Bob Lambert (academic)
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Robert Lambert (born 15 May 1952) is a British former undercover police officer and academic. He served in the controversial
Special Demonstration Squad The Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) was an undercover unit of Greater London's Metropolitan Police Service (MPS or the Met), set up in 1968 with the approval of the Wilson government, to infiltrate British protest groups. It was part of t ...
and posed as a left-wing animal rights activist from 1983 to 1988. While undercover, he had sexual relationships with four women, fathering a child with one of them, all of whom were unaware of his true identity. The child and the child's mother needed psychiatric treatment after discovering Lambert's identity much later, and both were awarded damages against the police. He has also been accused of involvement in an arson attack while undercover, which Lambert denies, as well as giving false evidence in court. Until December 2015, Lambert was a lecturer in Terrorism Studies at the
University of St Andrews The University of St Andrews (, ; abbreviated as St And in post-nominals) is a public university in St Andrews, Scotland. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest of the four ancient universities of Scotland and, f ...
and a senior lecturer at
London Metropolitan University London Metropolitan University, commonly known as London Met, is a public university, public research university in London, England. The University of North London and London Guildhall University merged in 2002 to create the university. The Un ...
's John Grieve Centre for Policing, but was forced to resign after details of his past emerged.


Career

Lambert joined the Metropolitan Police Service in London in 1977 and joined
Special Branch Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security and Intelligence (information gathering), intelligence in Policing in the United Kingdom, British, Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth, ...
by 1980. He was appointed to a management position in the Special Demonstration Squad following his undercover work and was head of the Muslim Contact Unit from its establishment in 2002. Following his retirement as a
detective inspector Inspector, also police inspector or inspector of police, is a police rank. The rank or position varies in seniority depending on the organization that uses it. Australia The rank of Inspector is present in all Australian police forces excep ...
he was appointed
Member of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...
(MBE) in the 2008
Birthday Honours The Birthday Honours, in some Commonwealth realms, mark the reigning monarch's official birthday in each realm by granting various individuals appointment into national or dynastic orders or the award of decorations and medals. The honours are ...
for "services to the police". After his career in the police force, he became a lecturer at the University of St Andrews and a part-time senior lecturer at the London Metropolitan University. Activists mounted a campaign to remove him from these posts. He resigned from them in December 2015. He was co-director of the European Muslim Research Centre in the Department of Politics at
Exeter University The University of Exeter is a research university in the West Country of England, with its main campus in Exeter, Devon. Its predecessor institutions, St Luke's College, Exeter School of Science, Exeter School of Art, and the Camborne School o ...
until August 2011.


Controversial undercover activities


Sexual relationships

In the course of his police service, Lambert infiltrated activist groups (environmentalists, animal rights activists and anti-racists) using the alias Mark "Bob" Robinson. To gain credibility as an activist, he formed friendships with other movement members; he also embarked in long-term relationships with women as a means of establishing a cover story. He fathered a child with one of the activists he was spying on although he already had a wife and children. After that relationship, ended he embarked on another with a woman who was not politically active. His colleagues at
Special Branch Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security and Intelligence (information gathering), intelligence in Policing in the United Kingdom, British, Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth, ...
raided her home in order to bolster his image as a hardcore militant. Lambert was confronted about his past activities by members of
London Greenpeace London Greenpeace was an anarchist environmentalist activist collective that existed between 1972 and 2001. They were based in London, and came to international prominence when two of their activists refused to capitulate to McDonald's ...
(which he had infiltrated in the 1980s) as he spoke at a conference in October 2011. Lambert subsequently apologised to other activists and to the woman whom he had used as a "lover" (who said she felt "raped by the state" after learning about the deception). Though he had earlier denied that reports in ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' newspaper were true, in July 2013 he acknowledged that he had conducted four such relationships under false pretences, saying that he "made serious mistakes that I should regret, and I always will do." At the time, he was said to have bragged to a colleague about having fathered a child with one of his targets. On 23 October 2014, the Metropolitan Police Service agreed to pay £425,000 to a woman called Jacqui whose child was fathered by Lambert; she did not know at the time of their relationship that he was an undercover police officer. The payment was part of an agreement for her to drop her legal action alleging assault, negligence, deceit and misconduct by senior officers. She was a 22-year-old activist at the time of her relationship with Lambert, who was using the pseudonym Bob Robinson, and she gave birth to their son in 1985. When the boy was two years old his father vanished, and she told BBC News she had received psychiatric care after learning the officer's real identity. The unprecedented payment resulted from a legal battle with women who said they were duped into relationships with officers who were spying on them.
Scotland Yard Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's London boroughs, 32 boroughs. Its name derives from the location of the original ...
said it "unreservedly apologises for any pain and suffering" but added that "the Metropolitan Police Service has never had a policy that officers can use sexual relations for the purposes of policing". Scotland Yard had previously refused to either confirm or deny whether Bob Lambert was a
Special Demonstration Squad The Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) was an undercover unit of Greater London's Metropolitan Police Service (MPS or the Met), set up in 1968 with the approval of the Wilson government, to infiltrate British protest groups. It was part of t ...
operative, despite his own admissions to journalists, but it was forced to change its position in August 2014 after a legal ruling. Lambert did not respond to BBC requests for comment on the settlement but had previously said that he wanted to apologise to women with whom he had relationships and that he had made some "serious mistakes". The son Lambert fathered with Jacqui has sued the Metropolitan Police Service alleging psychiatric damage. The Met sought to make Lambert a co-defendant in the case. The police paid an undisclosed sum in damages.


