As a victim of undercover police spying, this inquiry has left me bruised, but buoyed

The historical scope of the inquiry into allegations of systematic abuse by undercover policing units is unprecedented – it examines events that have shaped our society over the past 50 years. It will scrutinise how officers spied on more than 1,000 political groups since 1968. For me, the inquiry will be deeply personal: I was part of some of those groups.

Almost exactly 10 years ago, my whole world fell apart. I discovered that my partner of six years, who I thought was a fellow environmental campaigner called Mark Stone, was actually an undercover police officer, Mark Kennedy. It was earth-shattering. He’d been placed in my life by his employer to spy on me and my friends.

Soon afterwards, my deepest heartbreak became front-page news. I was mortified that a deception that had left me devastated was a matter for public debate. The Sunday Sport put the word out that they would give good money for a sex story involving any undercover cop. Daily Mail photographers were ejected from the front driveway.

Related: Secrets and lies: untangling the UK 'spy cops' scandal

My unmasking of Mark Kennedy lit the touch paper under a bonfire of hidden police lies and corruption. Those of us who were spied on, along with police whistleblowers and investigative journalists, have assembled evidence that forced the government to call this public inquiry. It was the revelation that police officers had spied on Stephen Lawrence’s family as they campaigned for justice that tipped the balance, and since then the allegations of wrongdoing haven’t stopped coming.

From the anti-Vietnam war movement, women’s liberationists, the black power movement, anti-racists and trade unionists and striking miners, to anti-roads protesters, environmentalists, Labour MPs, and left-leaning lawyers – police have targeted dissenting voices since 1968.

We have heard harrowing stories of families who were part of social movements that were bringing attention to deaths at the hands of the police or racist murders – cases where justice had not been done. We heard from the parents of dead children whose identities were stolen so they could be used as covers for police spies. And there’s us, more than 30 women who discovered that our partners were not who they said they were. They were undercover police, and they were spying on us.

After three weeks of following the socially distanced inquiry online, I am feeling battered and bruised, but deeply moved by hearing those stories told side-by-side. It’s as if all those campaigners and victims of injustice have linked arms and are facing the fight together to expose how not only the police, but successive governments, have spent vast amounts of resources on crushing any kind of protest or opposition.

When I first made my discoveries, I felt so alone with my trauma. Friends and family tried to help, but I was really not in a good way. Over time, however, I have gradually joined forces with more and more women who understand, because it happened to them too. We know what the British state did to us and so many others, and we are no longer alone. I hope the authorities are afraid of what that means.

Flaws with the inquiry process have been apparent from the beginning. The terms of reference are too limited, the attitudes of the judge are unacceptable, there are problems with how evidence has been gathered and processed, and it’s almost impossible to follow live proceedings with only a video of the written transcript being streamed online. The police are obstructive, avoiding scrutiny as much as they can. We almost certainly won’t get the full truth this way.

But what we have made happen here is truly powerful, and we have already learned a lot from the small amount of evidence that has been heard. The attitudes of the police towards those that they spied on were established in the late 1960s and early 70s, and they are built into the very nature of this type of political policing. The racism, the sexism, the contempt for campaigners – it was all there from the beginning. One police officer even told the inquiry that forming relationships with targets was entirely acceptable, just like an officer investigating drug dealers “sampling the product”. Because that’s what we were: the product.

Related: UK political groups spied on by undercover police – the list

Those campaigning on current issues, such as the climate crisis and Black Lives Matter, will benefit from this investigation into political policing to help understand how their movements are being policed today.

I’ve been following as much as I can from home, and it’s an intense, isolating and unsettling experience. To save our eyes from the strain of constantly reading, which is what’s needed to follow what was going on, some of us have been taking it in turns to read the transcript aloud, live on YouTube. Last Wednesday I read the words of one of the lawyers, while the excellent Maxine Peake read the part of a female former undercover cop, who had infiltrated the Women’s Liberation Movement in the early 1970s. One of the things we learned was that “Sandra” was sent to spy on meetings about unequal pay while her own pay was less than that of her male colleagues.

Friends and family often ask me when I’m finding things are difficult to listen to, why I need to follow it all so closely? They are rightly concerned for my wellbeing; but the fight is part of moving on.

This is only the beginning. The inquiry will be holding hearings into 2023 and beyond. I know I will lose heart many times before the end, but for now I feel buoyed, because I’m part of something so much bigger than myself. Every step along this road is a small victory against the odds.

• Lisa Jones is the pseudonym of a woman who had a six-year relationship with the undercover police officer Mark Kennedy