Tonight (7.45pm AEDT, Thursday, October 23), two women, ‘Ellie’ & ‘Wendy’, are scheduled to give evidence to the UK’s Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI). Both were victims of a spycop named James Thomson (AKA ‘James Straven’ & ‘Kevin Crossland’). Ellie & Wendy’s abuse was detailed in December 2020 by Nick Dole in British women thought they’d found boyfriends who shared their beliefs. They were actually undercover police (ABC, December 6, 2020):
Two years ago, Queensland woman ‘Ellie’ got a call that changed her life. It was from her first love, a man named James.
She had met him in 2001 when she was living in London. She was just 21 and he was 33, but that didn’t seem to matter. They were good together.
“We just clicked. He was chatty and a good listener. He was very charming,” Ellie said.
They were together for about a year before James broke it off. He had to move away, but they remained friends.
But in 2018, he phoned her in Australia to make a startling confession: he’d been living a lie. He was an undercover police officer who’d been sent to spy on her and those in her friendship circle.
The Australian connection to the UCPI/spycops scandal extends further to political activist Helen Steel and spycop John Dines (AKA ‘John Barker’). Unmasking the spy cops: how women found the truth about men who tricked them into relationships, Rob Evans, The Guardian, March 5, 2025:
Helen Steel was in her 20s and deeply in love with a man who told her he would “like to spend the rest of his life” with her.
She and John Barker had just moved into a new flat and would share long walks in the countryside, where they hoped to one day buy a cottage using money he had inherited.
“I had never felt this intensity of love for someone before,” she says. “Although we’d had a few small arguments … John and I had been blissfully happy”.
One day he surprised her by suggesting that he wanted children with her. “I was a little startled and asked how many he had in mind,” she says. “Six,” he replied.
But it was all a lie – even his name.
In reality he was an undercover police officer who had been sent to spy on her and her political allies.
In 2016 it was discovered that, from 2010, Dines worked at the Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security (Charles Sturt University). In 2012, he was mentioned as Assistant Professor, receiving a team award for ‘professional excellence’.
For more infos, please see:
• Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance : COPS helps support, promote and coordinate the quest for justice for people affected by political undercover police spying.
• Police Spies Out of Lives : A support group campaigning and working to achieve an end to the sexual and psychological abuse by undercover police officers.
• Spycops Info : Featuring a regularly-updated blog/podcast.
• SpycopsResearch An info database and Undercover Research Group project.
These soycops are not very nice people. No qualms in messing people’s heads up. That’s the most polite thing about them. Remember people, if they don’t feel right test them, more than once, follow them, again more than once. Or be like me and refuse all contact from anyone other than family you trust. Fuck the piggies.
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