The Guardian’s Paul Lewis and Rob Evans on investigating one of England’s most covert police units and learning that they were using the identities of dead children. Frank Bennett reflects on the impact of discovering that a police spy had stolen his dead brother’s identity to infiltrate two leftwing organisations, and to deceive a woman into a sexual relationship

The Undercover Police Scandal: Love and Lies Exposed is available now on ITVX

This episode first aired on 9 December 2020.

In 2018, Frank Bennett’s sister Honor received a hand-delivered letter from a public inquiry about their 18-year-old brother Michael Hartley, who had been reported missing at sea, believed dead, 50 years before. For a moment, they thought Michael had been found, but in fact, the letter revealed that their dead brother’s identity had been stolen by a police officer who had penetrated two leftwing organisations. Using this false identity, the police spy had deceived a woman into a sexual relationship and had been prosecuted during his deployment. Frank talks to Anushka Asthana about his childhood and the impact his brother’s death had on him and his family. Knowing that, years on, his brother’s name had been used by police has had a huge impact on his mental health, he says. Frank describes the police’s behaviour as “disgusting”.

Guardian investigative editor Paul Lewis and investigative reporter Rob Evans detail their decade-long investigation into undercover policing. At least 139 officers were given fake identities to monitor the inner workings of more than 1,000 political groups. Jessica, a former member of one of those groups, describes the impact of discovering that a man with whom she began a relationship in 1992 was actually an undercover cop

The Undercover Police Scandal: Love and Lies Exposed is available on ITVX

This episode first aired on 8 December 2020.

In 2010, Mark Stone, an environmental activist, was on holiday with his girlfriend when she discovered a passport for a man called Mark Kennedy in the glove box of their van. The man she was in a relationship with was actually a police officer who for seven years had lived deep undercover at the heart of the environmental protest movement. When the story became public, senior officers tried to quell the outcry, insisting that Kennedy was merely a rogue officer. In fact, the opposite was true. Kennedy was just one of many footsoldiers who had been routinely infiltrating political groups, mostly on the left, since as far back as 1968.