A campaign to extend an inquiry into controversial undercover policing units to include Scotland has been formally launched in Dundee.
The Pitchford Inquiry is investigating allegations of serious misconduct by undercover officers in England and Wales but does not extend north of the border.
Some of them are accused of forming relationships and even having children with women who did not know they were police spies.
Harvey Duke from the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance (COPS) Scotland said: “The Pitchford Inquiry into undercover policing is ongoing but will not be extended to Scotland.
“Instead, the Scottish Government have shockingly announced that senior Scottish police officers will investigate the police.
“This is completely unacceptable and a full public inquiry into the activities of spycops in Scotland is essential.”
Mr Duke also wants the investigation to include private intelligence agencies who, he claimed, spied on him as he campaigned in Dundee against welfare cuts in 2010.
He said undercover police were known to have operated across Scotland, including at the G8 Summit at Gleneagles in 2005, the Timex dispute in 1993 and the miners’ strike.
Campaigners say undercover police spies infiltrated political movements such as environmental and animal rights groups over several decades to gather intelligence.
This, they claim, undermined social justice and the fact relationships were formed with women under false pretences has been described as sexual abuse.
Former lecturer Bob Lambert resigned from his post at St Andrews University last year after it emerged he had infiltrated a political group as an undercover officer in the 1980s and fathered a child with an activist.
He was not the only one to do so and one victim, Helen Steel, took the Metropolitan Pollice to court after she discovered her partner was really a spycop.
She told last night’s launch that the man she knew as John Parker had actually stolen the identity of a dead child before forming a two-year relationship with her.
She did not find out the truth until 19 years later but then discovered a number of other women in the same position.
“Clearly there was a pattern of behaviour that could only have come about through some sort of training programme,” she said.
“We are fighting for an inquiry to investigate how these completely undemocratic practices came about and were allowed to continue.
“Anybody who wants to see society organised for the benefit of all should be concerned about undercover policing and the infiltration of social justice organisations.”
