Bob Lambert Writing and Speaking

This article is part of the Undercover Research Portal at Powerbase - investigating corporate and police spying on activists

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Part of a series on undercover police officers
Robert Lambert
Alias:	Bob Robinson
Deployment:	1983 or 1984 until 1988
Unit:	Special Demonstration Squad
Targets:	Animal liberation and anti-authoritarian movements

Subsequent to his retirement from police service in 2007, Detective Inspector Bob Lambert became a moderately prolific author and speaker in his second career as a progressive academic. Much of his research builds on his work on de-radicalisation of potential jihadis, and cooperation with mosques to ban recruiters while working for the Met's Muslim Contact Unit. An avowed former officer with the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, as an academic Lambert never addressed his work as an undercover with and later commander of the Special Demonstration Squad.

His articles, papers and reports have been published by a number of outlets, including peer-reviewed academic journals, left-of-centre think-tanks, and liberal newspaper The Guardian. Notably, most of his writings were published prior to his public exposure in October 2011 as a police spy who abandoned his son. Since that time, his publication rate dwindled (none together with others), as did his public speaking. .

If you believe we have omitted anything, please do get in touch - PGP is available on request.

• Also see the main profile page Bob Lambert

+++++ Last Updated November 2016 +++++

Writings by Lambert

In the following list of writings by Bob Lambert, entries are listed chronologically (oldest first) then alphabetically by the first author's surname. Author names are reproduced as they are given.

Academic papers & research

• Robert Lambert, The London Partnerships: an Insider's Analysis of Legitimacy and Effectiveness, doctoral thesis, Department of Politics (European Muslim Research Centre), University of Exeter, 2010.

• Dr Jonathan Githens-Mazer & Dr Robert Lambert MBE, Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: A London Case Study, European Muslim Research Centre/University of Exeter, January 2010.

• Jonathan Githens-Mazer, Robert Lambert, Abdul-Haqq Baker, Safiyah Cohen-Baker & Zacharias Pieri, Muslim Communities: Perspectives on Radicalisation in Leicester, UK, Centre for Studies in Islamism and Radicalisation, March 2010.

• Robert Lambert & Jonathan Githens-Mazer, Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: UK Case Studies 2010 - An introduction to a ten year Europe-wide research project, European Muslim Research Centre/University of Exeter, November 2010 (revised January 2011).

Books

• Robert Lambert, Countering Al-Qaeda In London: Police and Muslims in Partnership, C Hurst & Company, 2011.

Book chapters

• Basia Spalek & Robert Lambert, ‘Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism and Muslim Community Engagement post 9/11’. Rebecca Roberts & Will McMahon (ed.), Social Justice and Criminal Justice, Centre for Crime & Justice Studies, 2007.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Police and Muslim Communities in London: Countering Al-Qaida Influence and Islamophobia’. Thomas M Pick, Anne Speckhard & Beatrice Jacuch (ed.), Home-Grown Terrorism: Understanding and Addressing the Root Causes of Radicalisation among Groups with an Immigrant Heritage in Europe, IOS Press, 2009.

• Basia Spalek, Robert Lambert & Abdul Haqq Baker, ‘Minority Muslim Communities and Criminal Justice: Stigmatized UK Faith Identities Post 9/11 and 7/7’. Hindpal Singh Bui (ed.), Race and Criminal Justice, SAGE, 2009.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Counter-radicalization Programs: Tackling Terrorism and Hate Crime in London: A Brixton Case Study’. Sarah Canna (ed.), Protecting the Homeland from International and Domestic Terrorism Threats: Current Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on Root Causes, the Role of Ideology, and Programs for Counter-radicalization and Disengagement, National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, 2010.

• Jonathan Githens-Mazer, Daniel Jeffrey & Robert Lambert, ‘Suicide terrorism; Grievance & the final act: The 7/7 bombers & suicide terrorism in the 21st Century’. Leo Sher & Alexander Vilens (ed.), Terror and Suicide, Nova Science Publishers, 2010.

• Basia Spalek & Robert Lambert, ‘Policing within a Counter-Terrorism Context Post 7/7: The Importance of Partnership, Dialogue and Support when Engaging with Muslim Communities’. Roger Eatwell & Matthew J. Goodwin (ed.), The 'New' Extremism in 21st Century Britain, Routledge, 2010.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Community Intervention as an Engagement Strategy - al-Qaeda in London’. I. William Zartman & Guy Olivier Faure (ed.), Engaging Extremists: Trade-offs, Timing and Diplomacy, United States Institute of Peace, 2011, pp 81-105.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Competing Counter-Radicalisation Models in the UK’. Rik Coolsaet (ed.), Jihadi Terrorism and the Radicalisation Challenge, European and American Experiences, Ashgate, 2011, pp 215-225.

• Robert Lambert & Jonathan Githens-Mazer, ‘Re-visiting 7/7, Grievance and Shame’. Dr Anne Speckhard (ed.), Psychosocial, Organisational and Cultural Aspects of Terrorism: Final Report of the NATO Human Factors and Medicine Research Task Group 140, Research and Technology Organisation (RTO) Technical Report, NATO, 2011.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Extremist nationalism in Europe and support for Israel‘. Daud Abdullah & Ibrahim Hewitt (ed.), The Battle for Public Opinion In Europe: Changing perceptions of the Palestine-Israel Conflict, MEMO Publishers, 2012.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Counter-Terrorism and its Effectiveness in the UK since 1969: Does it pay to be Tough on Terrorism?’. Marie Breen-Smyth (ed.), Ashgate Research Companion to Political Violence, Ashgate, 2012.

• Robert Lambert, ‘The Muslim Safety Forum: Senior Police and Muslim Community Engagement during the War on Terror’. P. Daniel Silke, Basia Spalek & Mary O’Rawe (ed.), Preventing Ideological Violence: Communities, Police and Case Studies of “Success”, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Anti-Muslim Violence in the UK: Extremist nationalist involvement and influence’. Max Taylor, P M Currie & Donald Holbrook (ed.), Extreme Right-Wing Political Violence and Terrorism, Bloomsbury, 2013.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Anders Breivik: rational terrorist or insane spree killer’. John Pearce (ed.), Investigating Terrorism: Current Political, Legal and Psychological Issues, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Community Engagement: Countering Violent Extremism in the UK’. Rohan Gunaratna, Jolene Jerard & Salim Mohamed Nasir (ed.), Countering Extremism: Building Social Resilience through Community Engagement, Imperial College Press, 2013.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Victims of Terrorism: Distinctive and Diverse Experiences’. Orla Lynch & Javier Argomaniz (ed.), International Perspectives on Terrorist Victimisation: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015 .

Journal articles

• Bob Lambert & Bill Tupman, ‘Building Bridges’, Intersec: The Journal of International Security, 2007.

• Dr Basia Spalek & Bob Lambert, ‘Muslim communities under surveillance’, Criminal Justice Matters, 2007.

• Basia Spalek & Robert Lambert, ‘Muslim Communities, Counter-terrorism and Counter-radicalisation: a critically reflective approach to engagement’. International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, Volume 36 Issue 4, pp. 257-270 (2008).

