Bob Lambert

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

Robert Lambert, commonly known as Bob Lambert and sometimes styled Dr Robert Lambert MBE, born February or March 1952, , is a former Metropolitan Police officer turned academic.

A long-serving officer with the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, Lambert was a key member of its secretive Special Demonstration Squad. He served both as an undercover officer - using the false identity ‘Bob Robinson’ to infiltrate the environmental and animal rights protest movement in the 1980s - and then later as an influential manager of the unit in the 1990s.

He subsequently set up the Muslim Contact Unit within Special Branch, which worked with British Islamists purportedly to temper radicalisation, before retiring from the police in 2007. He then began a successful second career as an academic, building on his work at MCU.

In October 2011 he was publicly exposed as having been a police spy by some of the London Greenpeace activists upon whom he had spied.

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

The profile of Bob Lambert presented here is the first of a collection, it will supplemented by additional pages covering specific areas of interest over time:

• Bob Lambert
• Bob Lambert as Bob Robinson
• Bob Lambert Exposure and Post-Exposure
• Bob Lambert Career Timeline
• Bob Lambert and the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry
• Bob Lambert Consultancy
• Bob Lambert and the Academic Community
• Bob Lambert and the Muslim Community
• Bob Lambert Writing and Speaking
• Bob Lambert Gallery

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

Biography of Bob Lambert

Personal background of Bob Lambert

Bob Lambert was born in early 1952; documents lodged at Companies House indicate that he was born in March, whilst a New Yorker article claims that his birthday is 12 February.

Lambert's grandfather Ernest served in the Metropolitan Police for a quarter-century from 1899 until his retirement as an Inspector in 1924. Ernest Lambert died in 1963. Little is currently known about his parents or other antecedents, except that his father was “a London printer and a British soldier” who “entered the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to help rescue Jewish survivors at the end of the Second World War,” and was subsequently “a staunch supporter of a post war reforming Labour government that set great store by social justice and support for the underprivileged.”

During the 1980s, at the same time as pretending to be animal rights activist ‘Bob Robinson’, Lambert maintained a home in suburban Hertfordshire with his then-wife and their two children. Their daughter died suddenly aged seventeen in 1992, their son Adam in February 2011. Both are believed to have suffered from the same congenital heart disorder.

After divorcing his first wife, Lambert was later remarried to Julia (referred to in the New Yorker as ‘Katharine’).

As well as the aforementioned Lambert family home in Hertfordshire in the 1980s, by the late 1990s Lambert is described as living in a house in north London. by Jacqui (previously pseudonymised as ‘Charlotte’), an animal rights activist on whom he had spied. Jacqui only discovered that the man she had known as ‘Bob Robinson’, who got her pregnant in 1984 but disappeared in 1988, had in fact been an undercover policeman when she saw a newspaper story with his photograph in it in June 2012.

Legal action begun by Jacqui led to the Metropolitan Police formally acknowledging Lambert as a police infiltrator under the ‘Bob Robinson’ identity, and to it making a significant out-of-court settlement in relation to the behaviour of the service and its officer.

He is a supporter of Chelsea Football Club, regularly attending matches with other police officers including his former SDS and MCU colleague Jim Boyling. Lambert also shares with Boyling a passion for running, and both attend running club events on the outskirts of London.

Summary of police career

For a more detailed chronology of his work in the Met and in later years, see: Bob Lambert Career Timeline

Lambert is described as having joined the Metropolitan Police in 1977, aged 25, enjoying a thirty-one year long career before retiring in 2007 - though some discrepancies in his claimed biography have been noted.

Little is known about his earliest years in the Met, except for a passing reference by him to working a beat in the North London district of Camden. He is reputed to have joined Metropolitan Police Special Branch (MPSB) in 1980, before being recruited to its secretive Special Demonstration Squad sometime between then and 1983. He was deployed undercover as ‘Bob Robinson’ from at least early 1984 until late 1988.

Subsequently he worked in E Squad, a section devoted to non-Irish international terrorism, until 1993. He returned to SDS as its Operational Controller, with the rank of Detective Inspector. He left SDS in 1998, and it is not clear what his role was until January 2002, when he set up the Muslim Contact Unit. He led the MCU from this time, through the 2006 merger of MPSB (also known as SO12) with the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch (ATB or SO13) which created Counter Terrorism Command (also known as SO15), until his retirement in December 2007. Lambert has at times indicated that he was unhappy with the merger, noting his divergence from the investigatory-minded direction in which the first CTC head, Peter Clarke, took it.

