Afternoon session featuring testimony from Richard Chessum about his experiences in the Troops Out movement and how HN200 "Rick Gibson" manipulated elections to gain leadership positions. Chessum describes how Gibson secured positions on the London Coordinating Committee and later became convener of the Secretariat, the highest role in the movement. The Chairman acknowledges his initial underestimation of Gibson's deployment significance. The session continues with testimony from HN200, though this portion of the transcript is incomplete.
# Transcribed with OpenAI Whisper (medium model)
# Source: Local audio transcription (no YouTube captions available)
00:18:30 you
00:18:44 Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the afternoon session of today's evidential hearings. For those in the virtual hearing room, please remember to turn off both your camera and microphone. I will now hand over to the chairman, Sir John Mitting, to continue proceedings. Chairman.
00:19:00 Are there any questions from anyone other than Mr. Marcus?
00:19:06 No, sir.
00:19:09 Mr. Chesson, your counsel, there's Marcus, has some questions to ask of you in reexamination.
00:19:15 Now answer his questions, please.
00:19:17 I do indeed. Mr. Chesson, it's one topic with a few associated questions to help guide you in respect of where we're going. Just before lunch, you referred to the occasion that Rick Gibson was elected onto the London Coordinating Committee and you were not.
00:19:40 Do you recall the occasion that I'm referring to?
00:19:43 Yes.
00:19:46 Firstly, in terms of Rick Gibson's ascent up the hierarchy of the Troops Out movement, what stage was this election?
00:20:01 It was round about the time when I'd been approached to be the London Organiser by Bill Orrace and a senior person in Big Flame.
00:20:13 Which you've also referred to. Just so that we're clear, because everybody who's listening may not be, the role of London Organiser and a position on the London Coordinating Committee, were they the same role or entirely different roles?
00:20:32 They were different roles and well, I mean, the London Organiser obviously had to be somebody on the London Organising Committee.
00:20:39 One was a group role, the other was a single personal role.
00:20:45 So it was you and Rick Gibson who were standing for delegate position to that committee, is that right?
00:20:55 Yes.
00:20:56 Can you tell us what the circumstances of the vote were and how it turned out?
00:21:02 Well, people from Workers' Fight and the Revolutionary Communist Group came in force to the meeting and it was clear that they were going to try and get themselves elected in place of us.
00:21:15 At the time, it was assumed in place of me and Rick Gibson, because Rick Gibson and myself were very much on one side and they were on the other.
00:21:24 So it was assumed that either they would have two delegates, the Workers' Fight RCG people, or we would have two delegates.
00:21:33 In fact, one person at Workers' Fight was elected and Rick Gibson was the other person elected.
00:21:41 And when the votes were counted, Rick Gibson got two more votes than I did.
00:21:46 We couldn't understand this because in theory he should have got the same number as me because we knew roughly the people who were there and how they were lined up politically.
00:21:58 What we know now, of course, is that Rick was an undercover policeman, so he probably voted for himself but not for me, which would account for one of those votes.
00:22:08 The other vote, we can't be 100% certain about it, but at the time we assumed that it was Mary's flatmate because she was in Workers' Fight and she had also had a sexual relationship with Rick Gibson.
00:22:22 So we assumed at the time that looking around the room that it must have been a woman or a man, but it was assumed that it was Mary's flatmate.
00:22:32 So we assumed at the time that looking around the room that it must have been her who voted for Rick, but she wouldn't have voted for me because she had no reason to.
00:22:45 We were friendly with both Mary and her flatmate, but politically on opposite sides.
00:22:53 So the vote to the London Coordinating Committee, was that a significant vote for Rick Gibson at that time?
00:22:58 It was a significant vote because there was the question of who was going to be the London organizer.
00:23:04 I think it's possible, I mean I can't get the chronology absolutely right, but I had an answer to one of the previous questions.
00:23:14 I'd explain that for personal reasons I decided to withdraw because a friend of mine who was also wanting to do it, I was unhappy about having to stand against the decision.
00:23:28 I was against her, incidentally she was the person who wrote the book on the media in Northern Ireland.
00:23:33 And I didn't want to cause ill feeling between us and especially when Joey Lawless came up to me and made very derogatory remarks about her saying, well I'll support you against her.
00:23:45 And I felt well, I'm going to feel incredibly disloyal if I carry on standing under these circumstances.
00:23:51 I felt compromised and I did, I said to her, I reported the conversation to her that Gerry had had with me.
00:24:00 And I think at that stage we both withdrew.
00:24:05 And in the end of course Rick Gibson got elected onto the London Committee.
00:24:13 And then the person who had said he would support me from Big Flame and said Big Flame would too, he came up to me and said, well it's all been resolved because Rick Gibson's volunteered to do it.
00:24:26 To be clear, you turned down the job of London organizer because of this personal relationship you told us about, but would you have taken the position on the London Coordinating Committee?
