Anti-racism campaigner Lowri Davies shared the recording with the Guardian to raise awareness of what she alleges were “distressing” techniques used to try to manipulate her into providing information to the police.
She said two police officers spent 90 minutes seeking to convince her to become an informant, imploring her not to tell anyone about the attempted recruitment.
But Davies exposed the attempt by recording a phone call from one of the covert officers. It is the first public evidence that the police have sought to recruit a mole within the Black Lives Matter movement in the UK.
The disclosures are likely to heighten longstanding criticism that police in the UK are carrying out unjustified surveillance of political groups that are engaged in democratic and lawful protests.
A judge-led public inquiry is examining the activities of undercover police officers who spied on more than 1,000 political groups over more than four decades. The government was forced to set up the inquiry after a series of revelations about the misconduct of the undercover officers. These included the monitoring of black justice groups, including several run by grieving families whose relatives were killed by police.
As well as deploying undercover officers, police have for years run a secret network of informants within protest groups. Rarely heard about, they are members of political groups who are persuaded by police to covertly supply them with information about protests, often for cash.