John Dines entered Helen Steel’s life under a name that was not his own.

Calling himself John Barker, the Metropolitan Police officer presented himself as a fellow political campaigner. He became Steel’s partner in 1990. They lived together, discussed children and spoke about a shared future.

Almost everything important about him was concealed.

Dines was married. He was working for the Metropolitan Police Special Demonstration Squad. His identity had been constructed so that he could infiltrate London Greenpeace and related political groups.

The relationship continued for nearly two years.

This was not simply an officer having an affair while working undercover. Steel’s trust strengthened Dines’s false identity and gave him access to campaigners, conversations and relationships that would otherwise have remained closed to him.

Counsel to the Undercover Policing Inquiry said Dines used Steel to maintain his cover and obtain intelligence. The conduct was described as “cold, calculating emotional and sexual exploitation.”

The plain word for that is abuse.

Her private life became part of the operation

Helen Steel was an environmental and political campaigner. She was involved with London Greenpeace, a small independent group unrelated to Greenpeace International, and later became widely known as one of the two defendants in the McLibel case.

Her connections made her useful to Dines.

As Steel’s partner, he no longer appeared to be an outsider attending meetings. He had a place inside the campaigners’ social world. Living with her made his invented life appear genuine. Her trust gave him access to private conversations, introductions and information about other people.

The sources reviewed for this article do not identify a criminal charge against Steel arising from Dines’s deployment. Police material discussed at the inquiry later assessed her as “an entirely lawful activist.”

It would therefore be misleading to present the relationship as a two-year investigation that eventually established her innocence.

She was not merely watched. She was made part of the method.

Her home supported Dines’s cover. Her friendships widened his access. Her emotional commitment allowed him to remain embedded inside a political community.

The police turned a woman’s private life into intelligence infrastructure.

Two years of repeated choices

A deception maintained for nearly two years cannot be dismissed as a brief loss of judgement.

Dines repeatedly returned to Steel knowing that she was making decisions based on a false identity. He concealed his real name, marriage, employment and purpose. He allowed her to believe that their discussions about love, children and a shared future were genuine.

Undercover policing necessarily involves deception. An officer investigating serious crime may need to conceal a name or occupation.

That does not explain why Dines needed to become Steel’s partner, share her home or discuss having children with her.

The Metropolitan Police must identify what legitimate operational purpose required that level of intrusion. Without such an explanation, “maintaining cover” becomes a phrase capable of excusing almost any conduct an officer finds useful.

Dines remains personally responsible for the choices he made. An intelligence requirement did not compel him to construct a domestic and sexual relationship.

But the institution cannot treat this as private misconduct detached from police work.

The Metropolitan Police selected Dines, provided his false identity, funded the deployment and received his reporting. The abuse happened inside an authorised police operation.

What did his managers know?

There is no present evidence that a superior issued a direct instruction telling Dines to begin a sexual relationship with Steel.

That should not be claimed without proof.

There are, however, serious questions about what officers and managers knew. Inquiry material records that one fellow officer became aware that Dines was involved in a relationship, challenged him, but did not take the matter further because of their close friendship. Dines has also said he believes managers knew.

Management knowledge remains disputed. The management failure does not.

An undercover officer lived with a political campaigner during a long deployment. The unit continued supporting his false life and receiving intelligence from him.

If managers knew about the relationship, they tolerated abuse. If they did not know, their supervision was grossly inadequate.

Either way, the force must explain whether anyone examined how Dines had gained such valuable access, or whether useful intelligence protected him from scrutiny.

A state operation entered a woman’s intimate life for nearly two years. The public still does not have a clear account of what danger justified it.

MI5 and central government

The deployment was managed by the Metropolitan Police, but the intelligence interest extended beyond the force.

Inquiry material records that the Security Service asked whether Dines could provide an update on London Greenpeace. MI5 also received reporting from the Special Demonstration Squad and debriefed Dines when his deployment ended.

This places the police operation inside a wider state-intelligence system. It does not show that MI5 ordered the relationship with Steel. Nor is there current evidence that a home secretary or prime minister personally knew about it.

