A family has criticised a black undercover police officer for stealing the identity of their dead brother to spy on anti-racist activists and the campaign to expose the killers of teenager Stephen Lawrence, a public inquiry has heard.
The officer used the identity of Anthony Lewis, who died aged seven, to develop his fake persona when he infiltrated anti-racist and leftwing groups.
The officer, Trevor Morris, spied on campaigners who sought to put pressure on the police to investigate properly the murder of Lawrence by a racist gang.
On Wednesday, Marva Lewis, Anthony’s sister, told the inquiry: “Using a dead child’s identity would never be justifiable, but it seems especially disrespectful to use it to spy on anti-fascist or anti-racist groups. When I think of this, my upset about Anthony turns to fury and disgust.”
In a statement endorsed by her sister Judy, she added: “It is especially sickening that Trevor Morris was used to infiltrate racial justice campaigns, particularly when these centred on racist assaults by the police … or failures to investigate racist murders (like Stephen Lawrence) …
“From our perspective, it seems that he had stolen the identity of a deceased young Black boy, and his work undercover contributed to undermining the investigation into the racist murder of another Black boy.”
Her statement was aired at the public inquiry, led by the retired judge Sir John Mitting, that is examining how about 139 undercover officers have spied on more than 1,000 political groups since 1968.
This week, the inquiry is scrutinising the covert deployment of Morris, who infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) between 1991 and 1995. He deceived two women into sexual relations while undercover.
Morris was one of many undercover officers who used a technique that was authorised by their superiors for at least two decades.
Before they went undercover, the police spies searched through the national registry of birth and death certificates to find a dead child that they would adopt to use as the basis of their fake identities. They were then issued with official documents such as passports and driving licences in the name of the dead child to protect them from being exposed by suspicious activists.
The real Anthony Lewis had died in 1968 from sickle cell anaemia and related complications. The disease is more prevalent in people with an African or Caribbean family background.
Marva Lewis said that after the family learned from the inquiry that police had stolen her brother’s identity, “I remember my parents saying that it felt that all the pain relating to Anthony’s death and illness were brought up again … The news of Anthony’s identity being appropriated to infiltrate leftwing, anti-racist groups has disgusted my parents.
“I felt that my brother, this little boy who suffered so much, was dehumanised and his identity was treated as something to be played with and used. It made me feel sick and feel an overwhelming sense of injustice,” she added.
Giving evidence, Morris said he could not remember why Anthony’s name was chosen for his fake identity. He said he wanted to use a different fake identity but was overruled by his superiors.
At least three undercover officers collected information about the campaign pressing for justice for the Lawrence family. A previous inquiry has found that Morris “provided quite a lot of reporting about the Lawrence campaign”.
Morris has told the inquiry that he never targeted the Lawrence family campaign. He said the police were instead interested in activists that were seeking to infiltrate justice campaigns. Several of these campaigns were run by grieving families whose relatives were killed by police or died in custody.
Marva Lewis said: “It is sickening to think that rather than listening to the SWP and ANL and reflecting on their ideas as to how to confront and reduce racism and the threat of the far-right, the [police] chose to put a police spy in their midst to undermine them.”
