Morning - I'm at the Undercover Policing Inquiry. Today: former cabinet minister (Lord) Peter Hain. When Northern Ireland Secretary, he had to sign off intel-gathering on terror groups. But... in the 70s he was spied on by Scotland Yard for campaigning against apartheid.

It's going to be a fascinating day of evidence because he is the most senior politician we know of who was watched, and watched and watched and watched again by Scotland Yard's Special Demonstration Squad.

Lord Hain says that the central fact to grasp is that the racist South African Apartheid regime presented the Anti-Apartheid Movement, ANC and others as dangerous communists - and that meant London and Washington propped up the SA regime.

Peter Hain says his parents - South Africans of British heritage - were liberals (as was he). He says it was a "lie" that people like him were dangerous communists (and therefore a threat to the UK) because they campaigned to dismantle Apartheid.

Hain says he is proud that he organised (among many events) a non-violent pitch invasion as a public protest against sports tours between SA and the UK. They achieved their aim - they stopped the play and raised the profile of the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

Hain: I see non-violent direct action as having a long lineage going back to the Suffragettes, early trade unionists, the Chartists, to Gandhi... "a long line of non-violent direction action that's also carried out by Extinction Rebellion and other environmental protests today"

"Nothing that we did at the time ever invited a prosecution. "

David Barr QC, inquiry counsel, asks if protests set out to be criminal. Hain: "If it's part of your line of argument that non-violent direct action has a subversive periphery, I reject that. We changed the course of history ... ultimately bring about the downfall of Apartheid."

Hain drives his central point: "[Undercover] resources [directed at us in the 70s] should have been devoted to catching terrorists, catching drug traffickers and serious criminals, not devoted to keeping an eye on & harassing anti-Apartheid protesters."

Bit of history: Targeting sporting links to SA was important to the Anti-Apartheid battle. Like all aspects of life in SA, sport was segregated on racist lines. It was a priority to campaigners to make the world take notice of this injustice.

Peter Hain said that as the Anti-Apartheid Movement realised the importance of sport to their cause, he began to formulate direct action tactics to highlight the issue and the abuses suffered by non-white sports people back home.

And so, campaigners launched the Stop The Seventy Tour visit by an all-White South African team to the UK in 1970. What began as a modest plan in the Hain family's living room in Putney, SW London, became a nationwide campaign.

The family phone became, completely unintentionally, the national hotline for campaigners, the flat the national HQ. Peter Hain's mother, who supported the cause, found herself thrust into the role of unofficial secretary helping to co-ordinate the demonstrations.

Stop The tour protests linked up a huge range of groups - including The Student Christian Movement and various communist/socialist movements.

Lord Hain: "My philosophy had always been that you bring in the broadest spectrum you can, that shares the objective of defeating Apartheid, people of good will, even if they disagree about everything else."

David Barr QC for the inquiry suggests come 1970 that emotions were running high and suggests there was "the potential for violence".

Hain: "If the response from the police or stewards of the grounds was proportionate, no. When I jumped or tried to get over the fence at Twickenham, I wasn't trying to provoke violence [or attack police] but to get on to the pitch ... to stop an Apartheid rugby match."

Quote of the day from Hain: "The police had to decide when facing anti-Apartheid protestors whose side they were on. And in many cases of undercover officers they made the wrong choice. The police, in targeting us, were putting themselves on the wrong side of history."

Here's one of the Hain family living room meetings infiltrated by an undercover officer - it's a planning meeting to disrupt a coming Springboks rugby game at Twickenham. "Box 500" on left means report was marked for attention of MI5. Full doc here: https://www.ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/UCPI0000008656.pdf

Hain: "Why were they not targeting the agents of Apartheid, bombing and killing [and acting illegally in London]... These officers should have been helping to bring down the Apartheid system ... instead of spying on us."

Lord Hain has been repeatedly asked this morning about the risk of violence - or police suspicions that the AAM was planning violence to Stop The Seventy Tour. His repeated answer was it was neither planned nor, factually, occurred.

The only incident detailed so far turns out to be a one-off DIY action by a teacher in Bristol, who spread tin tacks on the Rugby field ahead of a Springboks match - something Lord Hain said the national movement would never have approved and he personally deplored.

There was some kind of plan to use a "Mata Hari" female activist to lure a Springbok player to a location where he could be, er, dyed black. Hain smiles to himself as he recalls the failed plan: Playing to rugby stereotype, the player had been too drunk to move ...