Those distinctions matter, but they do not separate the operation from government machinery.

MI5 wanted information about the group. The Metropolitan Police provided and controlled the undercover officer. Intelligence moved through that system while responsibility for the method remained divided between individuals and institutions.

There may never have been a document instructing an officer to use Helen Steel.

Institutional responsibility does not depend on finding such a sentence.

One body requested intelligence. Another operated the deployment. The officer chose how to obtain and preserve access. Managers received reports without stopping—or perhaps without asking about—the abuse that helped produce them.

The absence of a written order does not erase responsibility. It may show how effectively responsibility was dispersed.

When Steel searched for the truth

Dines left Steel in 1992 after pretending to be suffering a mental breakdown.

She initially believed that a man she loved had disappeared while seriously unwell. Over time, contradictions in his history led her to investigate who he had really been.

Police monitored that search.

Documents disclosed through the inquiry show that officers recorded whom Steel contacted and how close she was getting to identifying Dines.

When Steel travelled with her parents to New Zealand in 2002, New Zealand authorities monitored the family and searched their luggage at the request of British police.

By then, Dines had left the Metropolitan Police and was working as a barrister in New Zealand.

When officers feared Steel might locate him, senior police approved arrangements to move Dines and his family to Australia.

Current reporting based on inquiry material says senior officers authorised a £2.5 million protection and relocation package, including housing assistance and compensation connected to Dines’s loss of professional income.

The precise financial position still requires clarification. Earlier inquiry material recorded substantially lower Operation Muscat expenditure up to June 2003. The £2.5 million figure should therefore be described as an authorised package, not automatically as the amount ultimately spent.

The accounting question matters. It does not change the direction of protection.

Public resources were used to protect the former officer and preserve the secrecy surrounding his deployment. Steel, whose intimate life had been manipulated by that operation, had to uncover the truth herself while police tracked her progress.

From useful access to institutional danger

While Steel’s trust benefited the operation, the police used it.

Once her search threatened to expose what had happened, she was treated as a risk.

The June 2026 inquiry transcript records that frustrating further attempts to find Dines protected the SDS and potentially protected convictions. The same exchange refers to a document assessing Steel as an entirely lawful activist and states that she was not a personal risk to Dines.

What she threatened was secrecy: the officer’s identity, the conduct of the Special Demonstration Squad and potentially convictions affected by undisclosed undercover activity.

That is why the reported £2.5 million authorisation matters.

It reveals whose interests received institutional protection.

The officer was moved and supported. The woman deceived by the operation was monitored.

Descriptions such as “officer safety” and “operational security” may explain part of the police decision. They do not answer why exposing police misconduct was treated as a threat that needed to be contained.

The wider significance is that secret state powers were used against lawful political activity without Steel’s knowledge or any meaningful opportunity to challenge them.

A police officer entered her home and intimate life. Intelligence passed through police and security structures. International cooperation was later used to obstruct her search for the truth.

Whatever political label is applied to that machinery, it operated without the consent, scrutiny or safeguards expected in a democracy.

Questions the police still need to answer

The Metropolitan Police and the wider intelligence system should provide a clear account of:

  • what intelligence Dines obtained through Steel;
  • which reports depended on access created by the relationship;
  • who received and used that information;
  • which officers and managers knew or suspected that the relationship existed;
  • why the deployment was allowed to continue;
  • what part MI5’s intelligence requirements played;
  • who authorised the surveillance of Steel in New Zealand;
  • who approved the reported £2.5 million package;
  • how much money was ultimately spent;
  • whether any officer or manager faced personal accountability.

This was not simply the story of a dishonest man leading two lives.

A police officer created the deception. An authorised police operation benefited from it. Other officers failed to stop it, and the institution later used public resources to prevent the woman it had harmed from reaching the truth.

Helen Steel was not merely watched. Her trust, home and intimate life were incorporated into an intelligence operation.

When she began discovering the truth, police resources were used not to help the woman their officer had deceived, but to protect the officer, the unit and its secrets.

The police abused Helen Steel, obtained intelligence through that abuse and then treated her search for the truth as the danger.