Public Servant, Secret Agent

by Paul Routledge

  Having played such a key role in Thatcher’s victory, Neave could have had virtually any job in her Shadow Cabinet for the asking. To the surprise of many, he chose Northern Ireland, traditionally a graveyard for British politicians. He had not hitherto shown any public interest in the province, where an undeclared civil war had been raging for a decade, claiming hundreds of lives. At the age of fifty-nine, and not in the most robust of health, it was a striking choice. But Thatcher did not hesitate. ‘His intelligence contacts, proven physical courage and shrewdness amply qualified him for this testing and largely thankless task,’ she recorded later.18 It is intriguing that she should single out, first and foremost, his intelligence contacts. Her remarks confirm that Neave was still in regular communication with the secret state. Thatcher also made him head of her private office, thus reinforcing his influence. He was now the gatekeeper to the leader, as well as the man to shape Conservative policy on Ulster. The taste of success was all the sweeter for the long years spent in the wilderness.

  15

  In the Shadows

  Few politicians could more appropriately have been described as a ‘shadow’. In parallel with his public life as an MP, Neave operated in the shadows for almost forty years. Sometimes his intelligence expertise came close to the surface, as in his role as midwife to Margaret Thatcher’s ambitions, but there was a darker side to his activities. Despite his reputation as a vaguely progressive Conservative, Neave was now moving in very deep shadows on the hard right of British – and Irish – politics.

  His emergence as a power broker in the Tory Party coincided with the appearance of a number of groups dedicated to ‘saving’ the nation from a perceived threat of breakdown of civil society, caused either by strikes or Communist subversion. These self-appointed groups, drawn from the ranks of former intelligence officers, the City, ex-army officers and the fanciful fringe of politics, had links with the security services. At their apogee, they organised a smear campaign to bring down Harold Wilson, who (absurdly) was believed to be a Communist, or to have Communist sympathies. As was subsequently disclosed by ex-MI5 officer Peter Wright in Spycatcher, a group of ‘dissident’ MI5 officers plotted the downfall of Wilson and his government from 1974 onwards. Other groups, often giving themselves quasi-military names like GB 75 and Civil Assistance, concentrated on the trade unions and the Labour left, particularly Tony Benn, who was a Cabinet minister in Wilson’s government.

  An investigation in 1987 by the respected anti-Fascist magazine Searchlight found that the presence of Neave and an ally, George Kennedy Young, former deputy director of MI6, ran ‘like a silken thread’ through the various endeavours to discredit Labour, promote Thatcher and ‘if necessary, organise unorthodox means of achieving their political goals’. Searchlight’s investigators asked whether ‘a quiet coup’ had taken place in Britain during the middle 1970s. In late 1974, the far right around the Conservative Party was ‘deeply depressed and adrift’. Labour had won two elections, trade union influence in government was at an unprecedented level, and the alternative, a Tory government headed by Heath, promised ‘only further betrayal’ at the hands of a man who had backed down on immigration (the Ugandan Asians), sold out on sovereignty (joining the EEC) and caved in to the unions (the U-turn over Upper Clyde shipbuilders and his double defeat at the hands of the miners). Labour had to be discredited and Heath dumped. The unions had to be tackled, and contingencies set in train in case the unthinkable – a Labour victory over a new right-led Tory Party at the next election – happened.

  Organisations and cabals were set up to deal with each of these problems, the Searchlight investigation established. These could be seen as unconnected efforts of right-wingers eager to save their country from the depredations of the left, but so many of the projects seemed to be linked to people who had been involved with MI5 or MI6 that a conspiracy theory did not seem to be far-fetched.

  If it does strain credibility, however, it is worth considering the evidence. Neave had actually met Peter Wright before these events. Wright’s original motive was to quiz Neave about one of his fellow Colditz inmates, Michael Burn, a journalist whose name had come to light as a possible contact of Soviet spy Anthony Blunt. Wright hoped to learn that Burn had shown Communist sympathies in Colditz but he drew a blank. However, ‘Neave gave me a lot of valuable information on inmates who were either traitors or potential ones,’ he later recorded.1 The fact that Neave felt happy about informing on his fellow inmates some thirty years after their incarceration is unpalatable but a significant pointer to his real agenda.

