerful influences there are in the world today, there are determined and principled voices who campaign against them. They deserve the protection of the state. 17. This public inquiry could learn many lessons from South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission ('TRC') set up after the apartheid South Africa regime was peacefully replaced by a democratically elected ANC government in 1994. But it need not even go that far. At the very minimum, this Inquiry should let the British people know how its government misused policing tactics on campaigners against racial injustice of the most extreme kind. The UK Government should have been supporting us: instead it was covertly putting us under surveillance, undermining our work and assisting the racist regimes we opposed. Intelligence reports and other documents 18.1 have been provided with 40 documents by the Inquiry, mainly intelligence reports, as well as Lord Peter Hain's statement dated 3.3.2020. I have not, at the time of providing this statement, had access to the bundle of evidence for the April 2021 hearing 2. I am asked if the details recorded in the intelligence reports are accurate and, if not, to set out the respects in which the reports are inaccurate. 19. Obviously, these events took place around 50 years ago. I have a clear recollection of some events, but little recollection of others. Broadly speaking, the 2 Tranche 1, phase 2, undercover police activity principally between 1973-1982. Page 5 of 55 UCPI0000034326/5 reports appear to be a fairly accurate, if partial, account of what I recall about the events reported on. 20.0n occasion however, the reports grossly mischaracterise the groups in which I was involved, for example, the report which describes the group in the Star and Garter incident as 'anarchist-oriented extremists under the control and direction of Ernest Rodker'3. I was neither an anarchist nor an extremist and I acted of my own free will. 21. The report of a meeting to plan a sit-in at South Africa House states that those present agreed that the sit-in would be 'quite militant' and that it would be 'necessary for the security guards to use force to eject the demonstrators'4. This reads as if the participants were intending to provoke the security guards. I remember the event and there was no such intention. But it was assumed that as employees of the apartheid government, the security staff would be hostile and might use violence against the protesters. It should be noted that although the participants in this event were, as reported by the UCO, members of the AAM, on this occasion they were acting as individuals. Sit-ins were not part of the RAM's repertoire of campaign activities. The background to the sit-in was the murder in detention by South African security police of Ahmed Timol, who was a friend of some of the South African exiles present at the meeting. They were understandably upset and angry, and wanted to mount some action that went further than the picket of South Africa House that was usually organised in response to deaths in detention5. 3 P1 of doc 33 MPS-0526782-CLF.
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