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Pubs, police spies and the left
An interesting detail emerged from the recent spycops hearings, writes KEITH FLETT
BROWN ALE? A branch of Wetherspoon shows election coverage on TV in 2010. Pubs are often places where people talk politics

THE current closure of pubs across Britain is bad news for a lot of people — those employed in them, those who avoided social isolation by paying a visit and those who just like a drink. 

It is particularly bad news, though, for a small group of people who, recent evidence has revealed, found their most effective working environment to be the pub.

At the recent public hearings of the spycops inquiries it was revealed both in oral evidence and written statements that it was not so much infiltrating left-wing meetings that gave these individuals the information they craved, but the informal chat in the pub afterwards.

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