In June 2008, Lambert was awarded the MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) “for Services to the Police”.

After leaving the Met, Lambert built upon his MCU work and began a successful second career as an academic specialising in engagement with British Islamists, purportedly to temper radicalisation.

Overview of undercover tour as ‘Bob Robinson’

For a more detailed chronology of Lambert's undercover tour, see separate article: Bob Lambert as Bob Robinson

‘Bob Robinson’ first appeared in the animal rights and environmental milieu in north London late 1983 or early 1984. His deployment followed that of the first known SDS officer sent to live amongst animal rights activists, Mike Chitty, who appeared in South London in early 1983.

His infiltration into animal rights circles began with regular attendance at demonstrations, where he made the acquaintance of genuine activists, including Jacqui. He soon became a familiar face at protests, and offered to drive people to and from events. He took part in hunt sabotage, protests against businesses associated with animal products, and joined London Greenpeace, an anarchist-leaning group involved in environmental and social issues.

Having established himself on the scene, he took on more responsibilities and a more active role in various campaigns and groups, and “set about befriending campaigners suspected of being in the ALF” [Animal Liberation Front]. He wrote or co-wrote a number of activist documents, including London Greenpeace's What's Wrong With McDonald's? factsheet - which was later subject to a notorious libel suit issued by McDonald's. Throughout his undercover tour as ‘Robinson’, Lambert implied to activists that he was interested in or already involved in more clandestine forms of political activity, such as that associated with the cells of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).

As an activist in an ALF cell, he was implicated in the burning down of the Harrow branch of the Debenhams department store as part of a coordinated incendiary device operation which also saw branches in Luton and Romford targeted at the same time on the same night. The 1987 attacks, which caused an estimated £340,000 worth of damage on the Harrow branch alone, with £4 million in fire damage and £4.5 million in trading losses across all three, was credited with precipitating the ending of Debenhams' involvement in the fur trade.

The other two members of ‘Robinson’'s cell, Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke, were both arrested and subsequently imprisoned. The 2015 “forensic external examination” of SDS-related documents undertaken by Stephen Taylor for the Home Office obliquely references Lambert's involvement in securing the arrests of Sheppard and Clarke, and indicates that the then-Home Secretary Douglas Hurd complimented the unit on its operation.

Lambert remained deployed in the field as ‘Robinson’ until late 1988. Using the pretext of being under investigation by police for his involvement in the 1987 Harrow Debenhams' arson - which included a Special Branch raid on the home of non-activist Belinda Harvey “to add credibility to Lambert's cover story” - ‘Robinson’ told Harvey and other friends, including his son's mother Jacqui, that he needed to go ‘on the run’ to avoid capture; to some he said that he planned to move to Spain until things quietened down. He then “abandoned his flat and stayed for a couple of weeks in what he called a ‘safe house’”, before spending a farewell week with Belinda at a friend's house in Dorset in December 1988. With this, he disappeared out of their lives, with a few postcards postmarked Spain and sent in January 1989 the only indication that he still existed.

Subsequent career in policing

Whilst the precise details of Lambert's entire police career are not currently known, we do have an idea of what he did and when for much of his service in the Met; anyone who could help us, please do get in touch (and ask for our PGP key if you need it).

E Squad (1989-1993)

After being pulled out of his SDS undercover tour, Lambert was redeployed elsewhere in MPSB, first finding a new home in E Squad, which dealt with worldwide terrorist threats

In his 2011 book (and elsewhere), Lambert refers to how “in the 1980s Special Branch officers would meet Sikh community representatives in London to discuss the terrorist threat posed by Sikh extremists,” a theme he returned to in a Chatham House lecture where he explicitly noted the involvement of E Squad (“a wonderful department”). However, in neither version is it clear whether he himself was involved in this community engagement work with Sikhs.

It was whilst working in E Squad that Lambert appears to have first engaged with Muslim communities. In 1991 he was the officer who arrested Omar Bakri Mohammed for making threats against Prime Minister John Major in relation to the Salman Rushdie affair. Bakri had issued a ‘fatwa’ against the PM and suggested him a target for assassination; for this Bakri was detained and questioned for two days by MPSB before being released without charge.

