Bob Lambert Career Timeline

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

This article gives a précis of the career of former Metropolitan Police Special Branch officer Bob Lambert, a notable undercover officer and subsequently manager in the Special Demonstration Squad, as well as his academic and other activities on leaving the Met.

Corrections or additions? Please contact the UndercoverResearch Group (and ask for our PGP key if you need it).

• Also see the main profile page on Bob Lambert and Bob Lambert Gallery.

+++++ Last Updated February 2018 +++++

Bob Lambert police career timeline

1977-1980 - early years in the Met

• 1977: Lambert reputedly joins Metropolitan Police, aged 25.

• 1980: Reputedly joins Special Branch.

• Between 1980 and 1984: Reputedly recruited into SDS, “soon after” having joined MPSB.

• September 1983: The month Lambert implies he is recruited into SDS.

1983/1984-1988 - undercover with SDS

• 1983 or 1984: Deployed undercover as ‘Bob Robinson’ tasked with infiltrating animal rights, environmental and other political activists.

• From 1983 or 1984 until at least 1986: ‘Robinson’ living in a bedsit at 16 Talbot Road in Highgate, North London.

• June 1984: The month when Lambert himself implies his undercover deployment begins. Initially, ‘Robinson’ simply turns up at the kinds of publicly-advertised demonstrations that rarely attract more than a handful of uniformed police, before moving to the fringes of more radical protest, making friends, persuading activists of his usefulness, and then beginning the gradual process of working his way into the heart of the action.

• 1984 (or less likely) 1983: Meets young activist Jacqui (AKA ‘Charlotte’) outside Hackney Town Hall during an animal rights demonstration. He approaches her and engages her in conversation. In the coming weeks he becomes a regular at similar protests, then joins hunt sabotage trips also attended by Jacqui; he offers to transport the hunt sabs back to London in his van, typically dropping Jacqui off last. In time this leads to the start of a relationship between the two.

• Summer 1984: Becomes involved in London Greenpeace.

• 6 September 1984: Takes part in an animal rights demonstration against dairy company Unigate taking place outside a company shareholder meeting at the Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane in London's upmarket Mayfair district. ‘Robinson’ hand writes a flyer - headed “UNIGATE MURDERS ANIMALS” - which is duplicated and handed out at the protest. Also present is fellow activist ‘Andrea’, with whom ‘Robinson’ is having a relationship at this time.

• Christmas 1984: Jacqui conceives son by ‘Robinson’.

• Christmas 1984 to Autumn 1985: ‘Robinson’ said to be “caring and supportive throughout the pregnancy,” and “seemed thrilled, through the pregnancy, through the appointments.”

• Autumn 1985: ‘Robinson’ insists on visiting his dementia-stricken father in Cumbria even though Jacqui is due to give birth; actually he is most probably visiting wife and other children in Herefordshire. He arrives back just as Jacqui is going into labour. He is said to have been present throughout the fourteen hour labour.

• Late 1985?: Attends picket of Murray's Meat Market butcher shop in Brixton, south London, where graphic leaflets are handed out. He is arrested under his false identity of ‘Bob Robinson’, and is understood to have made at least one appearance under that name at Camberwell Magistrates' Court. Geoff Sheppard remembers talking to Bob at this demonstration, so already knew him in 1985.

• December 1985 or January 1986: ‘Robinson’ is held up at knife point while urinating in a public toilet in Brixton, according to a letter written to his friend Martyn Lowe. Lowe was horrified at the time, but now wonders if it there was any truth in the story other than having an excuse to visit a police station without suspicion.

• 1986: Lambert attends pickets at Wapping, East London, with Jacqui in support of striking print workers sacked by newspaper magnate Rupert Murdoch. Ultimately around 6,000 workers lose their jobs, whilst more than 1,200 people in total are arrested in regular confrontations with police.

• 1986?: Authors A5 leaflet You Are The ALF! and a booklet called London ALF News.

• 1986?: Organises a benefit concert in aid of the ALF Supporters Group; uses some of the proceeds to buy etching fluid (or paint stripper), which he subsequently claimed to have used to damage a car belonging to the director of an animal testing laboratory.

