IT WAS 10 years after Alison’s long-term partner disappeared that she was able to convince more than a few friends that he was an undercover police officer.

She believed he was Mark Cassidy, a joiner from Birkenhead who headed out at 6.30am each morning to work on building sites during the five years they lived together, from 1995 to 2000.

He was active in construction union Ucatt and an ally in the left-wing causes she committed her spare time to.

In 2013, he was revealed as Special Demonstration Squad agent Mark Jenner — but when Alison asked police to see her file, she received the all too familiar “neither confirm nor deny” (NCND) response.

As she left the Royal Courts of Justice yesterday, I asked Alison whether she had any hope that the inquiry would force the police to reveal more information.

“I just don’t know,” she said. “Some public inquiries have made significant progress, and some have just been a whitewash.

“But, throughout all of our legal battles, there’s been overwhelming evidence that these people are who we say they are.”

Mr Jenner is in scores of Alison’s family photos and attended relationship counselling with her to discuss his reluctance to have children. It turned out that he already had three — with his wife.

Now with children of her own, Alison is more keen than ever to break the Met’s continued stonewalling.

She welcomed Lord Justice Pitchford’s specific references to activists being targeted for their political allegiances and the affect on their personal lives.

“But when you’ve had the experience I’ve had, you become very cynical about the state’s functions,” she added.