Inquiring too well

Stephen Lawrence was murdered thirty years ago in a racist attack in London. The murder and the resulting police non-investigation has been the focus of multiple inquiries over the intervening three decades, resulting in official findings of institutional racism against the UK police and multiple corruption investigations. The "Spycops" scandal subsequently revealed that undercover police officers had infiltrated the Lawrence family's campaign for justice, in an effort to dig up dirt and smear them. Those actions were the subject yesterday of the Undercover Policing Inquiry - when it all went horribly off-script:

Asked if undercover police were gathering “intelligence with which to smear the Lawrence family”, [former undercover police officer Trevor] Morris told the Undercover Policing Inquiry on Thursday that that was not his job. Instead, he said it was for MI5 – the Security Service – to do.

Morris said: “I heard this subsequently, and I thought that was … nonsense. That's not what we’re about. We're about gathering intelligence, not smearing individuals.

“That's a Security Service job. Let them do that. We're bothered about gathering intelligence. That's what we were doing.”

Morris then said: “Sorry I shouldn’t say that. Let’s scrap that last bit. I’m not saying that.”

The interrogating lawyer asked: “Are you or are you not in a position to say whether or not the Security Service was seeking to smear …”

At this point the live feed of the Undercover Policing Inquiry was suspended.

Which is all just a bit Orwellian. I guess the inquiry was inquiring too well, and uncovering things the British establishment really didn't want the public to know. But no amount of Orwellian censorship can disguise the truth here: that the British state is rotten to the core.