• Robert Lambert, ‘Salafi and Islamist Londoners: Stigmatised Minority Faith Communities Countering al-Qaida’. Crime Law and Social Change, Volume 50 Issue 1-2, pp.73-89 (2008).

• Robert Lambert, ‘Ignoring the lessons of the past’, Criminal Justice Matters, Volume 73 Number 1, pp22-23 (2008).

• Robert Lambert, ‘Empowering Salafis and Islamists Against Al-Qaeda: A London Counter-terrorism Case Study’. Political Science and Politics, Volume 41 Issue 1, pp. 31-35 (2008).

• Dr Basia Spalek, Dr Salwa El-Awa & Robert Lambert MBE, ‘Preventing Violent Extremism in Prison: Key Policy and Practice Issues’, Prison Service Journal, Issue 180, November 2008.

• Jonathan Githens-Mazer & Robert Lambert, ‘Why conventional wisdom on radicalization fails: the persistence of a failed discourse’. International Affairs, Volume 86 Issue 4, pp889-901 (2010).

• Robert Lambert, ‘Listening to the Victims of Terrorism’. Journal of Terrorism Research, Volume 2 Issue 1, (2011).

• Robert Lambert, ‘Researching counterterrorism: a personal perspective from a former undercover police officer’. Critical Studies on Terrorism, Volume 7 Number 1, pp165-181 (2014).

• Robert Lambert and Tim Parsons, Community-Based Counterterrorism Policing: Recommendations for Practitioners, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism], 40(12), October 2016.

Newspaper, magazine and website articles

2007

• Bob Lambert, ‘Reflections on Counter-Terrorism Partnerships in Britain’, Arches, issue number 5, January-February 2007.

2008

• Robert Lambert, ‘Salafi and Islamist Londoners: Stigmatised Minority Faith Communities Countering al-Qaida’, Arches Quarterly, Summer 2008.

2009

• Robert Lambert & Jonathan Githens-Mazer, ‘The demonisation of British Islamism’, The Guardian, 1 April 2009.

• Jonathan Githens-Mazer & Robert Lambert, ‘Quilliam on Prevent: the wrong diagnosis’, The Guardian, 19 October 2009.

• Robert Lambert, ‘UK counter terrorism aids far-right’, Al Jazeera English website, 29 October 2009.

• Jonathan Githens-Mazer & Robert Lambert, ‘Reshaping Prevent’, The Guardian, 31 October 2009.

• Robert Lambert & Jonathan Githens-Mazer, ‘Let's be honest about Prevent’, The Guardian, 9 December 2009.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Counter-Productive Counter-Terrorism: The Legacy of George Bush and Tony Blair’. Arches Quarterly, Volume 3 Issue 5, pp. 48-52, December 2009-February 2010.

2010

• Jonathan Githens-Mazer & Robert Lambert, ‘Muslims in the UK: beyond the hype’, The Guardian, 28 January 2010.

• Dr Jonathan Githens-Mazer & Dr Robert Lambert, ‘Sentencing of protesters against war in Gaza: community concerns should not be ignored’, MEMO website, 18 February 2010.

• Jonathan Githens-Mazer & Robert Lambert, ‘Education and Understanding: The Tools for Tomorrow’, The Platform website, 18 February 2010.

• Robert Lambert & Jonathan Githens-Mazer, ‘A hatred exposed’, The Guardian, 1 June 2010.

• Robert Lambert & Jonathan Githens-Mazer, ‘Prevent is dead. What next?’, The Guardian, 14 July 2010.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Tackling al-Qaeda's UK propaganda’, Al Jazeera English website, 11 November 2010.

• Dr Robert Lambert, ‘Mohammed Sawalha: a maligned and vindicated British-Palestinian citizen’, MEMO website, 25 November 2010.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Tackling Islamophobia’, New Statesman, 5 December 2010.

• Robert Lambert, ‘British Muslim Organisations: The Target of an Orchestrated Neocon Campaign of Denigration’. Arches Quarterly Volume 4 Issue 7, pp128-142, Winter 2010.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Sweden bomber's Luton link must not reinforce cliche’, The Guardian, 13 December 2010.

2011

• Robert Lambert, ‘Educating the English Defence League’, New Statesman, 5 February 2011.

• Robert Lambert, ‘David Cameron's crackdown on extremism is counterproductive’, The Guardian, 8 February 2011.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Islamophobia in Early Modern England’. Arches Quarterly, Volume 4 Issue 8, pp. 98-109, Spring/Summer 2011.

• Dr Robert Lambert, ‘An engagement ring, a pendant and the seeds of two dates’, MEMO website, 27 April 2011.

• Robert Lambert, ‘What if Bin Laden had stood trial?’, The Guardian, 3 May 2011.

• Robert Lambert MBE, ‘7/7: What a Public Inquiry Would Have Addressed’, The Platform website, 17 May 2011.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Neo-Conservative Ideology Trumps Academic Research and Practitioner Experience’, North London Central Mosque Trust website, June 2011.

• Robert Lambert & Jonathan Githens-Mazer, ‘The fiery birth of the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy: England's Summer of Discontent, ten years on’, openSecurity, 3 June 2011.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Cameron and Blair: the real counter-terrorism coalition’, New Statesman, 6 June 2011.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Fighting 'hate speech' smears on Sheikh Salah’, Al Jazeera English website, 1 July 2011.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Murdoch's dirty tricks against Palestinians’, Al Jazeera English website, 11 July 2011.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Nationalists pose bigger threat than al-Qaeda’, Al Jazeera English website, 24 July 2011.

• Dr Robert Lambert, ‘Terrorists Are Sane’, Huffington Post UK, 26 July 2011 (updated 25 September 2011).

• Dr Robert Lambert, ‘Londoners United Against the EDL’, Huffington Post UK, 30 July 2011 (updated 28 September 2011).

• Robert Lambert, ‘Counter-terrorism versus Counter-subversion’, New Statesman, 2 August 2011.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Muslims Tackle Looters and Bigots’, Al Jazeera English website, 12 August 2011.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Was Anders Breivik a psychotic spree killer or a calculating terrorist?’, RUSI.org, 18 August 2011.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Answering the EDL in Tower Hamlets’, Huffington Post UK, 4 September 2011.

• Robert Lambert MBE, ‘Tough Policing: Advice for the New Met Police Commissioner’, The Platform, 15 September 2011.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Policing without torture: An UK export’, Al Jazeera English website, 9 October 2011.

• Dr Robert Lambert, ‘One Society Many Cultures’, Huffington Post UK, 12 October 2011.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Police, counter-subversion and extremism’, The Guardian, 20 October 2011.

• Bob Lambert & Maajid Nawaz, ‘Tackling the Islamists’, New Statesman, 5 December 2011.

2012

• Robert Lambert, ‘The Strength of Local Partnerships: Overcoming Obstacles During the War on Terror’, Arches Quarterly, Spring 2012.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Time to end exceptional security policies targeting Muslims: they don't work’, openSecurity, 28 February 2012.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Re-thinking detention without trial’, openSecurity, 10 March 2012.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Failing to take far right violence seriously’, openSecurity, 23 July 2012.

• Robert Lambert, ‘Breivik court verdict: security lessons?’, openSecurity, 2 August 2012.

• Robert Lambert MBE, ‘Security Lessons from the Breivik Court Verdict’, The Platform website, 24 August 2012.