Lambert's early engagement with Muslims centred around the London Central Mosque, where “prominent figures” such as Zaki Badawi and security manager Fasli Ali had success in “combating violent extremism and maintaining order in the face of serious challenges”. He notes that this made London Central Mosque “a role model and source of partnership support” on which he would later draw in his Muslim Contact Unit work, particularly at the Finsbury Park Mosque in the early 2000s.

Lambert has claimed that he “helped colleagues from the FBI on the first World Trade Center attack” in 1993 and that he “was involved in the investigation”, stating that he “was able to ask a Muslim community leader in London for help in clarifying the details of the time spent in the UK of one of the suspects.” (Presumably this suspect was Ramzi Yousef (nephew of 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed), who had lived and studied in the UK for four years before going first to Kuwait then on to train in Pakistan, before next heading to the US.)

Return to SDS (1993-1998)

In November 1993 Lambert returned to SDS, taking on the role of Controller of Operations. This put him in the position of running the whole unit on a day-to-day basis, working under its titular head, Detective Chief Inspector Keith Edmondson. According to the Ellison Review, by August 1998 he had overall lead of the unit, having been made up to Acting Detective Chief Inspector.Lambert states he left SDS sometime in 1998.

Management decisions

In 1997 it seems that Lambert unilaterally broadened the mission of the unit, extended its reach beyond the Greater London area to the whole of the UK, and changed its name from ‘Special Demonstration Squad’ to ‘Special Duties Section’ in order to “reflect the increasing remit, and to meet customer requirements”. In his third Operation Herne report Chief Constable Mick Creedon registers surprise that this appears to have been executed without being directly sanctioned by Lambert's seniors, noting that it “demonstrates the considerable autonomy and influence that the Detective Inspector had within the management structure of the unit, and the apparent lack of Senior Management and Executive oversight.”

Authorship of SDS documents

Lambert is believed to have contributed significantly to the SDS Tradecraft Manual, which the first Herne Report describes as “an organic document of initiatives, operational learning, guidelines and suggestions from established UCOs to assist other UCOs [undercover officers] in their deployments”. In addition, it is claimed that in 1997 Lambert penned a confidential Special Branch document called Withdrawal Strategy, which discussed Peter Francis' exfiltration from his undercover deployment.

According to Evans and Lewis, at some point around June 1992 (when still in E Squad) Lambert was tasked by Special Branch superiors “to discreetly study the rogue officer” Mike Chitty, who had been Lambert's contemporary as an SDS undercover officer infiltrating animal rights activists in the mid-1980s. The culmination of Lambert's eighteen month covert inquiry into Chitty was a “highly confidential” forty-five page report written in May 1994 (by which time he had returned to SDS as its Operational Controller), which was then “stored under lock and key in a Scotland Yard archive”. (For more detail, see the profile on Mike Chitty)

The Ellison Review mentions additional pieces of SDS paperwork written by Lambert. These include a “briefing note” outlining the work of undercover officer N81 and how it touched upon the Stephen Lawrence family campaign; and a “file note” dated 18 August 1998 which summarises the 14 August meeting hosted by him between Richard Walton and N81.

The Stephen Lawrence murder investigation, Macpherson Inquiry and Ellison Review

See main articles: N81, Bob Lambert and the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, and N81: meeting with the Lawrence Review Team

In April 1993, black teenager Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racially motivated attack by a gang of white youths whilst he waited for a bus in the south-east London neighbourhood of Eltham. The failure of the Metropolitan Police to promptly secure evidence, follow up on information received, protect witnesses or interview suspects led to a public outcry, and subsequently to the Macpherson Inquiry, which found the MPS investigation to have been stymied by incompetence, corruption and “institutional racism”.

In August 1998, when the leadership of the Met under Commissioner Paul Condon was formulating its response to Macpherson Inquiry, Bob Lambert hosted a meeting at his own home in north London between undercover officer ‘N81’ and (Acting) Detective Inspector Richard Walton. At the time N81 was infiltrating a left-wing political group close to the Stephen Lawrence family justice campaign, whilst Walton was a member of the Met's ‘Lawrence Review Team’, and soon to join John Grieve's newly established Racial and Violent Crime Task Force, or CO24..

