THE Home Office was locked down today as core participants to the Spycops inquiry accused the department of a “state cover-up.”

Victims who were duped into relationships with undercover police officers were in a standoff with security for about an hour.

A 55-year-old man was “manhandled” by outsourced guards as the group tried to hand-deliver thousands of letters responding to a “rigged” Home Office consultation over the future of the public inquiry.

Kate Wilson, one of the women who was deceived into a relationship with undercover police officer Mark Kennedy, told the Morning Star: “We literally got manhandled, one of our group was held against the wall, and they locked the building and called the police.”

The Home Office’s front doors were damaged, and officers agreed “to make the delivery for us,” she added.

“They’ve launched a public consultation which doesn’t even seem to contemplate the possibility of it continuing as a statutory public inquiry.

“One of the options is that the inquiry ends completely.

“It’s just such nonsense, it’s shocking they even suggested it.

“We wanted to deliver our responses to that consultation to say that this needs to continue.”

The core participants for the inquiry into an undercover police unit that spied on tens of thousands of political activists held banners demanding “end the state cover-up” outside the department from 11am today.

More than 2,500 people have emailed the Home Office since the consultation was announced on July 16.

Alex Hodson from the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance said: “This consultation isn’t about ‘timely justice for the victims,’ they clearly have no interest in us at all.

“It stinks of a cover-up to protect vested interests and sweep systemic abuses, corruption and miscarriages of justice under the carpet.”

Another of the core participants, Roger Geffen MBE, said: “Cutting short the inquiry would inevitably mean it fails to achieve its statutory purpose.

“Many shocking abuses committed by spycops since 1998 would remain unknown, their many victims’ quest for truth would be frustrated, and the recommendations of the inquiry itself would be unable to reflect what has happened under the current legal framework.

“After all, it is the police and other state actors whose constant delaying tactics have made the inquiry over-run by several years, at huge public expense. Their efforts to avoid accountability mustn’t be allowed to succeed.”

Dr Donal O’Driscoll from the Undercover Research Group said: “The consultation questionnaire appears to assume the inquiry will not continue and that has caused significant alarm.

“It is framed around alternative approaches which would mean that the most recent wrongdoing would never be examined.”

Survivors of spycops’ abuses called on the Home Office to withdraw the consultation and meet with the inquiry’s core participants to discuss ways forward.

They also want the inquiry to be “fully resourced” to complete the Terms of Reference and for an expert panel and a new chair to be appointed to ensure a smooth handover.

The Home Office was also told to ensure “prompt disclosure of evidence to those who were spied on, and full candour and openness from the police and other state parties under investigation.”

Lisa, who only wished to share her first name, from Police Spies Out of Lives said: “I was deceived into a six-year intimate relationship by Mark Kennedy.

“He was present in every part of my life, including my family and the most difficult moments I was living through.

“I have been waiting for more than a decade for the inquiry to finally give me the opportunity to understand how this could happen, and what exactly went on.

“We need the inquiry to follow the evidence, hear from those responsible and uncover who knew what, and why all safeguards failed.

“Whatever the ministers ultimately decide to do, the fact that they are creating uncertainty for people like me is cruel when we have waited for so long to get answers.

“The prospect of the inquiry being curtailed just as it reaches the evidence relating to my own experience is devastating.”

Last month the inquiry heard that the undercover police unit had to be shut down amid severe criticisms and recriminations.

Jon Boutcher, a senior police officer who took over responsibility for the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) unit, concluded within months that it had to be wound up because it was conducting unjustified surveillance and was badly run.

He said that most of the political groups, which included pro-Palestinian supporters and left-wing groups, being infiltrated “posed no threat to public order, let alone democracy.”

The Home Office was contacted for comment.