[A-List] UK state: counter-subversion

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

How agencies hunted union 'subversives'

Industrial anarchy of 1960s and 70s fuelled spy services paranoia

Richard Norton-Taylor and David Gow
Thursday October 24, 2002
The Guardian

For Britain the 1960s and 1970s were its most tumultuous, feverish decades
of post-war economic and political life. Demonstrations against the Vietnam
war, the counter culture, and, not least, industrial militancy, fuelled the
paranoia of the security services.

Successive Labour and Tory governments struggled to combat rampant inflation
and head off what the police special branch and MI5 regarded as a threat to
democratic institutions from communists or Trotskyist groups whose path to
winning the working class was through recruiting in trade unions and among
strikers.

It was against this background that as many as 23 "senior trade unionists",
including Joe Gormley of the miners and Ray Buckton of the train drivers,
were employed by the security services to supply them with information.

A modest post-war economic boom had ended without restructuring of the UK's
archaic industrial relations inherited in 1945, notwithstanding
nationalisation of core industries such as coal and steel. Having in 1969
seen off In Place of Strife, the attempt by Barbara Castle, Harold Wilson's
employment secretary, to reform strike laws, the unions were beset by
rank-and-file militancy fuelled by endless shopfloor negotiations, poor
management, and inflation.

The Conservative prime minister, Edward Heath, through the 1971 industrial
relations act and the national industrial relations court, tried to limit
union power but was blown off course by wildcat strikes and official
disputes.

1972 was pivotal: 30m days lost through industrial stoppages, the first
national miners' strike since 1926 (when Arthur Scargill rose to prominence
through the siege of Saltley coke depot), and an unofficial dock strike. A
year later the Aslef train drivers became the bain of commuters for striking
in defence of its "craft" tradition, Opec upped oil prices dramatically,
inflation soared above 20%, and the Heath government imposed a three-day
week to try to offset a power shortage in another national coal strike. The
1974 strike prompted Heath to call an election which brought in a minority
Labour government after a "who runs the country" campaign.

The 1974-79 governments of Wilson and James Callaghan fared little better in
their modernisation efforts, despite union leaderships accepting restraint
through "social contracts" and appointment of hardline managers such as
Michael Edwardes at the state car firm, British Leyland, where he was
besieged by shop stewards, notably Derek Robinson, "Red Robbo".

Against this, special branch and MI5, dominated by a right-wing culture,
were desperate to combat "subversives". It meant infiltrating spies into
organisations, attracting informants, bugging, and burglary. It also meant
amassing huge numbers of files on individuals. Tony Robinson, a member of
Lancashire special branch between 1965 and 1981, tells the BBC2 series, True
Spies, how he visited MI5's registry. There were "thousands and thousands of
files... there must have been upwards of, if not more than, a million."

According to Cathy Massiter, the former MI5 officer: "Whenever a major
dispute came up... it would immediately became a major area for
investigation." She resigned in 1984, believing the "counter-subversion"
operations were "getting out of control" and the agency was serving the
political interests of the Tories.

Files were kept on union leaders irrespective of any communist past. MI5
compiled 40 volumes each on Hugh Scanlon and Jack Jones, leaders of the two
largest unions, the TGWU and the AUEW.

The security services also went for CND, the Anti-Apartheid Movement, and
the National Council of Civil Liberties, now Liberty (whose leaders,
Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman, respectively trade and industry
secretary and solicitor general, still have MI5 files on them).

If the agencies were looking for any secret agendas they were disappointed,
as former officers privately admit.

Mrs Castle describes her bemusement in her diaries. "Another security
service report on the Ford dispute," she wrote in 1969. "The more I read
these reports, the less confidence I have in our intelligence. To begin
with, the material is always mighty thin and most of it would be obvious
anyway to an informed politician."

MI5, whose anti-subversion section has now been shut, did not help the BBC
make True Spies. Maybe it takes the view it is all history. The BBC did,
however, get help from the Metropolitan police special branch; it allowed
former officers to speak, so long as they did not compromise national
security. Some seemed to want to settle old scores. One, "Alan", names
Gormley as an informer, and tells the programme that special branch warned
MI5 of plans for a strike in 1972.

Alan claims that, nevertheless, MI5 advised the government there would be no
strike. "It was a very strained relationship. They [MI5] were public school,
we were grammar school or maybe below."