by Robert Green
Dalyell wanted to know who had ordered their involvement. He speculated that agents could have been acting on their own initiative, reflecting increasing concern at the time that elements within MI5 were out of control in connection with the coalminers’ strike.
Towards the end of his speech and almost as an afterthought, he said: ‘I ought to add that Commander Rob Green was, I am told, the person who physically sent the signal to Conqueror that sank the Belgrano…’ When I read this in all the leading national newspapers, my heart sank. Back on 2 April 1982, with intelligence reports of the Argentine invasion pouring in, I had worked non-stop for 36 hours. My intelligence team was therefore reorganised and expanded into a four-watch system, in addition to the separate cell providing 24-hour intelligence support on Soviet deployments.
I was watching TV at home on 2 May when I learned HMS Conqueror had torpedoed the Belgrano. From my previous time on watch, I knew the cruiser was being trailed by Conqueror, which was not allowed to attack it while it stayed outside the exclusion zone, but then the submarine was secretly ordered to attack. I immediately realised the implications, and that repercussions would be serious.
Dalyell’s final howler wrongly implied I had been closely involved in the attack. It also showed his ignorance of the fact that intelligence support was entirely separate from operational control of the war. Moreover, that signal to attack was the most important operational order of the war to date. It would therefore have been authorised by Admiral Fieldhouse himself before being sent personally by Flag Officer Submarines, Vice Admiral Peter Herbert, for onward transmission to HMS Conqueror. The impression Dalyell gave to my former colleagues, from Admiral Fieldhouse down, was that I had ridiculously inflated my role. Even more serious was the renewed suggestion – now stated under Parliamentary privilege and recorded for posterity in Hansard – that I could have been disloyal and stupid enough to have taken top secret documents and given them to Hilda for safe keeping. His inference that I might have been disaffected, a potential traitor, and willing to endanger Hilda was not only extremely offensive, but very dangerous for my credibility.
I was therefore grateful to Paddy Ashdown when he opened his response to Dalyell’s bombshell with a robust expression of support for me. However, he spoiled this somewhat by claiming I agreed with all Dalyell had said. No doubt sensing the danger for me, he quickly added that I had in no way collaborated with Dalyell.
Ashdown challenged the Government: ‘If what the Hon. Member for Linlithgow [Dalyell] says is true, it is inconceivable that it could have occurred under normal circumstances other than with agreement at the very highest level. But if that did not happen, there must have been a significant breakdown in the way that our intelligence services are controlled … There are many people, including me, who, because of friends and contacts, have reason to worry that the traditional and appropriate control of this country’s intelligence services has become much looser than appropriate and much less regulated than is necessary within a democracy…’ He warned that in the absence of satisfactory answers, there was only one way forward: ‘A full inquiry in front of a High Court judge.’
Giles Shaw, Minister of State for the Home Office, had listened intently to these speeches. When he rose to reply at 4.33am, he announced that because he had been given no warning, he was unable to answer Dalyell’s ‘numerous and far-reaching’ questions. However, Shaw made the curious observation that ‘it may be considered odd, if there were a British security element involved in the investigation, or occasioning the crime for which the investigation has been set up, that it should continue without those involved being able to ensure that the police and the security services are sharing common knowledge.’ A Home Office Minister was admitting in Parliament that, if MI5 was involved in Hilda’s murder, it would have no difficulty staying ahead of the police, and therefore covering its tracks.
Despite his claim of lack of notice, Shaw seemed well briefed on the main facts of the police version of the case. He even regurgitated the smokescreen of statistics from DCS Cole’s inquest testimony about the police effort put into the investigation. No evidence had been found to link the murder with Hilda’s anti-nuclear activities. Repeating the inquest findings, he noted Dalyell had expressed substantial criticism of the Home Office. He assured him that ‘the debate and the questions will obtain full consideration and a proper and comprehensive reply…’
Nine days later, Shaw’s written reply amounted to 20 words:
I am now able to state unreservedly that your allegations about the Intelligence services being involved are totally without foundation.
