Heartache and betrayal behind 'secret' police

A woman said she had the bottom "ripped out of her world" when she discovered the man she had fallen in love with was an undercover police officer.

Mark Kennedy - a serving officer originally with the Metropolitan Police - posed as an environmental campaigner for years, forming close relationships with several women.

He was finally unmasked when a case against protesters who had allegedly been plotting to shut down Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottingham collapsed.

An official inquiry into the use of undercover officers is still ongoing years after the case came to light.

A new BBC audio series recounts how Mr Kennedy, who was calling himself Mark Stone, appeared at the Sumac community centre in 2003, saying he wanted to help environmental campaigns.

He made friends easily, due to his enthusiasm and access to transport and cash.

Pat Smith, volunteer at the centre, said: "He was very friendly, he was very engaging, he was a laugh.

"He would DJ at parties, he would buy people drinks, he was supposedly either a courier or a professional climber.

"He was a little bit edgy, a jack-the-lad. He was known as 'Flash' because he always had the money to buy a round of drinks.

"He was in the thick of things".

A 10-part podcast on the Mark Kennedy case is available on BBC Sounds.

The podcast also hears from former undercover police officer Neil Woods, who reveals some of the tactics this secretive branch used.

He said: "I would seek out the most vulnerable people in those communities.

"The reason for that is the most vulnerable people are the easiest to manipulate.

"If that sounds ruthless, well, of course it's ruthless, a key thing about undercover policing is that is necessitates ruthlessness."

The man known as Mark Stone became a integral part of a community, especially when it came to direct action against environmental targets.

As well as protests at power stations like Drax in North Yorkshire, Didcot near Oxford, Kingsnorth in Kent, and the G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005, he travelled extensively in Europe.

But he also became emotionally involved with members of the group.

Eleanor Fairbraida, who herself had a brief relationship with Mr Kennedy, remembers how he became very close, very quickly with one of her friends, Kate Wilson.

Ms Fairbraida, now living in Bristol, said: "I think she felt that she had met someone who was like a bit of a kindred spirit.

"At the time she was living in a caravan on the drive of a housing co-op where lots of activists were living and she was temporarily in the caravan on the drive.

"And he told her, that he was really into like trailer trash living.

"She was really into country and Western music and he said he was also really into this.

"Their family supported the same football teams and she felt like she had met someone who was a lot like her."

But Neil Woods says that even in the tough world of undercover policing, there were boundaries.

"Your aim is always to gather evidence, your aim is always to eventually stand in the dock and give evidence."

"[Mark Kennedy's] aim from the outset was merely to gather intelligence, it was never to gather evidence.

"This is more like something the security service would do, which makes the police more like secret police.

"It blurred the edges of what is policing and what is security services."

After Kate Wilson moved away, Mark Kennedy started a relationship with another woman.

Her identity has been kept secret but she has been known as Lisa in interviews and said she fell "completely in love with him".

Mr Kennedy was among 114 people arrested in a police raid in 2009 designed to prevent a protest against Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station near Nottingham.

Those around him said he was shocked by his treatment in the aftermath, with his home raided, and spent time away.

The next year he took Lisa on holiday but she made a shocking discovery.

Looking at his passport, she found his real name, and the fact he had children.

She said: "It rips the bottom out of your world.

"Like everything that you thought you understood about... years of your life.

"Suddenly, you're questioning everything, you're questioning everybody that you know and...and yourself of course.

"Because how did you get it so wrong?"

Confronted with this and further evidence by members of the Sumac community, Mark Kennedy confessed.

A failure to disclose his involvement led to the collapse of the case against the environmental protesters in 2011 who had been arrested at Ratcliffe-on-Soar.

The collapse of the case triggered a review of his operation and the wider role of undercover police officers.

This in turn led to a full public inquiry, which has been continuing since 2017.

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