  Neave was closely connected with a number of the far right groups about whose existence much more is known now than at the time they were operating. After the Burn episode, Wright approached Neave again ‘as one of the “suspect plotters” against Wilson’. On this occasion, he related that: ‘The interview with Neave was whether he knew of any secret armies or proposed ones in the UK. He came out of the interview well, showing himself loyal to the Crown and to British democracy.’ Astonishingly, Wright concluded that Neave ‘was not a conspiratorial type of man’.2

  Not by his own paranoid standards perhaps, but of course Neave was a natural plotter, as a glance at his history shows. Less well known is his role in setting up ‘stay-behind’ networks on Continental Europe, whose role was to gather intelligence after the war resistance in the event of a Soviet invasion.

  Stephen Dorril observes: ‘European accounts of the stay-behind networks are fairly consistent in their claims that, before hostilities had ceased, networks were already tentatively being planned. Central to these activities were personnel from SOE and in particular from IS9. It is interesting to note the postings of senior IS9 officers and the setting up of “fronts” as the war wound down. These fronts acted as intelligence gathering and recruitment centres and provided cover for MI9 and MI6 officers. It has been suggested that it is through these centres that the prototype stay-behind nets were recruited.’

  Ken Livingstone, who made a particular study of Neave and the Irish problem, insists that ‘Neave … kept his own friendships and contacts with the intelligence community throughout the post-war period.’3 Who’s Who records that Neave was Officer Commanding Intelligence School 9 (TA) from 1949 to 1951. Thereafter, he was in demand as a lecturer, particularly on escape and evasion, to the armed services including (on the admission of his daughter Marigold) the SAS. IS9 continued to operate through the Korean War before being transformed into the Joint Research Prisoner of War Intelligence Organisation (TA) and then the more anonymous Joint Reserve Reconnaissance Unit (TA). Its functions were taken over by the SAS in 1959. The decision was welcomed by Neave whose admiration for the regiment was ‘unbounded’. According to the authors of Smear! Wilson and the Secret State, the Birmingham-based SAS unit had squadrons in the more important industrial centres and could provide a means of monitoring social unrest.4 Neave also kept up his contacts in the security services, and it was only natural that when men like Colonel David Stirling, another fellow inmate at Colditz and founder of the SAS with whom he was still very friendly, began to harbour fears of a social collapse and a ‘Communist takeover’, they would turn to Neave for political support.

  Within months of Thatcher’s takeover of the Conservative leadership, and against a backdrop of a Labour government barely able to govern on a majority of three, the siren voices of the far right began to make themselves discreetly heard again. Retired General Walter Walker, formerly Commander-in-Chief of NATO’s Northern Command, whose private quasi-army had a fantasy membership of 100,000, reported a conversation with Nicholas Ridley MP, later a Thatcher Cabinet minister. Ridley was (perhaps appropriately) talking in riddles, he complained: ‘It seemed to me that what he was trying to convey, but hadn’t the guts to say so openly, was that the only hope for the country would be a military coup.’5 Talk of military action to forestall a Communist takeover filled the air. In 1974, a serving army officer wrote in Monday World, the journal of the Monday Club, of
which Neave was a member, that some soldiers believed they would be ‘called upon to act in England’. David Stirling said in July that year: ‘Moving into installations owned by the government is a very delicate business, and that is one reason for the secrecy surrounding those people who have already made positive plans.’6

  George Kennedy Young, author of the ‘spies as leaders of society’ memorandum, joined in the fray. He invited General Walker to attend an informal reception on 30 April 1975 of a ‘right-wing group’ numbering twenty to thirty Tory MPs. The reception was given by Sir Frederic Bennett, Tory MP for Torbay ‘along with Airey Neave, [a member] of Geoffrey Stewart Smith’s Foreign Affairs Research Institute’.7 It was probably through this group that in late 1974 or early 1975 Young and others, with the backing of Airey Neave, rapidly organised a network throughout the constituencies to support Margaret Thatcher. This network, called Tory Action, was formed when it became clear that Edward Heath would be challenged for the leadership.8 According to Searchlight, Neave was in fact one of the original inspirations behind Tory Action, which sought not solely to oust Heath but to replace him with a leader and policies much further to the right.