2013

Nothing so far recorded for this year.

2014

Nothing so far recorded for this year.

2015

Nothing so far recorded for this year.

2016

Nothing so far recorded for this year.

Presentations, panels and media appearances: a chronology

This comprehensive timeline of Robert Lambert's career as an academic was collated by Undercover Research Group over a number of years. It should be noted that there is a distinctive spike in activity around 2011, in the period when Lambert's book was published shortly before his public exposure as a major figure in the undercover policing scandal.

2005

• 10-11 October 2005: Lambert delivers paper entitled ‘The Threat from Salafi-Jihadist Groups’ at a NATO conference in Amman, discussing his work as head of the Muslim Contact Unit.

2006

• 28 October 2006: Whilst still head of the MCU, Lambert is a panelist (alongside CSTPV's John Horgan and Marie Breen Smyth of the University of Wales at Aberystwyth) discussing ‘Forging a Critical, Policy Relevant Research Agenda: the Way Forward’ at ‘Is it Time for a Critical Terrorism Studies?’, a two day conference organised jointly by the British International Studies Association Working Group on Critical Studies on Terrorism and Aberystwyth University's Centre for the Study of Radicalisation & Contemporary Political Violence (CSRV), which takes place in Manchester.

2007

• 26 April 2007: In his capacity as head of the MCU, Lambert delivers a presentation to ‘Radicalisation in Denmark - Opportunities for Early, Co-ordinated Efforts’, a counter-terrorism conference hosted by Danish intelligence agency PET in Copenhagen.

• 18 October 2007: Still a police officer, Lambert attends ‘The Politics Of Radicalisation: Reframing The Debate And Reclaiming The Language’, a one-day seminar organised by Marie Breen Smyth and the Centre for the Study of Radicalisation & Contemporary Political Violence at the University of Wales Aberystwyth, which is held at the London Muslim Centre in Whitechapel, East London. Lambert is assigned to a discussion group which includes Imran Khan, lawyer for the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence. Other attendees include academics such as Richard Jackson and Stuart Croft; representatives of CAGE (Makbool Javaid, Moazzam Begg, Adnan Siddiqui and Saghir Hussain); Lambert's Brixton-based ally and co-director of STREET (and subsequently an academic colleague) Abdul Haqq Baker; Daud Abdullah and Jamil Sherif from the Muslim Council of Britain; Massoud Shadjareh and Reza Kazim (both of Islamic Human Rights Commission); Azad Ali representing the Muslim Safety Forum; senior members of Hizb ut-Tahrir (leader Abdul Wahid and media spokesman Taji Mustafa); Dominic Grieve MP (then Conservative Shadow Attorney General, subsequently Attorney General in the Coalition government from 2010 until 2014, and currently Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee); and Jason Tierney from the Home Office; and even Ali Dizaei (then a senior Muslim officer with the Metropolitan Police Service).

• 11 November 2007: Lambert attends an event celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Islamic Human Rights Commission held at the London Muslim Centre in Whitechapel. He receives a trophy in “appreciation for his integrity and commitment to promoting a fair, just and secure society for all, which, is a rarity and will be greatly missed”. Fellow guests include Daud Abdullah (MCB and MEMO), Yvonne Ridley (Respect Party), George Galloway (Respect Party), Ibrahim Hewitt (Interpal and MEMO), Moazzam Begg (CAGE) and Muhammad Abdul Bari (MCB and IFE).

• 24 November 2007: Attends the Global Peace & Unity festival in London - organised by Islam Channel and Mohamed Ali Harrath - where he is presented with a ‘Friends of Islam’ award by the Muslim Council of Britain.

• 12-14 December 2007: Lambert, shortly before his retirement from the Met, delivers a paper elaborating on his work at the Muslim Contact Unit at a conference on the theme of ‘Policing in Three Dimensions’ held under the auspices of RegNet (Regulatory Institutions Network) at the Australian National University in Canberra.

2008

• 16 May 2008: Lambert meets with Carl Arrindell, Director of International Operations & Strategic Planning at the Islam Channel, to discuss a proposal to set up a “new initiative designed to counter the growth of Islamophobia”. Also in attendance are Islam Channel boss Mohamed Ali Harrath; entrepreneur Sufyan Ismail; Muslim Council of Britain media officer Inayat Bunglawala; Asghar Bukhari, founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK; and at least one other person. This subsequently leads to the establishment of ENGAGE.

• 5-7 June 2008: On the closing Saturday, Lambert presents a talk entitled ‘Community Based Approaches to Counter-Terrorism in London’ at an internationally-sponsored conference held at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, ‘Muslim-Government Relations in Changing Security Contexts: Prospects for Transformation - A Conversation with Participants from Britain, France, Germany and the United States’. Presenting alongside Lambert in the same segment is Mehmood Naqshbandi, who authored the 2006 City Of London Police booklet, Guide To Islam. Other participants include then-Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain and Chairman of East London Mosque Muhammad Abdul Bari, and BBC journalist Dominic Casciani, who would later report on various aspects of undercover policing following the exposure of the SDS and NPOIU programmes, having previously profiled a pre-unmasking Bob Lambert positively in September 2011.

• 13 July 2008: Lambert participates in a seminar discussion entitled ‘Islamism and Extremism: A Western Preoccupation’ at the second day of a two-day ‘Understanding Political Islam’ event held at the Islam Expo in the Olympia Exhibition Centre. Lambert's session is chaired by Jamie Bartlett from DEMOS, which is also a sponsor, with other participants including Anas Altikriti from the Cordoba Foundation and academics Robert Leiken and Tahir Abbas. Other sponsors and hosts include the British Muslim Initiative, Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, Conflicts Forum, Forward Thinking and the Cordoba Foundation. Fellow participants include Alistair Crooke (formerly of Secret Intelligence Service/MI6), Azzam Tamimi (Alhiwar Television), American academic John Esposito, and Basheer Nafi, an Egyptian-born British academic previously accused of being a terrorist.

• 23 July 2008: Lambert attends the launch of the Islam Channel's 2008 Global Peace & Unity Event at the House of Lords.

• August 2008: Lambert is interviewed at length about his Special Branch career in the Metropolitan Police, his work with the Muslim Contact Unit, and his subsequent academic research by Richard Jackson for the journal Critical Studies on Terrorism. He characterises his time in MPSB at “provid[ing] opportunities to see how terrorist groups and violent extremist political groups go about their business.”

• 10-11 September 2008: Lambert appears on two panels - ‘Trust-building and terrorism’ and ‘Trust-building as an alternative to “radicalisation”’ - at Aberystwyth University's two-day conference, ‘Trust-Building in Conflict Resolution’. Basia Spalek appears on the same panels.

• 16 September 2008: Lambert presents the keynote speech on the theme of ‘Partnership and Continuum in the Age of Conflict’ at the annual iftar reception organised by the Islamic Forum of Europe at its London Muslim Centre. Other principal guests include founding IFE President (and at the time Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain) Muhammad Abdul Bari, and IFE's then-President Muhammad Habibur-Rahman.

