[A-List] Wilson plot: Leigh review, part 1

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

THE ENEMIES DEEP WITHIN

A 3-part review of David Leigh, "The Wilson Plot: The Intelligence Services
and the Discrediting of a Prime Minister 1945-1976", London: Heinemann, 1988

PART ONE

Contrary to the classical liberal myth of the separate spheres of state and
civil society, Marxian and other radical (and even not so radical) critics
of capitalism have noted their interpenetration. Marxists in particular have
devoted vast amounts of time and intellectual energy to the study of the
capitalist state. Normally this concerns the state's roles and the
facilitator and legitimator of the accumulation process, taking its cue from
Marx's famous line concerning the state as the executive committee of the
bourgeoisie. Of course the state is rather more than that, and Marx himself
had rather more to say about the state than simply leave it there. As Clyde
W. Barrow notes in his useful 1993 study, "Critical Theories of the State:
Marxist, Neo-Marxist, Post-Marxist" (University of Wisconsin Press), Marx
left behind a number of comments and observations on the capitalist state,
each of which have spawned parallel sub-traditions of inquiry within the
Marxist canon. Add to that the muckraking of sympathetic radicals like
Thorstein Veblen, C. Wright Mills and G. William Domhoff and it is no wonder
that the radical critique of the state is so varied. A valuable aspect of
Barrow's work, echoed in recent discussions on PEN-L, is that he treats
these differing approaches as complementary, rather than mutually exclusive
absolutes.

Another state theorist who takes a slightly different tack from those above
is Martin Shaw, a sociologist in origin who has developed a suitably
sociological take on the emerging "global state", taking as of central
importance the state's monopoly on violence. In his most recent book, for
example, he claims that we neglect the legacy of Carl von Clausewitz at our
peril ("Theory of the Global State: Globality as an Unfinished Revolution",
Cambridge UP, 2000). It's a useful reminder of the violence that attends
state formation and state preservation, as with defence against external and
internal enemies. In states with a legacy of empire, as in Britain and
France, and, in more recent times, the United States, experience gained in
subduing the natives during colonisation and quelling local uprisings and
struggles for independence forges institutions and personal relationships
that eventually find their way back to the domestic front. This is not to
say that, prior to empire, home was free of repression. "Britain" has a long
history of ruthless subjugation of unruly types, be they Celts, Catholics,
Royalists, puritans, factory workers, miners or Irish republicans. France
shares with Britain an institutionalised anti-Communism that so dreaded the
red menace that its ruling class was largely content to capitulate to Hitler
(look at the composition of the Vichy government - largely the generals
responsible for the "defence" of France against Nazi Germany). And the
United States, of course, can boast of J. Edgar Hoover, and a long pedigree
of "red" hunting, viz. the extermination of the Indian population (see Joel
Kovel, "Red Hunting in the Promised Land", London: Cassell, 1993).

Nevertheless the experience of overseas jaunts and foreign adventures comes,
in time, to inform domestic "intelligence", as the techniques formulated and
practised abroad are applied at home. Such is the case with the British
secret state, a direct result of the war effort against Nazi Germany and
concurrent insurrection in Palestine. All of which is given a remarkably
detailed telling in David Leigh's 13-year-old book which, despite the
occasional reminder in the media - including a Channel 4 documentary
broadcast in 1996 - has made little impact of any significance. Why?

Firstly, serious discussion of the secret state is difficult because it is
secret. Its very secrecy is a licence to speculate, and it's not far from
speculation to conspiracy. Before long, you join some fairly unpleasant
company like Lyndon LaRouche and David Icke, whom most people rightly regard
as a few sandwiches short of a picnic. However, the charge of
conspiratorialism serves to discredit those, like Leigh, who do their best
to dig up the appropriate documentary evidence. Despite being able to piece
together events and produce a corresponding paper trail, Leigh and others
like him remain tarred by the "conspiracy" brush. Then there is the use to
which Leigh and other critical investigators are put by the intelligence
services themselves, as they provide snippets of information and
disinformation, half-truths and tidbits, in the effort to lead their
would-be scrutineers down blind alleys - and preferably long ones.

Secondly, of course, is the monumentally disgraceful effort by the organs
and personnel of state to cover up absolutely everything not deemed
desirable to be known. Even today the newly "open" and "accountable" MI5
denies all allegations concerning the Wilson Plot. [*] The draconian secrecy
laws exercised in defence of the British secret state have been employed
systematically to exclude and obfuscate the efforts of investigators like
Paul Foot, John Pilger, Duncan Campbell and Leigh, as well as career civil
servants like Clive Ponting and Sarah Tisdall. But, as we have apparently
never tired of hearing, if the efforts of our political masters are anything
to go by, secrecy and lack of accountability only leads eventually to
atrophy - hence the collapse of the Soviet Union. And in the British secret
state, the shabby nature of the employment available - not simply in terms
of job content, but actual pay and conditions - meant that, sooner or later,
an insider would inevitably spill the beans out of spite or disillusion with
the prevailing regime. And this is exactly what happened in the case of
Peter Wright.