Yet the police had not even met Dalyell! He told the media: ‘I think Giles Shaw has simply gone through his officials to the Security Service and asked them, and they’ve said: “There’s nothing in it, old boy.”’
Later Dalyell told me that Shaw, his old friend from Cambridge Union days, admitted that he had been ‘less than frank’ with him about this, because his advisers had been ‘less than frank with me’. He had promised to tell him more, but died unexpectedly in 2000.
Dalyell’s allegations gained credibility when it emerged that the Hatfield flat of a former colleague of mine was broken into and thoroughly searched within hours of his speech. The day after the break-in, I bumped into Lieutenant-Commander Peter Hurst in a shop in Yeovil. Until then I’d had no idea he lived little more than five miles from me. He, too, had carried out top secret work in the Northwood command bunker. We were the only two with that security clearance to have left the Navy since the war. However, unlike me, he was on watch during the exchange of signals leading to the attack on the Belgrano. What was more, he worked in operations, and was closely involved in communications with the nuclear submarines.
His flat contained valuables including solid gold cufflinks in full view, hi-fi equipment, two video recorders and televisions, yet nothing was stolen except a bottle of gin. All his personal papers in a filing cabinet were rifled through, and an electric typewriter was moved to near the door. The other three flats in the same block were not touched, which was odd because his was the most difficult to access as the only one on the first floor. Hurst believed he had also been placed under surveillance, because later that day the phone started behaving strangely at this flat, his family home and at another London flat he rented out to tenants who complained about it. Later I learned from a reliable media source that another officer doing high security work at Northwood and living in lodgings nearby believed his belongings had been searched. Two hold-alls, left secure in a cupboard, had been opened.
Hurst and his wife were a timely comfort to me and Liz. The first former colleague I discussed Hilda’s case with, he gave me desperately needed affirmation that he did not question my loyalty. After their experience, they had no doubt our fears about the Belgrano connection were justified.
West Mercia Police issued a statement that inquiries had revealed no evidence of involvement by intelligence officers, and refuting claims of a cover-up. However, the police had no choice but to investigate the allegations and seek an early meeting with Dalyell.
His speech ensured that the run-up to Christmas in Dorset was far from peaceful, as Liz and I were besieged by national and international media. The pace was set by Stuart Prebble, producer of Granada Television’s flagship national investigative programme, World in Action. It was no coincidence that he had arranged to visit us on the eve of Dalyell’s speech. Naively, we invited him to stay the night. That evening he told me he had also discovered HMS Conqueror’s logbook was missing. I did not sleep well.
Over breakfast the next morning, Prebble challenged me. ‘Rob, if you know the facts about all this, and you suspect Mrs Thatcher was ultimately responsible for the abduction and assassination of Hilda, then you now have the opportunity to bring her down. What’s more, it’s your duty to do so.’ I felt like a rabbit caught in headlights. Aghast and horrified, I retorted: ‘Bulls..t. Even if I wanted to, I don’t have all the facts. Besides
, you know better than I do that Thatcher would have layers of bureaucratic defences around her.’
Later that day, when BBC Midlands TV interviewed Dalyell, he said, ‘Sources that have proved reliable in the past have a track record and my track record from these sources and other sources is so far 100 per cent accuracy in relation to the Belgrano. No, I can’t say [who it was] because I would never be trusted again to be a receptacle for information that they didn’t want to be identified.’ When challenged that it was a long stretch to link Hilda to the Falklands War, he replied: ‘Not if one has the kind of information given anonymously, and then not anonymously.’