• 22 September 2008: In his capacity as an academic at Exeter University, Lambert led a panel discussing community-based approaches to counter-terrorism at the ‘National Intelligence vs the Sub-State Actor’ seminar hosted by the Centre for the Study of International Governance at Loughborough University. His former job as a police officer is noted, as is his key role in setting up the Muslim Contact Unit.

• 17 December 2008: Lambert delivers a paper on ‘Empowering Salafis and Islamists Against al-Qaida: A London Counter-Terrorism Case Study’ at ‘Community Engagement for the Purpose of Counter-Terrorism and Counter-Radicalisation: Reflections, Critiques and International Dimensions’, the British International Studies Association's annual conference hosted at the University of Exeter.

2009

• 27 October 2009: Lambert is a featured speaker at a discussion hosted by Lord Ahmed and the Cordoba Foundation at the House of Lords on the subject of the ‘Preventing Violent Extremism’ (also known simply as ‘Prevent’) programme, and “to address recent revelations of spying on the Muslim community and the ramifications on present and future security and community relations.” Other speakers are Muhammad Abdul Bari of the Muslim Council of Britain, Bari's fellow EMRC Advisory Board member Oliver McTernan from Middle East peace process-oriented charitable organisation Forward Thinking, Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve, Arun Kundnani from the Institute of Race Relations, and Saleh Mamun from activist group Campaign Against Criminalising Communities.

• 2 November 2009: Lambert is a featured speaker at the ‘Conference on Radicalisation, Non-Traditional Security and International Economic Cooperation’, which takes place in Singapore, co-organised by Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and Warwick University.

• 21 November 2009: Lambert speaks on the subject of ‘Converts to Salafism tackling violent extremism: a Brixton case study’ at ‘New Movements within the Islamic Tradition’, a seminar organised by Inform (an independent charity describing itself as “The information network on religious movements”) at the London School of Economics. Other participants invited include academics from the Universities of Chester, Liverpool Hope and King's College London, as well as ex-Islamist Munir Ahmed Zamir, Hakeem Ajonbadi from Nasrul-Lahi-l-Fathi Society of Nigeria, former Mojahedin-e Khalq member Masoud Banisadr, and the executive director of the Dialogue Society, Ozcan Keles.

• 2 December 2009: Lambert attends ‘Disengagement Amongst Youths’, a conference on “Radicalisation, Extremism and Organised Crime” organised through St. Andrews University through the British Council, in Fryshuset in Sweden. He delivers talks on both “al-Qaida influence in London” and on “countering al-Qaida influence [through] police/public partnerships”. Other speakers include Jeffrey Murer from St. Andrews, Johan Olsson from Sweden's Security Service (SÄPO), and journalist Anna-Lena Lodenius, who authored a report on extremism on behalf of SÄPO.

2010

• 28 January 2010: The first major piece of research by Lambert in concert with Jonathan Githens-Mazer, his co-director at the University of Exeter-based European Muslim Research Centre, is published today. Entitled Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: a London Case Study, it is heavily influenced by his work with the Muslim Contact Unit.

• 10 March 2010: Lambert and his EMRC colleague Jonathan Githens-Mazer attend a special closed meeting to discuss “the growing spate of attacks in all its forms against British Muslims” held at the House of Commons, organised by the Muslim Council of Britain and supported by the Muslim Safety Forum, the Cordoba Foundation and the European Muslim Research Centre. In attendance are Parliamentarians Mohammad Sarwar, Dan Rogerson, David Burrows and Phyllis Starkey (a fellow “team member” of Islamix alongside Lambert and Githens-Mazer), plus Barons Ahmed of Rotherham, Sheikh of Cornhill and Hylton of Hylton, academics including Chris Allen and Maleiha Malik, Abdurahman Jafar representing the MSF, National Association of Muslim Police's President Zaheer Ahmed, journalist Peter Oborne and former director of the Runnymede Trust, Robin Richardson, whilst MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott also send messages of support.

• 30 March 2010: Lambert is among the speakers at a four hundred-strong meeting called at the London Muslim Centre to challenge Islamophobia following Andrew Gilligan's documentary ‘Britain's Islamic Republic’, broadcast on Channel 4 as part of its Dispatches strand, which “accused the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) of using the East London Mosque as a base for ‘infiltrating’ the local Labour party to impose Shariah law.” Lambert argued that “assaults on Muslims are linked to the negative and false information in the media that help create the sense that all Muslims pose a terrorist threat,” that “Many who carry out attacks on Muslims are extreme nationalists,” and and also that “both the mainstream media and politicians of doing nothing to expose the BNP extremists.” Other speakers included George Galloway MP from the Respect Party, Muhammed Habibur Rahman from the Islamic Forum of Europe, and Neil Jameson from London Citizen.

• 5 June 2010: Lambert is a featured speaker at ‘Stop Islamophobia Defend the Muslim Community’, a one-day conference co-organised by Stop The War and the British Muslim Initiative, and supported by CND, Cordoba Foundation, Federation of Student Islamic Societies, Islam Channel, Islamic Forum of Europe, Islamophobia Watch, London Muslim Centre, Muslim Welfare House, National Union of Journalists, North London Central Mosque, Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Unite. Fellow speakers include Daud Abdullah (Muslim Council of Britain), Mohammed Ali (AKA Mohamed Ali Harrath) (Islam Channel), Anas Al-Tikriti (British Muslim Initiative), Moazzam Begg (CAGE and former Guantanamo Bay prisoner), Lindsey German (convenor of Stop the War Coalition, and until February a long-term member of the SWP), Muhammad Habibur-Rahman (vice-president Islamic Forum of Europe), Kate Hudson (CND), Imran Khan (Lawrence family solicitor), Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, Seumas Milne (at the time a Guardian journalist), Peter Oborne (then the senior political correspondent of the Daily Telegraph) and Salma Yaqoob (Respect Party).

• 7 July 2010: Murtaza Shibli's book, 7/7: Muslim Perspectives, is launched at the House of Lords on the fifth anniversary of the London terrorist attacks. The event is co-sponsored by the European Muslim Research Centre, and Lambert and Jonathan Githens-Mazer have provided supportive messages, leading to the strong possibility that either or both may have been in attendance.

• 23 October 2010: Lambert is a panelist at the 'Moving Beyond the Rhetoric: Increasing Trust between Faiths, Beliefs, Cultures and Communities’ one day conference organised jointly by the Cordoba Foundation, Forward Thinking and Global Peace and Unity to coincide with the first day of the GPU's own weekend-long event. The invitation-only conference “brought together academics, faith leaders, practitioners and activists to share their experiences, knowledge and expertise on building bridges between communities in the context of promoting understanding and dialogue.” As well as speaking from the dais, Lambert had also been a member of the organising committee.

• 27 November 2010: Lambert and Githens-Mazer's Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: UK Case Studies report is launched at an event at the London Muslim Centre attached to East London Mosque jointly hosted by the European Muslim Research Centre, the University of Exeter and the Cordoba Foundation and chaired by Anas Altikriti (former chair of the Muslim Association of Britain, and chief executive of Cordoba Foundation). As well as the two authors, speakers include John Esposito (Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University), Telegraph journalist Peter Oborne, Salma Yaqoob (Respect Party), Seumas Milne (The Guardian) and Chris Allen (University of Birmingham).