• 1986: Co-authors the What's Wrong With McDonald's? fact sheet - which later precipitates the ‘McLibel’ case - with others in London Greenpeace..

• Summer 1986: ‘Robinson’ hosts a party at his Talbot Road bedsit.
• July 1986: Appears as a sworn witness under his false ‘Bob Robinson’ identity at the retrial of Steve Curtis in relation to a demonstration at Grosvenor Square in April against the bombing by the USA of Libya.

• January-February 1987: Attends trial of Ronnie Lee and the ‘Sheffield Cell’ of the ALF, with Geoff Sheppard and Paul Gravett.

• May 1987: Meets twenty-four year old Belinda Harvey (AKA ‘Karen’) at a party in Tottenham; they soon embark on a sexual relationship. He starts to spend most of his time at the East London house she shares with seven others.

• Summer 1987: Concurrently sleeping with Belinda Harvey, Jacqui and his wife.

• Summer 1987: Has “grotty” flat over a barber's on Graham Road in Hackney.

• 11 July 1987: ALF cell comprising Lambert, Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke plants incendiary devices in three Debenham's department stores around south-eastern England, located in Luton, Harrow and Romford, as part of a firebombing campaign against stores selling furs. The devices are primed to go off after trading hours and to set off the sprinkler systems, damaging the stock. The Luton store's system was switched off for repair, and so a blaze took hold, at a reported cost in damage alone of £6.7 million. Together the three attacks were said to have cost anything up to £9 million.

• September 1987: Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke are arrested at a bedsit in Hillside Road in Tottenham, North London during a raid by Anti Terrorist Squad officers. They are said to have been “in the process of what was clearly the well-practised manufacture of improvised but efficient incendiary devices” similar to the ones used at the Debenham's stores two months previously.

• Late 1987: After around three and a half years together, estrangement develops between ‘Robinson’ and Jacqui, with him claiming that she is “neglecting their sex life.”

• February 1988: Belinda Harvey moves into the flat in Seaton Point on the Nightingale Estate with two other friends of ‘Robinson’.

• March 1988: In a letter to another activist, ‘Robinson’ explains how he is desperate to ensure that enough supporters visit Sheppard, who is on remand. “I just had a feeling that no one would be visiting him on the Sunday and I was getting very frustrated,” he writes.<Letter seen by the Undercover Research Group.>

• Spring 1988: Provides support to Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke as they face trial over the Debenham's actions. He visits Geoff while he is on remand in Wandsworth jail, bringing him a book on philosophy.

• May 1988: ‘Robinson’ moves out of the Graham Road flat (though he may have kept it on) and in with Belinda Harvey at her flat at Seaton Point on the Nightingale Estate.

• Around June 1988: Brushes off the subject of parenthood with Belinda Harvey (AKA ‘Karen’) when she broaches it with him.

• 13-17 June 1988: ‘Robinson’ sets off daily to attend the trial of Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke for the Debenham's department store fires.

• Autumn 1988: Flat on the Nightingale Estate in Hackney is raided early one morning by police officers from Special Branch, who say they are looking for ‘Robinson’.

• October 1988: Belinda moves out of Seaton Point, largely due to the raid. Bob stays there for a few months longer.

• December 1988: Lambert cements his exit strategy with a ‘farewell’ weekend in the company of Belinda at the house of a friend in Dorset, before apparently leaving the country to evade capture by the police.

• December 1988: Keeps seeing Jacqui and their son until he leaves. Jacqui will not know about his relationship with Belinda until 2012, when she finds out about Lambert having been an undercover officer.

• Early 1989: Belinda receives a postcard from ‘Robinson’ postmarked as sent from Valencia in Spain. Jacqui receives a similar one.

1989-1993 - E Squad

• 1989: Lambert redeployed to post at New Scotland Yard in Metropolitan Police Special Branch's E Squad.

• Between June and December 1992: Tasked with secret investigation into former SDS undercover officer Mike Chitty by superiors within Special Branch.

• October 1993: Attends the 25th anniversary SDS reunion at the Victory Club near Marble Arch, along with around fifty other former and serving officers and managers.

1993-1998 - Controller of Operations, SDS

• November 1993: Lambert rejoins SDS as a manager - Controller of Operations - responsible for the day-to-day running of the unit, and effectively second only to its titular head, Detective Chief Inspector Keith Edmondson.