The existence of this clandestine meeting were not publicly known until March 2014, when Mark Ellison QC revealed details about it in The Stephen Lawrence Independent Review, with a less in-depth account in the simultaneously released third Herne report.

1998-2001 - the ‘missing years’

It is not clear what Lambert did between leaving SDS sometime after August 1998 and the establishment of the Muslim Contact Unit in January 2002.

Biographies - in writings he authored - indicate that he remained with Metropolitan Police Special Branch throughout that time. No evidence has so far come up to suggest he was involved in, for example, Territorial Policing, that he was transferred to other Branch-level units such as the Anti-Terrorist Branch, or that he transferred to a police force other than the Metropolitan Police Service.

By implication, Lambert seems likely to have been working in a different unit or units within MPSB during this time period. One biography notes that from beginning in MPSB in 1980 until 2006 or 2007, Lambert had dealt “with all forms of violent political threats to the UK, from Irish republican to the many strands of International terrorism.” Whilst his work on international terrorism at E Squad has already been noted, an involvement in Irish republican matters would suggest time served in B Squad (though it is by no means clear whether that would have occurred at this point of his career or in Lambert's pre-SDS years).

Muslim Contact Unit

See forthcoming article Muslim Contact Unit for more detail.

In January 2002 Lambert set up the Muslim Contact Unit (MCU) within Special Branch, “with the purpose of establishing partnerships with Muslim community leaders both equipped and located to help tackle the spread of al-Qaida propaganda in London.”

The avowed strategy of the MCU under Lambert was to “set about identifying the Muslims they believed were best equipped to take on the so-called “hate preachers”, chief among them the infamous Egyptian Abu Hamza, who were believed to be serving as propagandists for al-Qaeda in London”, most notably at Brixton and Finsbury Park. Typically this approach meant working with Muslims characterised as ‘Islamists’ or ‘salafis’ - a path which Lambert himself notes was directly in conflict with prevailing counter-terrorism policing opinion on dealing with political Islam which cautioned “against accommodating ‘traditionalists’” and “lump[ed] salafis and Islamists together as ‘radical fundamentalists’”.

Reflecting on his time at MCU, Lambert has latterly claimed that the unit “was a graveyard in career terms,” and that he realised he would never rise above Detective Inspector.

Summary of academic career

See forthcoming page Bob Lambert - academic career for a more detailed account

According to Lambert his involvement in academic issues began in 1995, when he received a First from the Open University for an interdisciplinary undergraduate degree on European cultural history. In 2003 - whilst running MCU - he received a First from Birkbeck College at the University of London for his Masters.

Following his retirement from the Met, in 2008 he took up a place as a PhD student at the University of Exeter, an institution with which he maintained links until at least 2011 (in October of which he was exposed as a spy). From 2008 he also began teaching on a course managed by St. Andrews University. In 2012 he took up a senior lecturing position at London Metropolitan University.

In 2010 he was awarded his doctorate by University of Exeter for his PhD dissertation The London Partnerships: an Insider’s Analysis of Legitimacy and Effectiveness. This dissertation (and the research underpinning it) later became the basis of his book, Countering Al-Qaeda in London: Police and Muslims in Partnership, as well as numerous other pieces of work.

Despite his retirement from the police in 2007, Lambert continued to engage with the Muslim Contact Unit through his academic work.

Just before Christmas 2015, Lambert quit his jobs at both his academic posts, after campaigners had written to St Andrews' principal Louise Richardson.

University of Exeter & EMRC

After retiring from the Met in late 2007, he became a Research Fellow at the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies in the University of Exeter's politics department, a post he held from 2008 until 2011.

Whilst at Exeter there he became closely associated with Professor Jonathan Githens-Mazer, and in September 2009 the two together set up the European Muslim Research Centre (EMRC), which was officially launched the following January.

Following the public exposure of Lambert as a former undercover police officer in October 2011, Exeter's university management has remained tight-lipped, making no statement about its errant academic, despite having previously heralded much of his work - right up to September, when the press office plugged the launch of Lambert's book at the Houses of Parliament.

Since then, though, the EMRC appears to have been quietly dismantled, with Lambert and erstwhile collaborator Jonathan Githens-Mazer parting ways, and the Centre's website allowed to rot away, his name as co-director of the Centre being removed from the website sometime between June and August 2012. According to journalist Rob Evans in 2015, Exeter's management eventually confirmed to The Guardian that Lambert resigned from the university in October 2011 - the same month his undercover past was exposed - but beyond that “refused to explain”.