• 29 November 2010: A second launch event is held for Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: UK Case Studies report at Birmingham Central Mosque.

• 10 December 2010: A third launch of launch event for Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: UK Case Studies report takes place at Woodfarm Education Centre in Glasgow, jointly promoted by the European Muslim Research Centre, the University of Exeter, the Cordoba Foundation, Scottish-Islamic Foundation and Woodspring Educational Trust. Anas Altikriti of Cordoba chairs the event, Lambert and Githens-Mazer attend, and David Miller (University of Strathclyde/Spinwatch) is the featured guest speaker.

2011

• 21 February 2011: Following serious concerns being raised about a chapter in the EMRC's flagship report Islamophobia And Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: UK Case Studies (including “serious errors of fact which may lead a reader to misconstrue the conduct, actions and the intentions of [Tower Hamlets] Councillors Helal Abbas, Denise Jones, Ken Clark, Joshua Peck, Rachael Saunders, Michael Keith and Jim Fitzpatrick MP”), the University of Exeter seeks to “curtail distribution of that version”, replacing it with a revised edition, minus the offending (and possibly libelous) section. The University “apologises unreservedly,” though the report's writer-editors Lambert and Githens-Mazer appear not to follow suit.

• 11 March 2011: Lambert joins Marie Breen Smyth, former Muslim Council of Britain Secretary General Muhammad Abdul Bari and others as a speaker at a conference entitled ‘Radical thinking – between extremes of freedom and security on campus’, hosted by the UCL Islamic Society and the Federation of Student Islamic Societies at University College London.

• May 2011: Appears on Press TV current affairs show Rattansi & Ridley, interviewed by Yvonne Ridley (a leading Respect Party activist) and Afshim Rattansi, in relation to his involvement in the organisation of the forthcoming ‘European Islamophobia Conference’. Lindsey German (a leading Respect Party activist, and until 2010 a prominent member of the SWP) is also featured on the same programme.

• 21 May 2011: Lambert is a prominently billed speaker at the ‘Confronting Anti-Muslim Hatred in Britain and Europe’ European conference organised by Enough Coalition Against Islamophobia at the London Muslim Centre in Whitechapel. Other invitees include Labour MP Tony Benn, journalists Peter Oborne and Seumas Milne, Salma Yaqoob (then of RESPECT), John Rees and Lindsey German (both formerly of SWP and RESPECT, then of Stop The War Coalition and Counterfire), Daud Abdullah (variously British Muslim Initiative, Muslim Council of Britain and MEMO), and academic John Esposito.

• 11 June 2011: Lambert is quoted in his role as co-director of the European Muslim Research Centre at Exeter University in an article in The Independent newspaper about the Muslim Council of Britain's claims about under-reporting of Islamophobic hate crime.

• 29 June 2011: Lambert is a prominent signatory to an open letter condemning the arrest the previous night of Sheikh Raed Salah, a prominent Palestinian leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel invited to the UK for a speaking tour by Daud Abdullah's Middle East Monitor (MEMO). Salah would later face deportation proceedings, during which Lambert would be called as an expert witness.

• 29 July 2011: Lambert appears to have been present at a meeting of ad hoc anti-English Defence League group ‘United East End’, which takes place at the London Muslim Centre in Whitechapel to discuss preparations against an EDL march planned for September, and to commemorate the victims who fell at the hands of Norwegian far right terrorist Anders Breivik in Oslo and Utøya one week earlier. Also present is Ken Livingstone.

• 5 September 2011: Takes part in a panel discussion on the English Defence League hosted by Salma Yaqoob (a leading Respect Party activist) on the Islam Channel. Other guests include former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg of CAGEprisoners, academic Amina Yaqin, and Sabby Dhalu from Unite Against Fascism.

• 7 September 2011: Lambert is interviewed by Sarah Montague on BBC Radio 4's current affairs programme Today on his book Countering Al Qaeda In London (which is launched the same day) and his belief that the Prevent counter-terrorism programme damages inter-community relations.

• 7 September 2011: Lambert launches his book Countering Al Qaeda In London at a reception hosted by Islington Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn at the Parliamentary office building Portcullis House. Speakers include Ibrahim Hewitt of Interpal, Anas Altikriti from Cordoba Foundation, and Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU).

• 8-11 September 2011: To highlight the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, David Miller (Spinwatch) and others from the Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group (CSTWG) of the British International Studies Association organise a series of events in Glasgow. These include ‘From 9/11 to the Arab Spring, the Norway killings and the English riots: What have we learned about political violence and terrorism?’, a public roundtable on the Thursday at which the featured speakers are Lambert, Scottish human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar, Helen Dexter (University of Manchester) and Christina Hellmich (Reading University). In addition, on the Friday Lambert both co-leads a research workshop with Richard Jackson (who previously interviewed him about his work), and on the Saturday hosts a plenary session entitled ‘Muslim Partners or Muslim Extremists?’, after which he also launches his book.

• 9 September 2011: Lambert is profiled in a positive light by Dominic Casciani on the BBC News website to tie in with the publication of his book Countering Al Qaeda In London.

• 19 September 2011: Lambert continues his book promotion drive with a lecture at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, also entitled ‘Countering Al Qaeda in London’. The event is chaired by Nigel Inkster, IISS's Director of Transnational Threats and Political Risk, and entire talk is filmed.

• 20 September 2011: At a Chatham House event based upon the themes in his book, Lambert gives a talk and is the subject of a question-and-answer session moderated by Rosemary Harris under the title of ‘Partnering with the Muslim Community as an Effective Counter-Terrorist Strategy’.

• 22 September 2011: Lambert visits Singapore to attend the International Conference on Community Engagement, hosted by Nanyang Technological University's International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR). He talks about his experience in MCU as part of a panel discussing community engagement models from the perspective of interior ministries. The previous day, Basia Spalek also participated in a panel, focused on ‘Community Engagement Models in the West’.

• 25 September 2011: Lambert promotes his book with a lecture also entitled ‘Countering Al Qaeda in London: Police and Muslims in Partnership’ at the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies in Doha, Qatar.

• 27 September 2011: Lambert joins David Miller from SpinWatch as an expert witness in the immigration tribunal deciding whether the Home Office was right to arrest, detain and attempt to deport Sheikh Raed Salah, a leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel, who came to Britain for a speaking tour at the invitation of Daud Abdullah's Middle East Monitor (MEMO). Salah's arrest came after Home Office officials acted on information supplied by the Community Security Trust, a registered charity “that protects British Jews from antisemitism and related threats”. In his evidence Lambert (given by virtue of his status as former head of the Muslim Contact Unit) states that the CST “often tends to be biased” when it comes to criticism of Israel by Muslims, regularly conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. After losing the initial tribunal, Salah later secured victory in the Upper Immigration Tribunal.

• 29 September 2011: Lambert presents a paper on ‘Countering Terrorism without creating ‘Suspect’ Communities’ at ‘Migrants, ethnic minorities, Muslims as objects of global surveillance’ event hosted by the University of Warwick's Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations at the University of Leicester.

• 30 September 2011: Lambert is guest speaker at another promotional event for his book, this time hosted by organisation for Muslim professionals The City Circle at its West London headquarters.