• May 1994: Finishes confidential report on Mike Chitty after almost two years of investigating.

• 1995: Receives a First from the Open University for his ‘Interdisciplinary’ BA Honours undergraduate degree.

• 1995: Present at meeting to discuss the sharing of intelligence product between the MI5 case officer responsible for monitoring Militant, Peter Francis and other SDS managers, held at the SDS safe house at Beaumont Road in Chiswick.

• Summer 1995: Acts as handler or cover officer on the first ever overseas SDS deployment when Peter Francis attends a YRE camp in a Bavarian forest. He spends most of his time in a nearby hotel on expenses. Lambert was involved in striking the deal with German authorities which gave the British police officers permission to be there. Part of this deal included Francis having to provide detailed reports for the Germans on activists in their country.

• 1997: Writes an SDS document entitled Withdrawal Strategy.

• September 1997: Signs Peter Francis' leaving card.

• January 1998: Writes a debriefing note following “a nice lunch at a nearby tandoori” with recently-exfiltrated undercover officer Peter Francis.

• 14 August 1998: Hosts meeting between SDS undercover officer N81 and Acting Detective Inspector Richard Walton at the garden of his north London house.

• 18 August 1998: Makes a file note of N81/Walton meeting for his senior managers.

• 1998: Lambert leaves SDS.

Late 1998-late 2001 - the ‘missing years’

• 1998-2001: Lambert's ‘missing years’. If you have any information to share on Lambert's activities during this period, please get in touch.

2002-2007 - Muslim Contact Unit

For a more detailed timeline of Lambert's time in the Muslim Contact Unit, please see separate Writing & Speaking and Interactions pages.

• January 2002: Sets up the Muslim Contact Unit (MCU) with a fellow former SDS officer

• 2003: Receives First from Birkbeck College, University of London, for his MA on Early Modern European Culture.

• July 2006: First notable public references to the MCU appear in two sources: in the Policy Exchange booklet When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries by Martin Bright, based on documents leaked by Foreign Office civil servant Derek Pasquill, and in a City of London Police press release relating to Tim Parsons' Guide To Islam.

• 26 April 2007: Delivers a presentation to ‘Radicalisation in Denmark - Opportunities for Early, Co-ordinated Efforts’ counter-terrorism conference hosted by Danish intelligence agency PET.

• 27 September 2007: Attends small ceremony at New Scotland Yard to present Peter Francis with the commendation he had previously been cited for but never received. Also present is “the then head of the Yard's counter-terrorism intelligence command”, and one other unnamed person. (It should be noted that in his account of this meeting to Mark Ellison QC, Peter Francis refers to the “Commander of Counter-Intelligence”.) Lambert invites Francis to the 40th SDS anniversary reunion the following year.

• December 2007: Retires from the Metropolitan Police after thirty years' service, with the rank of Detective Inspector.

Bob Lambert post-police career timeline

For a more detailed timeline of Lambert's post-retirement academic career, please see separate Writing & Speaking and Interactions pages.

2008-2011 - academic career (up until exposure)

• 18 May 2008: Appointed director of Abdul Haqq Baker's Salafi youth outreach project STREET.

• 7 June 2008: Presents paper entitled ‘Community Based Approaches to Counter-Terrorism in London’ at weekend-long ‘Muslim-Government Relations in Changing Security Contexts: Prospects for Transformation’ conference.

• 13 June 2008: Awarded MBE “for Services to the Police”.

• 2008-2011: Research Fellow at University of Exeter in its Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies.

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

• August 2008: Sets up Lambert Consultancy and Training Limited (company created on 21 August by Qa Nominees and Qa Registrars, with Lambert and his wife appointed directors on 22 August).

• September 2008: Begins teaching, lecturing and supervising dissertations on the e-learning MLitt terrorism studies course provided by St. Andrews University's Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence.

• 27 October 2008: Presumed to have attended the 40th anniversary SDS reunion (from which Francis was blackballed).

• 18 November 2008: Extended ‘special thanks’ by academic Basia Spalek “for his significant help and support in his role as consultant and facilitator” on the publication of her report, Police-Muslim Engagement and Partnerships for the Purposes of Counter-Terrorism: an examination.