I had mixed feelings about Dalyell’s bombshell. After the suppression of evidence at the inquest only a fortnight before, it was gratifying, and heady stuff, suddenly to find my concerns not only front page news in the national media but debated in the House of Commons. On the other hand, I felt profoundly uneasy that Dalyell had become a self-appointed political champion of Hilda’s case. I was also appalled that the most sensitive part of my Royal Navy career had been publicly dredged up just when I had been settling into rustic obscurity. Most disturbing of all was to come under suspicion of being a traitor – and, the ultimate nightmare, that I could be personally implicated in the murder of Hilda. Nearly 20 years would elapse before my research confirmed the deadly significance of Dalyell’s 19 March letter to Heseltine. Until then, I remained in denial that the Belgrano connection was the trigger for the British state security apparatus to move against her. I simply could not cope with the possibility that my work had caused Hilda’s death.
Feeling an urgent need to distance myself from Dalyell, I decided to challenge him publicly that he might have been set up. I reasoned that blaming Hilda’s murder on Thatcher’s embarrassment over the Belgrano was almost too convenient a distraction from the nuclear industry.
Dalyell’s obsession with the Belgrano controversy meant he could not resist going public about the link with Hilda’s murder. Moreover, his fascination with science – for years he had written a parliamentary column called ‘Thistle Diary’ in the New Scientist – had laid him open to cultivation by the nuclear industry. Thus he could be relied on to exonerate it – which he had.
Meanwhile, I was gaining media traction as a serious critic of the police handling of the case, and for my suspicion that the nuclear industry was somehow involved. The state security machine, therefore, would have wanted to flush me out and neutralise me, and head off any suggestion of nuclear industry dirty tricks.
The risk of tempting Dalyell to run with the claim of MI5 involvement would be worthwhile if it drove me to speak out against the war – whereupon I could be impaled upon the Official Secrets Act. Ponting was on remand awaiting trial for a similar offence, so MI5 would have been confident. My decision to become a roof thatcher provided enough circumstantial evidence to convince a jury that I had become disaffected.
Now Dalyell had indeed run with it. The break-in to Hurst’s flat a few hours after the debate made me take Dalyell’s claim seriously, and I did come under enormous media pressure to discuss my views on the war.
I urgently needed to shore up my loyalty to the Navy. On 29 December, therefore, I wrote to Admiral Fieldhouse to set the record straight. I wanted him to know I had never contacted Dalyell, and had tried to correct his errors:
… namely that I did not make the signal to sink the Belgrano(!), and that I did not resign because of my dissatisfaction with the war but had applied for voluntary redundancy three months before the invasion for reasons totally unconnected with it.
Journalists continued to repeat the inaccuracies almost every time they wrote about the murder. A myth was widely spread that I had been a nuclear submariner, not back-seat aircrew in carrier strike jets and anti-submarine helicopters, and even that I was the commanding officer of HMS Conqueror!
I also let Fieldhouse know I had been reliably informed that some documents had gone missing from Northwood at about the time I left on terminal leave in early October 1982, and that I had come under suspicion. I assured him that ‘such a stupid and irresponsible idea never even entered my head’, and asked to meet him because DCS Cole wanted to interview me again. The First Sea Lord reassured me he needed
… no persuading that you did not mislead Mr Dalyell into concluding that you stored classified information in your Aunt’s house, or that you sent the signal ordering the sinking of the Belgrano. Thank you also for restating your reasons for your resignation…
Though happy to see me, he thought it would serve no purpose. His letter was enormously comforting.
A few days later, I found myself suspected of murdering Hilda.
CHAPTER 5
CONSPIRACY THEORIES STRENGTHEN
I had tried to trust the West Mercia Police to conduct an objective investigation. As Hilda’s next of kin, I expected updates with every major development, and reasonable responses to my requests and concerns. After the inquest, my faith in them evaporated.
DCS Cole phoned me on 27 December 1984, a week after Dalyell’s intervention, wanting to question me as soon as possible. He was under intense political and media pressure. On 6 January 1985, the Sunday Times ran a full-page feature article entitled ‘Who killed Hilda Murrell?’.
