A 90-year-old pensioner with no criminal record has lost a four-year legal battle to compel police to destroy a secret file they had compiled on his political activities.
On Wednesday, the supreme court ruled that police had lawfully kept a detailed record of John Catt’s activities at more than 60 protests over four years.
The peace and human rights campaigner had launched the legal action after discovering that police had secretly logged his habit of drawing sketches of demonstrations, and descriptions of his appearance and clothing.
Four judges ruled in favour of the Metropolitan police, with one dissenting.
Lord Sumption decided that it was necessary for police to collect the information on Catt because he regularly took part in demonstrations against a Brighton-based military manufacturer, EDO MBM, which police said were “amongst the most violent in the UK”.
Sumption said: “Not all of those who attended demonstrations organised by Smash EDO are intent on violence, but the evidence is that some are.”
He accepted that Catt – “for whom violent criminality must be a very remote prospect indeed”– took part only in peaceful protest.
However, Sumption said the information on Catt was part of a jigsaw that enabled police to prevent and detect crime associated with the demonstrations.
He wrote: “The composition, organisation and leadership of protest groups who are persistently associated with violence and criminality at public demonstrations is a matter of proper interest to the police even if some of the individuals are not themselves involved in any criminality.
“The longer-term consequences of restricting the availability of this resource to the police would potentially be very serious. It would adversely affect police operations directed against far less benign spirits than Mr Catt.”
After the ruling, Catt, from Brighton, said: “I cannot agree that the police in this country should be trusted with information about innocent people’s lawful political activities. In my view, without a new system of rules governing police surveillance, there is too much scope for the police to abuse their powers.”
He said he was looking to take the case to the European court of human rights for “the sake of other innocent people whose lawful political activities are being monitored by the state”.
Kevin Blowe, coordinator of the civil liberties group Network for Police Monitoring, which took part in the case, said: “This ruling allows the police extraordinary discretion to gather personal information of individuals for purposes that are never fully defined.”
In 2010, Catt used the data protection act to obtain a copy of his file held by the police’s domestic extremism unit.
The file recorded how he “sat on a folding chair … and appeared to be sketching” at one protest. At another demonstration, police noted “he was using his drawing pad to sketch a picture of the protest and police presence”.
Another entry recorded that he was clean-shaven at a demonstration by Sussex Action for Peace.
The clandestine unit has been monitoring thousands of individuals as police say they need to keep an eye on so-called domestic extremists who have, or are likely to, commit crime to achieve their political ends.
The unit insists that it is not concerned with campaigners who keep within the law to exercise their democratic right to protest.
But police have been criticised after it was revealed that the unit has been keeping files on activists who have not committed any crime.
Jenny Jones, the Green Party’s only peer, discovered that police logged her political movements for 11 years. She has no criminal record.
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