Spycatcher

When the "Spycatcher" case broke in 1987, Wright was celebrated as striking
a blow for civil libertarians against the notoriously opaque and repressive
British secret state. The efforts by the Thatcher government to suppress the
publication of "Spycatcher" in particular led to some of the best political
theatre in living memory, as Britain's top civil servant, Sir Robert
Armstrong, was despatched to Australia to argue for the book's censorship.
Wright's lawyer, Malcolm Turnbull, combining theatrical flair with an astute
sense of Australian disrespect for British imperial pretension, reduced
Armstrong's testimony to shreds, eventually getting Armstrong to utter the
famous admission that he had been "economical with the truth". It was all
the more pathetic when Wright's publisher proceeded to release the book in
the United States and copies flooded into Britain. Tony Benn and others were
reading extracts from the book at public venues like Speaker's Corner in
London's Hyde Park. Only with the greatest reluctance did Thatcher relent
and drop the case.

But what made Wright, a former MI5 career agent, turn against his former
masters? As Leigh records, a career of underachievement in an unsung agency
of the state prosecuting a decades-long vendetta against certain Labour
Party politicians, including most prominently Harold Wilson, was capped with
a compulsory retirement and miserly pension. Wright retired to Australia,
having attempted at first to retain links with the security services and
their contacts (including Sir James Goldsmith). The head of MI5, Sir Michael
Hanley, had attempted to fix Wright up with the Australian equivalent of
MI5, ASIO. Its head was Peter Barbour, who was a part of the intelligence
regime that had overseen the creation of the international network that we
know now as Echelon: the rich white boys' club run by the US with Britain,
Australia, Canada and New Zealand following along - a kind of cross between
Ian Fleming and Robert Conquest. However, Barbour had been moved from his
post by Gough Whitlam in September 1975 (Wright retired in January 1976). We
will come back to this episode in greater detail later.

Eventually Wright settled in Tasmania and took up farming. While Wright
corresponded with Hanley, who was the head of MI5 from 1972-78, after his
retirement, it is unlikely that Hanley would have shared much personal
sympathy with Wright, even if their political goals were very similar.
Hanley, it was, who kept a large file in his own safe under the name of
"Henry Worthington" (HW = Harold Wilson). In that file were all of the
clippings, innuendos, "facts" and gossip Wright and others had gathered over
many years, all supposedly pointing to Wilson's treachery. But such had been
the paranoia within Wright's circle, egged on by that of Wright's mentor,
James Jesus Angleton of the CIA, that Hanley himself had been dragged before
an interrogation committee in 1968, before being exonerated. For such a
self-consciously self-evident "patriot" as Hanley, this would have been well
beyond forgiveness. [**]

"Spycatcher" was Wright's second book, if actually the first in which he
received official credit. His first was published in 1983, entitled "Their
Trade is Treachery". Authored by Daily Express journalist Chapman Pincher,
it was a farrago of tales of post-war British countersubversion concocted
with the help of Wright who had kept many of his files. But such was
Wright's bitterness at his treatment by his former employer that he soon
engaged the help of another journalist and this time tried to shed more
light on the goings-on surrounding MI5 in the post-war period. But in
settling old scores, Wright purposefully neglected to tell the truth as
regards his own role in the most damning of all his partial revelations: the
plot to ensnare Harold Wilson as an agent of the KGB. His evasiveness and
partial recantations helped to discredit him, much to the relief of the
secret state. However, so much had come to light that David Leigh was able
to piece together events and render them a reasonably coherent whole, such
that Wright's activities, and those of his peers, including Hanley, were
laid bare - or as bare as they had ever been until then.

Part 2 of this review will focus on the personalities involved in the
construction of the post-war British secret state, and the prevailing
atmosphere of interlocking and related institutions that recall what is now
a very different era. Part 3 will conclude by examining the methods employed
to destabilise the Wilson governments. Also discussed will be the array of
instruments employed by the United States government and its agencies during
this time, as it sought to bring its (then) most important ally to heel. The
New Labour ascendancy effectively completes the revolution instigated by the
CIA, MI5, the IMF, and their protégé Margaret Thatcher and her entourage,
whose unleashing of forces of which they had little understanding renders
them now anachronisms - mere historical curiosities, political bygones.
Nevertheless, their legacy continues to flourish.

Footnotes

[*] The friendly and accessible website for MI5 (proudly proclaiming its
accreditation as an "Investor in People") helpfully includes a section
entitled "Myths and Misunderstandings" dealing with "common misconceptions",
including, of course, claims concerning the Wilson Plot. It reads as
follows:

The 'Wilson Plot'

In his book Spycatcher, the former Security Service officer
Peter Wright claimed that up to 30 members of the Service
had plotted to undermine the former Prime Minister Harold
Wilson. This allegation was exhaustively investigated and it
was concluded, as stated publicly by Ministers, that no
such plot had ever existed. Wright himself finally admitted in
an interview with BBC1's Panorama programme in 1988 that
his account had been unreliable and that in fact only one
other member of staff had been involved in any serious
discussion regarding a plot.

See http://www.mi5.gov.uk/myth8.htm

This is typical misinformation. Ministers, including Thatcher herself, were
hardly to be relied upon to reveal the truth, having gone to such ridiculous
lengths to suppress it in the first place. But having lost the Spycatcher
battle, they proceeded to discredit the book, helped along by Wright's own
incompetence and dishonesty. Leigh's book would not have been necessary had
Wright's account not been so unreliable. Leigh also records a significantly
greater number than "one other member of staff" having been involved in any
serious discussion regarding a plot. Even if we are to take this statement
at its word, this, in itself, is grounds for an inquiry, since it is an
admission that, whether or not it existed, rumours of a plot circulated,
requiring "serious discussion".

[**] For details on Hanley see the Guardian obituary, forwarded to PEN-L.
http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001II/msg03784.html