• 3 October 2011: Lambert is an advertised speaker at ‘Bangladesh In Crisis’ event organised by the Bangladesh Crisis Group at the Waterlily Business Centre in Aldgate, East London. Other speakers include Anas Altikriti (BMI), Moazzam Begg (CAGEprisoners), Jeremy Corbyn (Labour MP for Islington North), Farooq Murad (MCB), Omer Al-Hamdoon (MAB), Musleh Faradhi (IFE) and Chris Nineham (founder member of StWc and a long-time SWP member until February 2010).

• 4 October 2011: Lambert launches his book at a University of Edinburgh Law School ‘9/11 anniversary’ seminar under the banner of ‘Reflecting on Police-Muslim Relations within the Legacy of Stephen Lawrence and Ongoing Police Reform’. The event is co-organised by notable Lambert defender Stefano Bonino.

• October 2011: Lambert attends a dinner hosted by IslamExpo in honour of Wadah Khanfar, who had recently resigned as Director-General of Al Jazeera television station. Those in attendance included Islington MP Jeremy Corbyn, Lindsey German and John Rees from Stop The War (and formerly of the SWP and Respect), and Anas Altikriti (Cordoba Foundation and IslamExpo).

• 11-12 October 2011: At the first day of the ‘Rethinking Radicalisation’ conference organised by the Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Foundation for Peace in Warrington, Lambert makes a presentation on ‘Rethinking Radicalisation and Counter-Radicalisation’. The themes he explores include ‘Separating political ideology from political violence’, ‘Learning from Northern Ireland and other experiences’, and ‘Examining the rationale of Anders Breivik and the English Defence League’. Amongst the other speakers is fellow Special Branch veteran, Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Porter, Head of North West Counter Terrorism Unit.

• 11 October 2011: Lambert speaks at a book launch event at the House of Commons to celebrate publication of The Cold War On British Muslims, a SpinWatch report written by David Miller, Tom Mills and Tom Griffin (an editor of the openDemocracy blog OurKingdom). All three authors appear, alongside Daud Abdullah of MEMO and Anas Altikriti from the Cordoba Foundation, whose organisations jointly host the event, the Cordoba Foundation also having funded the report. Simon Danczuk MP is the official sponsor of the event, whilst CND's Kate Hudson, the originally advertised chair of the event, is replaced on the night by former Guardian associate foreign editor Victoria Brittain.

• 12 October 2011: Lambert presents a paper (based on his chapter in the 2011 Coolsaet book at the ‘Terrorism, radicalisation & de-radicalisation: European & American experiences’ conference co-hosted in Brussels by the Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations and the University of Ghent.

• 15 October 2011: Lambert is advertised as a featured speaker at the Unite Against Fascism/One Society Many Cultures conference held at Congress House in central London (headquarters of the Trades Union Congress), presenting findings on the subject of “extremist nationalist political violence and Anders Breivik”. At the end of his talk during the question-and-answer session he is outed as not just a former Special Branch officer, but an undercover operative who had infiltrated London Greenpeace in the 1980s by members of that group.

• 2 November 2011: Lambert (purportedly) delivers paper ‘Definition, causes and impact of terrorism’, submitted on behalf of CSTPV to the “Middle East Faculty at NATO Defence College” in Rome.

• 4 November 2011: An interview with Lambert conducted by New Humanist magazine shortly before his exposure as a former police spy is published.

• 8 November 2011: Lambert is scheduled to appear at an event at the London Muslim Centre in Whitechapel alongside David Miller (SpinWatch) and fellow academic Rizwaan Sabir (then Strathclyde, now Bath), to launch “two ground breaking research pieces” - that is, Lambert's book, and SpinWatch's report, The Cold War On British Muslims. The event is sponsored by the Cordoba Foundation and SpinWatch, with Anas Altikriti moderating. Following Lambert's unmasking in October 2011, the event is cancelled.

• 17 November 2011: Lambert delivers a paper, 'Reflecting on 10 Years Since 9/11. Policing Muslim Communities', at the ‘Victims of Terrorism’ conference hosted by CSTPV at St. Andrews University.

• 24 November 2011: An event which had been organised through the Centre for the Study of Pakistan at London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), ‘Re-thinking terrorist and violent extremist threats after Oslo’, at which Lambert was due to speak, is cancelled at short notice.

• 30 November 2011: Lambert delivers a paper on ‘Community based approaches to counter-terrorism’ to a conference “organised by Dr. Rob Johnson at All Souls, Oxford”. No further information is currently known.

• 5 December 2011: Lambert delivers a talk on ‘Countering Al-Qaeda in London: Police and Muslims in Partnership’ at Aberystwyth University.

2012

• January-December 2012: In January Lambert is invited to be a member of a the Advisory Board for openSecurity, a section of the openDemocracy ‘digital commons’ website, despite having been publicly outed as a police spy, and having been named in legal proceedings. He resigns in December of the same year. One of the editors of openSecurity, Jo Tyabji, subsequently noted that this “was a mistake, we didn't have our eye on the ball”. Despite being on the Advisory Board for nearly a year, Tyabji insists that Lambert attended no meetings. Lambert's academic collaborator at Exeter, Jonathan Githens-Mazer, was also a member of the Advisory Board, and continued after Lambert's resignation in 2012.

• 19 January 2012: Once again Lambert delivers a talk on the subject of ‘Countering Al-Qaeda in London’, this under the auspices of a Religion & Social Sciences seminar at King's College London.
• 7 February 2012: Lambert appears at Cardiff University's Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK to deliver a talk based on his book as part of a public lecture series His talk is video recorded.

• 9 February 2012: Lambert is scheduled to deliver a public seminar on the subject of ‘Overcoming Obstacles: Counter-Terrorism Police and Community Engagement’ alongside Richard English (St. Andrews), Orla Lynch (St. Andrews) and Basia Spalek (University of Birmingham). It is disrupted by animal rights activists.

2013

• 1 July 2013: Appears on Channel 4 News to deny allegations made by Peter Francis that SDS undercover officers were tasked with finding “dirt” that could be “used against members of the Lawrence family and friends”.

• 16 December 2013: Lambert appears at a workshop/debate event hosted by the New Political Communication Unit at Royal Holloway University of London on the theme of ‘Can religious media bring peace?’ Also taking part is Lambert's former co-director of EMRC Jonathan Githens-Mazer, and redoubtable Lambert defender Daud Abdullah of the Muslim Council of Britain, British Muslim Initiative, Middle East Monitor etc.

2014

• 24 April 2014: Lambert is interviewed for an episode of Radio 4's investigative programme The Report looking at the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain. He discusses how the Muslim Contact Unit worked with Salafi and Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups to depose Abu Hamza from Finsbury Park Mosque. Other contributors include Anas Altikriti (Muslim Association of Britain and Cordoba Foundation), Mohamed Soudan (Freedom and Justice Party), Olivier Guitta (Henry Jackson Society), Conservative MP Alistair Burt and Baroness Falkner (Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman).

• 2 July 2014: Lambert is interviewed by Andy Davies about his past as an undercover officer for Channel 4 News - see below for more details.

• 22 September 2014: Lambert is quoted as an expert in The Times in a story about calls for the UK government “to enlist the help of several controversial Muslim groups to stem the flow of British jihadists to Iraq and Syria.” Lambert praises both the Muslim Association of Britain and its parent organisation the Muslim Council of Britain for their efforts in wresting control of Finsbury Park Mosque away from Abu Hamza, and STREET is name checked.