St. Andrews University & CSTPV

In parallel to his post at Exeter, in September 2008 Lambert began 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 (CSTPV), a key academic location on the the international terrorism studies circuit.

Since at least 2006 former senior Metropolitan Police officer David Veness - who as Assistant Commissioner (Specialist Operations) had direct oversight of SDS between 1994 and 2005, as well as a personal working relationship with Lambert through the offices of the Muslim Safety Forum, which Veness chaired - has held the position of Honorary Professor of Terrorism Studies at CSTPV.

London Metropolitan University & John Grieve Centre

In September 2012 - that is, nearly one year after his exposure as a police spy - Lambert was hired by the John Grieve Centre for Policing and Community Safety (also known as JGC), an under- and post-graduate criminology unit based at the London Metropolitan University.

Lambert's role at London Met was not merely as a teacher, but as a course leader on the undergraduate Criminology and Law course, and as part of the team running the university's Professional Doctorate in Policing and Security (“the only doctorate course specifically in policing in the country”). For his work on the latter Lambert was fulsomely praised by vice-chancellor Malcolm Gillies in July 2013 “for giving excellent supervision while ensuring the course goes from strength to strength.” It is not known whether Lambert has continued his involvement on the undergraduate course.

The John Grieve Centre was originally established and led by former MPS senior officer (and recurring figure in the story of undercover policing) John Grieve at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College in 2003, before it was transferred to London Metropolitan in April 2006.

Of the seven ‘John Grieve Centre Team’ members noted by London Met's website other than Lambert himself, three have Metropolitan Police backgrounds, two worked for either MPS Anti-Terrorist Branch (SO12) or Special Branch (SO13) (now combined together as Counter Terrorism Command or SO15), two are alumni of St. Andrews University's Terrorism Studies course, and one has close connections to the University of Exeter's EMRC.

Resignation

In December 2015, after a long-running picketing campaign in London and a series of articles about undercover officers operating in Scotland, Bob Lambert announced his resignation from both his academic posts. According to a University of St. Andrews spokesman, Lambert tendered his resignation with effect from the end of the current term.

The announcement came a week after a letter to university principal Louise Richardson at St. Andrews, signed by spied-on activists Helen Steel, Lois Austen and Dave Smith, as well as journalist-activist George Monbiot (who had been awarded an honorary doctorate from St. Andrews):

We believe that his [Lambert] past conduct as a central figure in the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad means that he is supremely unsuitable for teaching and shaping the thoughts of others in his current position.

The SDS’ abuse of citizens and undermining of legitimate campaigns are one of the darkest corners of Metropolitan Police history. Lambert is no role model and should not be trading on his abuses.

The letter gave a detailed account of Lambert’s history as an SDS officer and further noted:

One has to wonder, if all this is not enough to make him unfit to teach others, what does it take? With fresh revelations coming to light almost weekly and the public inquiry about to begin, we can be confident there will be more.

Lambert's own writings, speaking engagements and media appearances

See forthcoming page Bob Lambert Writing and Speaking for the fullest compendium yet of such material

From his retirement at the end of 2007 until his exposure in late 2011, Lambert built up a reputation as an expert on islamophobia and police-Muslim community engagement. This enabled him to speak at many academic and political events, to have articles accepted by peer-reviewed journals, to be interviewed by both specialist and mainstream media, and even gave him regular opinion pieces in the ‘Comment is Free’ section of The Guardian website.

Subsequent to his unmasking as an SDS spy in October 2011, his appearances on conference platforms, in learned journals and as an invited author in the pages of liberal newspapers have been noticeably reduced.

Post-Met consultancy and other business interests

See also the forthcoming in-depth page Bob Lambert consultancy

Following his retirement from the police, Lambert became a director of a number of companies, each of which was directly connected to his academic work and contacts, but which were also linked to his past work in Special Branch.