• 15 December 2008: Mentioned in stories highlighting the presence of Islam Channel founder Mohamed Ali Harrath on Interpol's ‘Red Notice’ international extradition request list (in connection with his role in setting up the Front Islamique Tunisien in 1986 prior to claiming asylum in the UK in 1995) for his having written Harrath a letter of endorsement. Similarly mentioned as supporting Harrath is Metropolitan Police Special Branch's Detective Chief Superintendent Alan Mitchell, who had previously worked as a line manager for the NPOIU, the intelligence gathering and infiltration unit which first coexisted alongside Lambert's SDS, and by 2008 had supplanted it. Harrath is claimed by some newspapers to have been an ‘advisor’ to the Muslim Contact Unit, though the Met denies this, no evidence is proffered, and no source cited. The claim is subsequently recycled elsewhere. One notable supporter of Harrath through this is Telegraph and Spectator journalist Peter Oborne.

• 6 January 2009: Becomes director and company secretary of Siraat Ltd.

• September 2009: Co-director of European Muslim Research Centre.

• 1 November 2009: Resigns as director of STREET.

• Early 2010: Awarded PhD from University of Exeter for his research dissertation The London Partnerships: an Insider’s Analysis of Legitimacy and Effectiveness.

• 28 January 2010: Launch of first major piece of research by Lambert and principal EMRC collaborator Jonathan Githens-Mazer, Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime: A London Case Study. In his foreword Peter Oborne calls it a “very powerful study”.

• 29 January 2010: Release of the Islamic Human Rights Commission report on the policing of protests in London in 2008-2009 against Israel's invasion of Gaza. Lambert provides a positive review, calling it “precisely the kind of perspective the Met should engage with as it seeks to restore confidence in its unique tradition of public order policing in the capital”. He claims that the Met “is generally at its best when listening to its sternest critics”, and evokes the willingness of John Grieve (“who led the Met's radical and effective response to Lord Macpherson's stinging criticism at the conclusion of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry”) to do just that.

• 30 March 2010: Dissolves Lambert Consultancy and Training.

• 30 March 2010: Featured speaker - alongside Respect Party MP George Galloway, Islamic Forum of Europe director Muhammad Habibur-Rahman and others - at IFE-hosted event ‘Confronting Anti-Muslim Hatred in Contemporary Britain’.

• 5 June 2010: Invited to speak on the platform of the ‘Stop Islamophobia: Defend the Muslim Community’ conference organised by Stop the War Coalition. Other speakers include Daud Abdullah (Muslim Council of Britain), Mohamed Ali Harrath (Islam Channel), Anas al-Tikriti (Muslim Association of Britain/Stop the War Coalition/British Muslim Initiative/Cordoba Foundation), Moazzam Begg (CAGE), Lindsey German (SWP/Stop the War Coalition), Muhammad Habibur-Rahman (Islamic Forum of Europe), Salma Yaqoob (Respect Party), Kate Hudson (CND), Lawrence family lawyer Imran Khan and journalists Peter Oborne and Seumas Milne. Supporting organisations are listed as CND, Cordoba Foundation, Federation of Student Islamic Societies, Islam Channel, Islamic Forum of Europe, Islamophobia Watch, London Welfare House, National Union of Journalists, North London Central Mosque, Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Unite.

Autumn 2011 onwards: presentation of book, exposure and aftermath

• 7 September 2011: Appears on Radio 4 breakfast news programme Today to discuss his concerns with current government policy, and to plug his book, which is released later the same day.

• 7 September 2011: Lambert's book, Countering Al-Qaeda in London: Police and Muslims in Partnership, is released. A launch reception is held at the Houses of Parliament, hosted by Jeremy Corbyn MP, Cordoba Foundation and the Council for Arab-British Understanding, organised by the “sophisticated and focused public affairs company” Raitt Orr & Associates. Speakers include Ibrahim Hewitt (Interpal), Anas al-Tikriti (Muslim Association of Britain/Stop the War Coalition/British Muslim Initiative/Cordoba Foundation) and Chris Doyle (CAABU).