• 19 November 2014: In an article on British deradicalisation efforts on digital news site GlobalPost, Lambert is briefly quoted in his capacity as former head of the Muslim Contact Unit supporting the efforts of the likes of STREET, whose founder (and academic mentee of Lambert) Abdul Haqq Baker is also quoted, as is Lambert's St. Andrews colleague Douglas Weeks.

2015

• 13 January 2015: Lambert is interviewed by French current affairs magazine Le Point on his views on how best to tackle Islamist violence in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France.

2016

Currently we are unaware of any public activity undertaken by Robert Lambert in 2016.

About his exposure and his past as an undercover

Bob Lambert was publicly outed as having been an undercover police officer on 15 October 2011. This sub-section collects together the few times he has directly addressed this issue.

• 20 October 2011: In a ‘Comment is Free’ piece for The Guardian‘s website, Lambert acknowledges that he has been accused of having an “alleged...undercover policing role for special branch”, but says he “cannot” respond to the claims. All he will say is that he “did not recruit one Muslim Londoner as an informant nor did I spy on them”.

• 23 October 2011: The Guardian publishes a story based on a statement released by Lambert, in which he admits he had infiltrated London Greenpeace, pretending to be animal rights activist ‘Bob Robinson’, and entered into a long-term relationship with a woman (not named, but clearly Belinda Harvey). He also states that he “unreservedly apologised” to those he had deceived.

The same day he responds to Spinwatch's open letter of 20 October, which had called on him to provide “clarification of the allegations that have recently been published...London Greenpeace and the Guardian”. He reiterates the apology he made in his statement to The Guardian, but claims that “the vast majority of Met special branch undercover officers never made the mistakes I made [and] have no need to apologise for anything,” without mentioning that the same tradecraft and behaviour associated with his deployment have been identified with several of the officers whom he directly supervised in subsequent years.

• February 2012: Several months later, Lambert published a brief statement entitled ‘Rebuilding Trust and Credibility: A preliminary commentary reflecting my personal perspective’ on his Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence profile at the St. Andrews University website. In it he summarises the generalised admissions he has already made, reiterates the general apology he has already given, and indicates that until the litigation and official inquiries have been completed he will not say much more on the subject of any note.

• 15 June 2012: Having the night before seen a photograph of ‘Bob Robinson’ from the 1980s in a newspaper article about the allegations surrounding Lambert's involvement in the Debenham's incendiary device plot, former partner Jacqui telephones St. Andrews University, tells the person answering the call that she is the mother of Bob Lambert's child, and asks to speak to him. Ten minutes later Lambert calls her. During their conversation he “kept saying sorry, over and over again.”

• April 2014: Three key articles are published by Critical Studies on Terrorism: first an overview of the issues involved with undercover police deployments, by American academic Michael Loadenthal, himself from an anarchist activist background; the second by long-time academic colleague of Lambert, Basia Spalek, co-written with Mary O'Rawe;; and the third, a response by Lambert himself to the Spalek/O'Rawe essay.

• July 2014: It was several months more before Lambert made his first broadcast appearance directly acknowledging his unmasking as a former undercover officer with SDS, in an interview with Andy Davies for Channel 4 News. An edited version of the interview featured on the programme on 2 July, with an extended package being posted to the website a few days later on 5 July.

• March 2016: During hearings at the Undercover Policing Inquiry over 22-23 March 2016, solicitors for Lambert submitted an application to Sir Christopher Pitchford for a Restriction Order to be put in place to prevent the disclosure of Lambert's past and present personal or professional addresses (which would include the location of the 1998 meeting between himself, Richard Walton and N81, and of any Special Demonstration Squad or Muslim Contact Unit offices, or indeed any of his university offices) or details of his immediate family.

Lambert himself wrote a supporting statement in which he claimed that since his exposure in October 2011 he has been “subject of an ongoing campaign by activists to prevent [him] working as an academic” which “demonstrated the visceral hatred that a small but committed group of activists have” towards him. Whilst the application by his solicitors claims that “there is an objectively well-founded basis for concluding there is a real and immediate risk to N10 [Lambert] and his family of physical harm,” Lambert himself admits that the sum total of any direct contact with such activists has been his being photographed in a university cafe, and twice being “confronted by hostile activists while travelling to work.” He further admits that he has not been the subject to any visits at home, and does not make any claim that any member of his family has been in any way approached or harassed. It is of particular note that the core of his solicitors' claims of “real and immediate risk” to Lambert and his family is based on “The long history of some of the infiltrated groups including ALF and London Greenpeace of conducting campaigns of violence and intimidation [including] violence towards alleged infiltrators.” (No evidence for these claims has been offered, though a separate ‘risk assessment’ document was concealed from the public.) This, of course, belies the fact that Lambert was exposed in October 2011 and not once has he or his family been attacked; that he did not apply for any injunction or restriction order prohibiting publication of personal or professional details until March 2016 (i.e. four years and five months after being exposed); and that it contradicts what he said in his original ‘apology’ of 23 October 2011, in which he characterised London Greenpeace as “a peaceful campaigning group” and its members “law-abiding”.

• 20 Ocotober 2016: Judge Pitchford announces he is willing to grant a restriction order to protect Lambert's personal addresses past and present, names of his immediate family, and his current professional address. Since his past academic posts are already in the public domain, and his work relates to undercover policing, it makes no sense to include them, Pitchford says:

Mr Lambert also seeks to restrict reporting in connection with the Inquiry proceedings that may reveal any past professional address of his. However, the fact and locations of Mr Lambert’s three past academic posts (from which he subsequently resigned) and his association with them are already in the public domain and, in this respect, there appears no legitimate interest for Mr Lambert to protect. Furthermore, and for present purposes more critical, Mr Lambert’s experience when employed in these posts may well be relevant to the applications of other former police officers. I am minded to make an order that no report of or in connection the Inquiry proceedings may reveal:

“a. the past or present personal address, or the current professional address, of the applicant.”

Citations and other references in (mostly) academic publications

This section collates citations of Lambert and his work (either as a police officer or an academic). Authors' names are in bold to facilitate easier reading; no implication beyond citing Lambert (favourably or otherwise) is intended. This has the potential to be a very extensive list, so if you believe we have omitted anything, please do get in touch - PGP is available on request.

• In 2005 a report entitled Muslims In The UK: Policies for Engaged Citizens was published by the EU Monitoring and Advocacy Program of the Open Society Institute, co-authored by Tufyal Choudhury, Maleiha Mali, J Mark Halstead, Zamila Bunglawala and Basia Spalek, based on research undertaken the previous year. Among those thanked for their contributions and consultations were both Detective Inspector Robert Lambert and the “Muslim Unit Scotland Yard” (i.e. the Muslim Contact Unit).