STREET UK

In the words of founder Dr Abdul Haqq Baker, the Lambeth-based islamic youth outreach project ‘Strategy To Reach Empower and Educate Teenagers’ (also known as ‘STREET UK’) was set up “to provide alternative and safe environments for young Muslims to interact and comfortably express themselves among peers sharing ideas, aspirations and concerns.” It should be noted that STREET, whilst not officially incorporated until 2008, had been mooted as a project at least as early as 2006, and by Baker's account was active from March 2007 (though some other sources put STREET's foundation as taking place in 2006).

STREET was set up as a company by two Hertfordshire-based business registration services, Qa Nominees Ltd and Qa Registrars Ltd.. Its business address - both in terms of a registered and a trading address - was given as 54 Anson Road in Cricklewood, north-west London.

Bob Lambert was appointed director with Dr Abdul Haqq Baker, the initiator of STREET.

Lambert started this company after his retirement from the Met, but before he took up his posts at either St. Andrews University or the University of Exeter.) A salafi convert from Brixton, Baker worked with Lambert at least as far back as 2002, when MCU made contact with leading members of Brixton Mosque in the wake of the arrest of attempted ‘shoe-bomber’ Richard Reid, and they subsequently became academic colleagues. This academic partnership began at St. Andrews University, where - like Lambert - Baker lectured on the CSTPV Terrorism Studies course; and continued at the University of Exeter, where Baker was a research fellow in the EMRC run by Lambert.

Lambert's own son by his first wife, Adam, was seemingly also involved in STREET. According to Lambert he “played a pivotal role in establishing [STREET] as an effective and legitimate youth outreach project in Brixton”, working as its operations manager from July 2008 until his death in February 2011.

Lambert Consultancy and Training Ltd

In August 2008 Lambert set up a company called ‘Lambert Consultancy and Training Limited’, with his second wife Julia as its secretary, and - as with STREET - its registered address was given as 54 Anson Road in Cricklewood, north-west London. In March 2009 Lambert brought in his academic collaborator from the University of Exeter, Dr Jonathan Githens-Mazer, and Githens-Mazer's wife Gayle, as directors of the company. The company was dissolved one year later on 30 March 2010, having filed no accounts.

Siraat Ltd

In January 2009 Lambert, along with Raymond Boakye and Carey Anderson, set up Siraat Ltd, a “prison-based mentoring project across southern England” with an address at a business centre on Coldharbour Lane in south London's Brixton.

Siraat filed its last accounts in January 2010, its last tax return in January 2011, and was officially dissolved in July 2014. Neither Lambert - who as designated company secretary had legal responsibilities for ensuring timely business filings to Companies House - nor the others formally resigned as directors before Siraat's dissolution.

In addition to his directorship of Siraat Ltd, Carey Anderson - under the name Abdur Rahman Anderson - was also a director of Street Consultancy Ltd, which he set up with Abdul Haqq Baker (who used the name Anthony Baker) in March 2007, with a third director and trustee, Sameer Koomson, joining in June 2007. Like STREET and Lambert's own consultancy, this too was registered to the 54 Anson Road address in Cricklewood.

West London IMPACT

Whilst Lambert was never directly involved as a company director, he was tangentially connected to the Initiative for Muslim Progression And Community Tolerance (West London IMPACT) project. IMPACT was set up in December 2009 by Abdul Haqq Baker, Valerie Chung and Najeeb Ahmed, using company formation agent Graham Cowan and with a trading address in the West London neighbourhood of Southall. Baker and Chung both resigned as directors in March 2012, leaving Ahmed in charge. The organisation remained extant and up to date with its business filings as up until its dissolution in February 2013.

Withdrawal of government funding

STREET, Siraat and IMPACT initially all received significant income (estimated by the Daily Telegraph to be nearly £1.3 million) through the counter-terrorism funding stream administered by the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT).

By February 2011 all three had their government grants cut by OSCT as part of a shake-up of the government's ‘Preventing Violent Extremism’ - or PREVENT - strategy.

Exposure and post-exposure issues

For a more detailed account, look out for the forthcoming page Bob Lambert Exposure and Post-exposure

Having worked undercover as ‘Bob Robinson’ from early 1984 until late 1988 without being exposed, Lambert came out of the shadows somewhat in the mid-2000s in his new role as head of the Muslim Contact Unit. Whilst as a Special Branch officer he was not a wholly public figure, his community engagement work did see him make some public statements at least as far back as 2006. At the same time as his police career was winding down, his academic work began to take off. By November 2007, he had been publicly lauded in person by both the Muslim Council of Britain and the Islamic Human Rights Commission.