Accusations of arson and perjury

In June 2012, Lambert was accused in
Parliament In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...
by
Caroline Lucas Caroline Patricia Lucas (born 9 December 1960) is a British politician who was the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales from 2003 to 2006, 2007 to 2012, and 2016 to 2018. She was Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parli ...
MP of planting the fire bomb that caused £340,000 worth of damage to the
Harrow Harrow may refer to: Places * Harrow, Victoria, Australia * Harrow, Ontario, Canada * The Harrow, County Wexford, a village in Ireland * London Borough of Harrow, England * Harrow, London, a town in London * Harrow (UK Parliament constituency) * ...
branch of a
Debenhams Debenhams plc was a British department store chain that operated in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark, as well as franchised locations across Europe and the Asia Pacific. The company was founded in 1778 as a single store in London and gr ...
department store in 1987 as part of his undercover work in the
Animal Liberation Front The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) is a Far-left politics, far-left international, Leaderless resistance, leaderless, decentralized movement that emerged in Britain in the 1970s, evolving from the Bands of Mercy. It operates without a formal lead ...
. Lambert denied this. His activities as a police spy came to public attention in the course of revelations that the Metropolitan Police have employed undercover operatives (including Mark Kennedy), some of whom acted in ways designed to disrupt the activities of the groups they infiltrated. ''The Guardian'' newspaper has suggested that Lambert might have been prosecuted under his alias, and thus perhaps gave false testimony in court, for having distributed "insulting leaflets" outside a London butcher's shop. The
Derbyshire Constabulary Derbyshire Constabulary is the territorial police force responsible for policing the county of Derbyshire, England. The force covers an area of over with a population of just under one million. History In 1965, the force had an establishment ...
launched an investigation called Operation Herne in 2011 which combined many allegations against the police including this one and those pertaining to the
death of Stephen Lawrence Stephen Adrian Lawrence (13September 1974 – 22April 1993) was an 18-year-old black British citizen from Plumstead, southeast London, who was murdered in a Hate crime, racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus on Well Hall Road, Eltha ...
. It concluded that errors were made, but stopped at assigning any individual blame as far as this case was concerned.


Other controversial activities

Lambert's undercover activities also involved using the identity of a boy who had died at the age of seven. In 2013, it was reported that while undercover with London Greenpeace, Lambert had co-authored the ' McLibel leaflet', which resulted in a defamation lawsuit from
McDonald's Corporation McDonald's Corporation, doing business as McDonald's, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational fast food chain store, chain. As of 2024, it is the second largest by number of locations in the world, behind only the Chinese ch ...
that took ten years to resolve. After his time undercover, he was in charge of other officers in the same role. He deployed officers into
Reclaim the Streets Reclaim the Streets also known as RTS, are a collective with a shared ideal of community ownership of public spaces. Participants characterise the collective as a resistance movement opposed to the dominance of corporate forces in globalisati ...
as well as campaigns for justice by families of black people whose deaths were mishandled by police, such as
Stephen Lawrence Stephen Adrian Lawrence (13September 1974 – 22April 1993) was an 18-year-old black British citizen from Plumstead, southeast London, who was murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus on Well Hall Road, Eltham, on the ...
.


Academic work

Lambert's scholarly work includes: * ''Countering Al Qaeda in London: Police and Muslims in Partnerships'' (2011) London, C. Hurst & Co.


See also

*
UK undercover policing relationships scandal Around the end of 2010 and during 2011, it was disclosed in UK media that a number of undercover police officers had, as part of their 'false persona', entered into intimate relationships with members of targeted groups and in some cases proposed ...


References


Further reading

* *


External links


Guardian profileHuffington Post contributions
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lambert, Bob Living people Academics of the University of Exeter Academics of the University of St Andrews Metropolitan Police officers Members of the Order of the British Empire Undercover police agents Year of birth missing (living people)