Two days later, we met in my local police station in Sherborne – exactly two years after my last meeting with Hilda. Liz insisted on accompanying me with our solicitor. The icy weather matched the atmosphere inside the interview room, during what turned out to be a three-hour hostile interrogation. DCI Furber, playing ‘good cop’, accompanied Cole. I had not met Cole since giving him my original statement.
Neither detective attempted small talk, or expressed any sympathy for the situation I found myself in. There was no effort to update me about the latest developments. Instead Cole set the tone, aggressively launching into a line of questioning as if I were a suspect. ‘Were you aware of the contents of your aunt’s will before she died?’ What had my Navy salary been? How much was I now earning thatching? ‘Tell me again why you claim you were close, when you last saw her on 8 January 1983?’ They had checked Hilda’s diary. As I tried to describe the nature of our relationship, outrage welled up that I was having to do so again.
I seized my chance to educate the two officers about Hilda’s research into the economics of nuclear energy, and the dangers of radioactive waste. When I mentioned I had used my naval staff training and experience to help her with her Sizewell paper, this triggered questions about my security clearance, and whether I had told her anything of a classified nature. Cole seemed to know a lot about my involvement with Naval Intelligence, and the top secret electronic espionage work at Government Communications Headquarters in Cheltenham.
Probing the circumstances of my departure from the Navy, Cole tried to discover if I had been disaffected by the Falklands War. I explained that for career reasons I had applied for voluntary redundancy before the war. Later, I realised with some shock that, far from dismissing Dalyell’s allegation, he had almost certainly been interrogating me about whether I was one of Dalyell’s sources, or had helped Dalyell’s close friend Morgan-Grenville with his inflammatory Ecoropa leaflet about the Falklands War.
Cole’s next thrust was to question me about Morgan-Grenville’s statement. I outlined why I visited him, but I chose not to mention Hilda’s last letter to me with its ominous postscript, in case it was dismissed as an old lady’s fears about simply being knocked down by a London bus while attending the CND rally in October 1983.
As I recounted my gut reaction on hearing Hilda was missing, Cole cut me off with another dangerous question. ‘When you were in Naval Intelligence, did you ever have any contact with the civil power?’ By this he meant MI5. I replied that my work was in military intelligence about other countries. Had he hoped I might be indiscreet about that?
Both he and Furber then accused me of breach of confidence about sensitive details of Hilda’s case in press reports. I retorted that they neve
r briefed me about these or distressing developments like the sexual activity, but I learned of them from journalists. Judith Cook’s New Statesman article misquoted me. Were they hoping to scare me into doubting my integrity, and show that I could not be trusted with sensitive information after having the highest security clearance? I told them Dalyell and I had never communicated with each other until I tried to correct damaging errors in his Parliamentary statement. I had no evidence relating to his allegation of British intelligence involvement. However, I accepted there might be something in it – especially after learning about Hurst’s burglary. I was certainly not satisfied with the dismissive responses from the police.
I had been on the defensive long enough. I hit back: ‘I don’t believe the police are deliberately involved in a cover-up, although they may be unwitting victims of one.’ Cole recoiled, saying he had investigated the nuclear angle, but with no evidence he could not take it any further.
The interview reverted to suspect interrogation mode. Cole demanded detailed evidence of my movements, not just on the day Hilda was abducted, but the day before as well. I had to send them a photocopy of my thatching diary for those days, a photo of me working and a signed statement from Liz corroborating this. They also took a second set of my fingerprints. Later I learned they made the secretary of Leigh Village Hall Committee give a statement confirming I attended the annual general meeting on the Tuesday evening. In light of the fact that, with a beard at the time, I bore no resemblance to the driver of Hilda’s car, such treatment of the victim’s next of kin amounted to vindictive intimidation. Not only was I rattled and alienated; inevitably my suspicions grew that MI5 was indeed involved, and the police had something to hide.