For years, undercover officers from the Metropolitan police deceived and manipulated female activists such as McDonald’s campaigner Helen Steel. Her new book reveals their callous tricks
With hindsight, the environmental activist Helen Steel, a key figure in the 1990s McLibel case, can see that her life with John Dines was suspiciously idyllic.
When they met, at a London Greenpeace meeting in the late 1980s, she was spending her free time protesting against nuclear weapons at Greenham Common, or staying in mining villages supporting striking miners. Soon he was enthusiastically joining her on hunt saboteur trips to disrupt grouse shoots in Yorkshire, or on demonstrations against the poll tax, and spending his weekends with her, helping to campaign against the environmental record of McDonald’s.