00:24:36 Yes.
00:24:38 And I think that, I don't think Rick Gibson would have been aware of the conversation that I'd had with my friends.
00:24:47 I think that would have been unknown to him.
00:24:49 So he would have thought that I was still interested in the job of London organizer.
00:24:54 And he had reported, he had reported to his superiors that I was in line for a job.
00:25:01 And that if I applied for it, I was likely to get it because I was regarded as very efficient.
00:25:07 I mean that's in the report that he sent his superiors.
00:25:11 So there would have been a serious interest on his part and I assume on theirs if they wanted him to progress in the organization to make sure that I was not elected to that committee.
00:25:22 Having said all that, of course, there must have been an element of luck involved here in Rick's rise to that position because it would have been impossible before the start of the meeting to predict exactly the number of people who would be there.
00:25:38 But this was all in the mix.
00:25:41 Thank you.
00:25:43 We know that after that he rose to be, you told us, the convener of the Secretariat.
00:25:47 Was there a higher role in the movement than convener of the Secretariat?
00:25:51 No, that was the highest role.
00:25:56 And if you can answer this retrospectively, would the impact on the movement have been different had it been you rather than he who was elected to the London Coordinating Committee?
00:26:13 Given that he was an undercover policeman and that he wouldn't have had the interest of the movement at heart, I can't believe that he didn't engage in some actions which were detrimental to the organization.
00:26:26 So I think the answer to that is yes.
00:26:30 Thank you very much, Mr. Chesson.
00:26:32 So I don't have any more questions.
00:26:34 Thank you for the time that you've allowed me.
00:26:36 Thank you very much.
00:26:38 Mr. Chesson, may I ask you, because you are the only person who is able to give evidence about this, a bit about Big Flame.
00:26:48 Rick Gibson is dead obviously and can't speak about it.
00:26:52 But there is in the annual report for 1976 of the SDS a description of Big Flame.
00:27:01 You've given evidence about it, describing them as libertarian Marxists.
00:27:05 And I would like, if I may, to explore with you a little bit more about them.
00:27:11 Am I right in thinking that they were first formed in Liverpool?
00:27:19 That's where they originated, I understood, yes.
00:27:21 You describe them as libertarian Marxists.
00:27:25 Libertarian is a word that's often used in connection with groups that are anarchist or influenced by anarchists.
00:27:33 Is that a correct understanding in this context or not?
00:27:37 Not really.
00:27:39 Libertarian in the sense that they were less dogmatic and they were more open to the idea of the anarchists.
00:27:47 And in the sense that they were less dogmatic and they were more open to discussion and to differences of views within the organisation.
00:27:56 The Trotskyists, of course, believed in what's called democratic centralism.
00:28:01 It came from Lenin.
00:28:03 And you have a democratic discussion in the organisation, but once the organisation has decided upon a line, then everybody has to stick to it.
00:28:11 I remember when I was in the IMG that I was reprimanded by one or two of the senior people in the IMG because I had told somebody outside the organisation that I disagreed with the line on some of the things they were doing.
00:28:25 And I was told you don't speak to people outside the organisation and tell them you disagree with the organisation.
00:28:31 This would have been unthinkable with Big Flame because they believed in continuing discussion.
00:28:36 Libertarian in the sense that they were less dogmatic, were willing to accept different views within their organisation.
00:28:45 They were less perturbed by people actually speaking outside the organisation about those differences of views.
00:28:51 So for Libertarian, I should read undogmatic.
00:28:57 Yes.
00:28:59 Were they relatively well organised?
00:29:01 It's difficult for me to say because I was never a member.
00:29:05 But I think, yeah, they had structures within the organisation which related to their organisation.
00:29:15 As I say, I was never involved in that.
00:29:19 But I know that many of the people I met in Big Flame were feminist women and they were less interested in the organisation.
00:29:28 They were more interested in free discussion.
00:29:34 Thank you for clearing up one or two things for me about Big Flame.
00:29:38 I'm grateful to you.
00:29:40 I'm also deeply indebted to you for the care and thoughtfulness of the written and oral evidence that you provided.
00:29:48 My knowledge of the events of 1975 and 1976 in which you participated when I started the enquiry was very little,
00:29:58 as I demonstrated by saying that the deployment of Rick Gibson was unremarkable.
00:30:05 I think that the fact that you were involved in the enquiry was very important.
00:30:10 I'm grateful, very grateful to you for all you've done to help put me right about that.
00:30:16 Thank you.
00:30:18 We're now going to break for 10 minutes to enable the enquiries' technical apparatus to be set up differently
00:30:27 to hear the evidence of a former undercover officer.
00:30:29 Good afternoon, everyone. We will now take a break.
00:30:32 May I remind those in the virtual hearing room to remember to join your breakout rooms, please.
00:30:38 The time is now 2.50pm, so we shall resume at 3pm. Thank you.
03:14:59 Thank you.