Having retired from the Met, he seemed to fully embrace the public acknowledgement of his work (both positive and negative), and accepted invitations to speak at academic and political events as an expert on subjects such as community engagement policing or islamophobia. Whilst Lambert's past as an officer with the Metropolitan Police, and specifically with the MPSB, was to some degree known as he built up his academic reputation, Lambert did not publicise his own close involvement in its undercover operations. Indeed, in his book, discussing the work of fellow Special Branch officer-turned-academic and private sector consultant Lindsay Clutterbuck in analysing MPSB files from the 1880s, he noted disapprovingly that from its inception the Branch had favoured covert spying tactics over transparent interaction with particular communities: “Infiltration rather than community partnerships were the popular hallmarks of an elite police department first established in 1883 to combat the threat to the capital posed by Irish republican bombers.”

It was after seeing videos of Dr Robert Lambert speak at anti-racism events that several former London Greenpeace campaigners determined that the ex-Special Branch officer-turned-academic was the same person as the animal rights activist they had known as ‘Bob Robinson’ in the 1980s. A group of them then decided to attend a Unite Against Fascism/One Society Many Cultures anti-racism conference at Congress House in Central London where Lambert was scheduled to speak on 15 October 2011, and publicly exposed him as a police spy.

‘Apologies’ by Bob Lambert

Since his exposure in October 2011 as a former undercover police spy, Bob Lambert has made only a handful of public statements in relation to his time in SDS. Each of these can be seen to include only the barest admissions necessary at that time, with his words chosen extremely carefully.

We list and summarise each of them below:

• Lambert's reply to Spinwatch open letter (23 October 2011)

Following his public exposure, Spinwatch - which noted that it had “shared platforms with Bob Lambert...at public meetings and at academic conferences” - published an open letter to Lambert calling on him to confirm or deny “the specific allegations so far made public...give an account of what you now think of your previous activities...disavow any previous activities [and] publically apologise to the activists who you allegedly betrayed.

Lambert's response was to “apologise unreservedly for the deception I therefore practiced on law abiding members of London Greenpeace [and] for forming false friendships with law abiding citizens and in particular forming a long term relationship with [Name of person removed] who had every reason to think I was a committed animal rights activist and a genuine London Greenpeace campaigner.” However, he justified his actions by saying that he had been “deployed as an undercover Met special branch officer to identify and prosecute members of Animal Liberation Front who were then engaged in incendiary device and explosive device campaigns against targets in the vivisection, meat and fur trades,” and needed “the necessary credibility to become involved in serious crime”. He makes no specific mention of the Debenhams case, nor of the extended infiltration targeting London Greenpeace members by subsequent SDS officers such as John Dines or Jim Boyling, which he was at least in part responsible for supervising.

• Response to The Guardian (23 October 2011)

The same day as Lambert's reply to Spinwatch was published, The Guardian also published a story based on “a statement” from Lambert “after the Guardian contacted him”. All direct quotations attributed to Lambert appear to be identical to sections of the Spinwatch reply, which is also referenced, which may imply that Lambert did not respond separately or differently to The Guardian.

• ‘Rebuilding Trust and Credibility’ (1 February 2012)

Styled by Lambert as his own “preliminary commentary” on his role as a full-time police mole within London Greenpeace and other groups, ‘Rebuilding Trust and Credibility’ was a brief text which he placed on his profile page on the St. Andrews University website. In it he again plugged his book, points to his earlier public apology, and adds that he hopes to continue in his work with Muslim communities. He makes reference to “The recent trial of two members of a gang that murdered Stephen Lawrence in 1993” which “serves to remind us of the self inflicted damage the Metropolitan Police has had to overcome when seeking to rebuild trust with minority ethnic Londoners” - but of course says nothing about his own key role in facilitating the flow of secret intelligence from spies in the Lawrence family camp to the team leading the Met's whitewashed response to the Macpherson Report. He alludes to his relationship with Belinda Harvey, but due to the civil litigation by then begun, he rows back to “alleged”.