• 19 September 2011: Presents hour-long lecture on combating Al-Qaeda in London at think-tank International Institute for Strategic Studies in support of his recently-published book.

• 15 October 2011: Outed as a police spy by former London Greenpeace activists at a Unite Against Fascism/One Society Many Cultures conference held at Congress House in central London, the headquarters of the Trades Union Congress.

• 20 October 2011: SpinWatch publishes an open letter to Lambert calling on him to respond to the allegations that he infiltrated and spied upon London Greenpeace in the 1980s. Also see: Bob Lambert and Spinwatch.

• 20 October 2011: Lambert responds to the allegations about him in The Guardian with a ‘Comment Is Free piece’ in The Guardian. He refutes the notion that MCU is a Special Branch spying operation, and issues a notably narrow denial that he “did not recruit one Muslim Londoner as an informant nor did I spy on them.”

• 23 October 2011: Lambert responds to SpinWatch's open letter to him. The Guardian also publishes excerpts.

• October 2011: According to journalist Rob Evans, Lambert quietly resigns from the University of Exeter in a move publicised by neither party.

• 16 December 2011: Eight women deceived into long term intimate relationships by Lambert and four other male undercover police officers begin legal proceedings against the Met.

• 20 January 2012: The Guardian reveals that Lambert fathered a son with a woman activist whilst he was undercover in the 1980s.

• 1 February 2012: Publishes his “preliminary commentary” document, ‘Rebuilding Trust and Credibility’.

• 7 February 2012: Delivers ‘Countering al-Qaeda in London: Police and Muslims in Partnership’ lecture at Cardiff University's Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK, “organised in conjunction with the Universities' Police Science Institute”.

• 9 February 2012: Animal rights activists disrupt a talk by Lambert at a public seminar entitled ‘Overcoming Obstacles: Counter-Terrorism Police and Community Engagement’ hosted by the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews.

• Between 8 June 2012 and 29 August 2012: Name removed from the University of Exeter's European Muslim Research Centre (EMRC) website, where previously he had been identified as co-director.

• 13 June 2012: Lambert named under Parliamentary privilege by Caroline Lucas MP as the third person in an ALF cell targeting Debenhams department stories near London. She also reports on Geoff Sheppard's accusation that ‘Bob Robinson’ was the person tasked with planting the Harrow device, and that as it successfully set off the sprinkler system there, causing some £340,000-worth of damage, then Lambert must have been responsible. In a statement to The Guardian Lambert denies that he committed “serious crime such as 'planting an incendiary device at the [Debenhams] Harrow store'“.

• 14 June 2012: The Daily Mail runs a front page story about Bob Lambert with a photograph him in the 1980s as ‘Bob Robinson’, following the accusations made the previous day by Caroline Lucas MP. Jacqui (AKA ‘Charlotte’) sees the article with his photograph and finds out the father of her child had in fact been an undercover policeman. She telephones Lucas and explains she is the mother of Lambert's undercover baby; Lucas gives her the contact details of the lawyers acting for other women who had been in relationships with undercover officers.

• 15 June 2012: Lambert speaks to Jacqui for the first time in nearly 24 years since abandoning her and their son in late 1988, after she contacts him through St. Andrews University.

• September 2012: Takes up post as Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for the undergraduate Criminology & Law course at London Metropolitan University, working in the John Grieve Policing Centre.

• 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”.

• 7 April 2014: Publishes article in Critical Studies on Terrorism in which he defends his record as an academic, discusses (in broad terms) his work in Special Branch, and denies the “pejorative account” of him by Evans and Lewis.

• 24 June 2014: Siraat Ltd officially dissolved.

• 21 August 2014: The Crown Prosecution Service decides not to proceed with charges in relation to “alleged sexual misconduct”, such as rape, against former SDS undercover officers (including Lambert).

• 13 January 2015: Interview with French news magazine Le Point published.

• 23 December 2015: Lambert quits his academic posts at both St. Andrews and London Metropolitan universities.

Other Undercover Research resources

• Bob Lambert
• Bob Lambert as Bob Robinson
• Bob Lambert Exposure and Post-Exposure
• Bob Lambert and the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry
• Bob Lambert Writing and Speaking
• Bob Lambert Consultancy
• Bob Lambert Gallery