• Another early public mention for Lambert comes in 2006, when he was thanked in the introduction of Bringing it Home: Community-based approaches to counter-terrorism, a report by Rachel Briggs, Catherine Fieschi and Hannah Lownsbrough for the DEMOS think tank. He is named as a member of the researchers' steering group, which also included Lambert's academic protegé Abdul Haqq Baker, academic Stuart Croft, senior police officer Phil Gormley (subsequently revealed as someone with oversight of both the Special Demonstration Squad and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit whilst Head of Special Branch and secretary to ACPO-TAM), and subsequent Labour London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

• In their 2008 report published and funded by the University of Birmingham, Religion & Society and Arts & Humanities Research Council, Police-Muslim Engagement and Partnerships for the Purposes of Counter-Terrorism: An Examination, Dr Basia Spalek, Dr Salwa El Awa and Dr Laura Zahra McDonald thanked Lambert “for his significant help and support in his role as consultant and facilitator”. The “generosity shown by members of the Muslim Safety Forum and Muslim Contact Unit” was also acknowledged. Lambert was also listed as a formal research partner of the core University of Birmingham team in a project summary supplied to funding body Religion & Society.

• Thanked by Jonathan Githens-Mazer (“The author wishes to acknowledge with thanks the assistance of Robert Lambert MBE...in conducting the research contained here”) in his article ‘The blowback of repression and the dynamics of North African radicalization’, published in International Affairs Volume 85 Issue 5, September 2009.

• Abdul Haqq Baker, who as a leading activist within STREET worked closely with the Muslim Contact Unit, personally thanked Lambert (and Basia Spalek) in the introduction to his doctoral thesis, Countering Terrorism in the UK: A Convert Community Perspective (submitted November 2009). Baker also cites Lambert's own work extensively, including from a draft version of his own thesis, and from an unpublished NATO Advanced Research Workshop paper.

• In 2010, the Muslim Contact Unit (as well as Lambert himself) is cited as an important case example of a partnering initiative in the context of deradicalisation efforts by University of Bristol academics Dan Nilsson DeHanas (since moved to King's College London) and Therese O'Toole. They describe MCU as “innovative for not using an eligibility criterion”.

• Also in 2010, American academic Michael Kenney thanked Lambert (amongst others) for “constructive comments on earlier drafts” of his article ‘“Dumb” Yet Deadly: Local Knowledge and Poor Tradecraft Among Islamist Militants in Britain and Spain’ in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.

• In July 2010 Lambert was thanked by editor Murtaza Shibli (a media officer at the Muslim Council of Britain) in the introduction of his book, 7/7: Muslim Perspectives. The book's launch, at the House of Lords on the fifth anniversary of the London terrorist attacks on 7 July, was co-sponsored by the European Muslim Research Centre, and Lambert and Jonathan Githens-Mazer provided a supportive message: “This is an excellent book that challenges Islamophobic accounts of Muslims that have grown alarmingly since 7/7.” Lambert also supplied a further endorsement, which was used in publicity materials, stating that “7/7: Muslim Perspectives is an important contribution that should be read by everyone who was affected by 7/7. While the collection highlights the heterogeneous nature of Muslims in Britain it does nevertheless highlight the extent to which popularist accounts of the significance of the bombers’ Muslim identities has had the adverse consequence of stigmatising all Muslims as terrorists and extremists.”

• Lorenzo Vidino, an academic specialising in the study of Islamism and political violence, first interviewed Lambert in December 2008 for an article in the Washington Quarterly. He again interviewed Lambert and further cited his Muslim Contact Unit work three more times in 2010: in an article on the Foreign Policy magazine website entitled ‘Toward a Radical Solution’, in a journal article in CTC Sentinel, ‘The Role of Non-Violent Islamists in Europe’, and in a special report for the United States Institute of Peace, Countering Radicalization in America: Lessons from Europe. It is of note that in suggesting “10 lessons that the United States should keep in mind” to prevent Islamic extremism, Vidino advocates “consult[ation] with academics, civil liberties organizations — anybody with expertise. Inform the public. Get feedback from the Muslim community (and not just its most vocal self-appointed leaders)”, and specifically notes that “Britain and the Netherlands have been the most active, but the Danes are following suit. Germany, Norway, and Sweden have long-established and quite successful disengagement programs for neo-Nazis and are trying to apply the same tactics to jihadists”. Elsewhere Lambert has criticised Vidino's own analysis of radicalisation, accusing him of “repeat[ing] the ‘Londonistan’ analyses made repeatedly by Gilles Kepel, Melanie Phillips, Michael Gove, Douglas Murray and the seemingly endless corps of Rand, Middle East Forum, Policy Exchange and allied academics, researchers and commentators”.

• A 2013 report by Teesside University academics Nigel Copsey, Janet Dack, Mark Littler & Matthew Feldman of the Centre for Fascist, Anti-Fascist and Post-Fascist Studies briefly refers to the work of Lambert and Githens-Mazer at Exeter's European Muslim Research Centre with citations for both their Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: A London Case Study and Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: UK Case Studies

• In his 2013 article ‘The trouble with radicalization’ for International Affairs, Peter R. Neumann (founder of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College London) critically references Lambert's Muslim Contact Unit and academic work. He notes that “the notion that non-violent extremists are more effective than others at reaching people who are at risk of being recruited into terrorism is based almost entirely on the experience of Bob Lambert, whose Muslim Contact Unit at the London Metropolitan Police empowered non-violent Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood against Al-Qaeda. Lambert’s counterterrorist successes are beyond doubt, but he offers no control group, and it is impossible, therefore, to know what might have happened had other, similarly ‘edgy’ but less politically controversial groups been given the same job.”

• A less critical view of Lambert's MCU work is offered by Dr Alex P. Schmid in his 2014 research paper Violent and Non-Violent Extremism: Two Sides of the Same Coin?, in which he states that “the team set up by Robert Lambert played a crucial role in taking back the Finsbury Park mosque from the violent extremists associated with [al Qaeda] in a raid involving some 200 police officers. In the ‘liberated’ mosque, military-style equipment, guns, hunting knives, gas masks and chemical and biological warfare protection suits were found. The mosque was subsequently handed over to the [Muslim Brotherhood], whose UK members publicly opposed the use of violence in the UK. Lambert also teamed up with Brixton Salafis whom he considered to be the most effective group to fight the violent extremists of ‘Londonistan’.”Schmid omits to mention that from 2006 until 2011 he had been the director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV) at St. Andrews University, where Lambert himself had lectured since September 2008.

• In January 2015 Lambert's work in Brixton and Finsbury Park with the Muslim Contact Unit is cited as an example of a “youth centric community based approach” to countering violent extremism, in contrast to the Prevent model, in an article by American academic Samuel Tyler Powers. The article is published in the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence of St. Andrews University, but no mention is made of Lambert's connection to the CSTPV.

• In a follow-up report to that of Teesside University's Centre for Fascist, Anti-Fascist and Post-Fascist Studies two years previously, in 2015 Mark Littler and Matthew Feldman again briefly cite Lambert's and Githens-Mazer's Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: UK Case Studies.

Anything to add?

If you believe we have omitted anything, please do get in touch - PGP is available on request.

Further Undercover Research resources on Bob Lambert

• Bob Lambert
• Bob Lambert as Bob Robinson
• Bob Lambert Exposure and Post-Exposure
• Bob Lambert and the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry
• Bob Lambert Career Timeline
• Bob Lambert Consultancy
• Bob Lambert Gallery
• Bob Lambert Interaction with Others