[A-List] UK secret state: image consultancy

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

MI5 branded former communist Royle Family star 'a political thug'

Matt Wells, media correspondent
Thursday August 22, 2002
The Guardian

MI5 files branded the actor and former Communist party member Ricky
Tomlinson a "political thug", according to a BBC documentary.

True Spies, made by the film-maker Peter Taylor, also discloses that MI5
and special branch infiltrated organisations such as the BBC in an
attempt to keep track of perceived subversives.

Mr Taylor said Tomlinson was one of many public figures who were
tracked, not because there was any evidence of revolutionary intent, but
because they associated themselves with organisations which opposed the
prevailing political mood.

Tomlinson, who is now best known for his portrayal of as the
curmudgeonly Jim Royle in the Royle Family sitcom, appears "shocked and
outraged" when told of the dossier during the BBC2 programme.

Asked if he was a threat to the state, he replies using his character's
catchphrase: "My arse!" The actor began to be tracked when, as one of
the "Shrewsbury two", he was jailed for his part in the 1972 builders'
strike. In the film he says he was "definitely not a thug".

Mr Taylor said he used to dismiss as "exaggerated paranoia" the stories
of extensive phone tapping and surveillance. "But they were not, the
files were vast," he said.

Special branch officers agreed to help with the film, said Mr Taylor. "I
think they felt they had a story that people didn't know about, which
could and should be told - and responsibly. After much heart searching
they agreed to do it."

-----

Peter Taylor is an acclaimed journalist specialising in Northern
Ireland, and his recent series "Brits" revealed some truly remarkable
aspects of the British state's activities during the last 30+ years.
However, Taylor is not wholly reliable, and even his recent work can be
rationalised as an effort by MI6 and like minds within the state
apparatus to exorcise various unsavoury episodes and thereby discredit
lingering elements of the MI5 crackpots who pretty much ran the show
during the 1970s and 80s. For example, in "Brits" Taylor interviews on
camera (in itself very remarkable, given "Lady" Meta Ramsay's inability
to comment on her CV) an MI6 agent who surfaced occasionally throughout
the "Troubles" to forge links between republicans and the state with a
view to peace talks, and ultimately came through in the process that led
up to the Good Friday Agreement. However true that might be, it makes
MI6 look very good, at least in comparison to other branches of the
state. We know about the inter-service rivalry that saw MI6 seeing
Northern Ireland as its turf because much republican activity was based
across the border in the Republic of Ireland, while MI5 saw Northern
Ireland as home territory and therefore their turf. As has been
documented elsewhere, a significant part of the New Labour restructuring
of the secret state has been the clipping of MI5 wings and a restoration
of MI6 (and thereby the Foreign Office) as primary intelligence
authority. Without the "war on terror" it is difficult to imagine what
MI5 would be doing, given that the National Criminal Intelligence
Service was beefed up considerably (thanks to a report by former MI6
head David Spedding) at the expense of MI5's ambitions there, while its
peddling of services to private sector companies ("batting for Britain"
to use Thatcher's phrase) faces stiff competition from the "ex" MI6
types at Hakluyt, among other freelancers (e.g. Control Risks Group).

Taylor, meanwhile, earned considerable notoriety 11 years ago when, in a
special one-off documentary for the BBC, he followed the official state
line on the inquiry into Greater Manchester Deputy Chief Constable John
Stalker, who had been appointed to conduct an inquiry into a then
alleged "shoot to kill" policy waged by the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
It seems Stalker took his brief seriously enough to ruffle many
important feathers, whereupon he was set up in classic style by being
implicated in allegedly dodgy business dealings of a leading Manchester
businessman who happened to be a friend. Taylor's rendering of the story
was so utterly tortured as to beggar belief, since the chronology of
events that even he could not deny was explained as a succession of
coincidences and misunderstandings. Thus Taylor exonerated everyone. As
we now know MI5 and the RUC Special Branch in particular were out of
control, running their own agents who just happened to be fanatical
loyalists, the most notorious of whom was Brian Nelson.

As a journalist, of course, Taylor has to be careful to protect his
sources, and his "Brits" series would not have been possible without the
help of many who would have benefited from his earlier whitewashing of
their activities. Hence his own self-aggrandisement as a "responsible"
reporter. Given all the stuff that has been floating around for years in
the public domain (and the additional material that must have been
available to journalistic insiders), it is at the very least
disingenuous of Taylor to claim now that he used to dismiss all the
stories as mere paranoia. Where was he when Paul Foot, Robin Ramsay and
others were bringing to light the appalling story of Colin Wallace, the
former army information officer framed for murder because he uncovered a
paedophile ring that went to the heart of the loyalist establishment
that governed Northern Ireland? Foot's book, "Who Framed Colin Wallace?"
was published in 1989. Where was Taylor then? While it's interesting
that it is now so respectable to admit that certain matters "got out of
hand" during the 1970s and 80s, we would have to be as credulous as
Taylor and others would have us believe they are when excusing their
earlier convenient denials. Therefore it's worth bearing all this in
mind when Taylor "sets the record straight" on behalf of his RUC Special
Branch contacts.

Michael Keaney