• Interview with Channel 4 News (2-5 July 2013)

By the time of his first onscreen television interview since his exposure, the mother of the child whom Lambert fathered whilst undercover - Jacqui - had come forward, so now he admitted to having had four relationships with women whilst deployed in the field. Besides Jacqui and Belinda Harvey, nothing is publicly known about the other two. Lambert apologises to Jacqui and Belinda, but insists that he fell in love with them both. He refuses to say whether senior officers knew that he had fathered a child whilst undercover, but indicates that he will offer a full account to “the investigation team”, by which he presumably means Operation Herne. He denies that he was involved “in the planting or the ignition” of the Debenhams incendiary device. He admits that “on occasions” he was arrested as ‘Bob Robinson’ and implies that he used that identity more than once in court. He admits to co-authoring the McLibel leaflet, but denies knowing if McDonald's were aware of police involvement in the document. He again claims that his behaviour should not reflect negatively on his SDS colleagues, “the overwhelming majority” of whom “behaved impeccably at all times”.

• Article in Critical Studies on Terrorism (7 April 2014)

Whilst rather illuminating in the way that he discusses - if somewhat opaquely - his work in SDS, early on in the article Lambert explains that he “will not write my own full account in response to [the Evans/Lewis book] Undercover and [Paul Lewis' television documentary] Dispatches until I have first discharged my legal obligations to the investigations and court proceedings”. Accordingly, there are no further specific apologies to allegations, only that he “accept[s] blame for mistakes I made as an undercover police officer in the 1980s” and that he has “made public apologies for them”. He states that he does “not accept the pejorative account of my role in undercover policing” by Evans and Lewis.

Supporters and critics of Lambert

See forthcoming page Bob Lambert - support and criticism for detailed examination of topic

Since his exit from the Metropolitan Police, Lambert has received both positive and negative acknowledgement of his work. Around the time of his retirement, he was presented with first a ‘Friends of Islam’ award by the Muslim Council of Britain, and then a trophy from the Islamic Human Rights Commission “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”. He was also inducted as a Member of the Order of the British Empire “for Services to the Police” in June 2008, enabling him to style himself ‘Dr. Robert Lambert MBE’. A ‘Dialogue and Building Bridges’ award followed the next month courtesy of the Cordoba Foundation, at that year's Islam Expo.

However, following his exposure by London Greenpeace activists in October 2011, Lambert has been targeted by a number of protests. On 9 February 2012 animal rights activists disrupted a public seminar at St. Andrews University which Lambert was scheduled to speak at, reportedly leaving him “startled” as he was heckled over his activities as an undercover police spy. Leaflets detailing his infiltration were also distributed.

Then in February 2013 two online petitions were started, one calling for Lambert to apologise and face disciplinary action from his then-employer St. Andrews University, the other demanding that he be stripped of his MBE. To date, neither has drawn significant support.

Next, in October 2013 a preview of a documentary film on the subject of police infiltration of political activist groups was shown at St. Andrews University, and students leafleted to inform them of Lambert's past. This followed a number of articles published in student magazine The Saint which outlined Lambert's role as a police spy.

By March 2014 the London Metropolitan University branch of Unison had voted to support Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance, which works to publicise and resist police infiltration of political movements. This was then followed by a “packed public meeting” on the subject hosted by Unison at London Met in November. Later that year saw the creation of a group called [Islington Against Police Spies]. Comprising residents from the area around the university as well as those who studying or working in it, IAPS called for a series of pickets at London Met, describing Lambert as “a known liar, spy and exploiter of women - not in any way a fit person to be trusted teaching students at this University”, and with the aim of keeping up “pressure on London Met until they fire him”. This then led to wider coverage of the issue in the national media. London Met's management was then forced to defend Lambert publicly, whilst a handful of individuals - notably the aforementioned fellow John Grieve Centre senior lecturer Tim Parsons, academic colleague Stefano Bonino and Finsbury Park Mosque's Mohammed Kosbar - have offered Lambert their public support.

Court cases

In December 2011 Lambert was named in legal proceedings brought by eight women - one of whom was Belinda Harvey - who had had long-term relationships with undercover officers. The Metropolitan Police faced separate litigation from Jacqui, the unwitting mother of Lambert's ‘undercover son’. The Met settled this second suit out-of-court in October 2014 for £425,000.

Additional Undercover Research resources

• N81
• N81: Profile from the Ellison Report,
• N81: Meeting with the Lawrence Review Team
• N81: File Notes SDS
• N81: IPCC investigation
• Lawrence Review Team

• Richard Walton