  Seditious talk of private armies and ‘anti-chaos organisations’ continued throughout the summer of 1975, while Neave worked his way into his new post as Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary. He appointed as his deputy John Biggs-Davidson, a right-wing Tory who was also a member of the Foreign Affairs Research Institute. The third member of the team, Sir William van Straubenzee, a former Northern Ireland minister, but no Thatcherite, completed the team. Writing in the Irish Times, Renagh Holohan explained that Neave brought ‘considerable military and intelligence experience’ to the task but his views on Ulster were a mystery. His appointment was seen by many as a concession to the right, she added.9 In an interview with Desmond McCartan of the Belfast Telegraph, the province’s leading newspaper, Neave denied that he represented a switch to the right. He signalled that the bipartisan approach on Ulster policy at Westminster would continue, but there would be occasions on which the Tories would differ. ‘I also believe that the union should be maintained,’ he asserted. Ulster Unionists welcomed the appointment of such a distinguished soldier and politician, while the SDLP preferred to keep an open mind. A spokesman from the Republican Clubs invited him to visit the Long Kesh internment centre ‘and explain to the British people how it differed, not from Colditz but from Dachau and Buchenwald’.10 Gerry Fitt, SDLP MP for West Belfast, observed that Neave’s arrival ‘would please the generals. It might persuade some that there could be a military solution, and such an attitude is doomed to failure.’ Neave would find it more difficult to get out of Ulster than Colditz, Fitt joked. The pair, who were to become friends, exchanged banter in the television studios, with Neave pooh-poohing the concept of him as a walrus-moustachioed brigadier hell bent on a military solution. ‘I am not particularly right wing,’ he declared. On 20 February, he met Brian Faulkner, former leader of the Ulster Unionists, who was pleased that someone so close to Mrs Thatcher had been given the Northern Ireland portfolio. Early in March, he and Thatcher had talks in London with Garret FitzGerald, the Irish Foreign Minister. To the alarm of the Irish, Neave suggested that he might call for the abolition of incident centres set up in republican areas to monitor the current IRA ceasefire, but quickly dropped the idea when told that it might do more harm than good.

  Neave admitted he was largely ignorant of the issues and had a lot of reading to do. In one interview, he argued in favour of making power-sharing work, but after meeting the Unionists he said: ‘Power-sharing, by definition, means different things to different people.’ Less than a year before, hard-line loyalists (with the tacit support of the security services) had brought down Ulster’s first power-sharing administration by a political strike that brought the province to a halt. Their industrial action had not been viewed in the same subversive light as that of the coal miners. Labour was then setting up a seventy-eight-member elected Constitutional Convention to determine what form of government would be likely to command most widespread acceptance throughout the community. Neave promised to review Conservative policy on Ulster after the Convention elections, scheduled for 1 May.

  In the spring of 1975 he made a number of visits to Northern Ireland, talking to the Secretary of State Merlyn Rees, police and army chiefs and community leaders, including the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. His comments were guarded but a clear bias towards the Unionists, and hard-line Unionism at that, was becoming evident. Neave opposed the repatriation of IRA bombers Marion and Dolours Price from Durham gaol to Armagh prison, on the grounds that they might escape. He also expressed a conviction that the ‘hard core’ of internees in Long Kesh (subsequently rechristened the Maze in 1972 although the names remained interchangeable for a while) would never be released. Even the moderate Alliance Party was shocked, pointing out that no civilised country had indefinite internment. At Westminster, he argued for more MPs for Ulster, which would benefit the Unionists, and in a visit to Dublin on 5 May he told the Irish Foreign Minister that power-sharing could not be imposed on people who would not share power. The responsible thing to do was ‘work for an accommodation’. When hard-line Unionists made considerable gains in the Convention elections, he pronounced power-sharing as good as dead. The Convention staggered on for another nine months before Merlyn Rees finally signed the death warrant.

  Neave’s first parliamentary foray came on 14 March, during a debate on Northern Ireland initiated by Merlyn Rees. The Ulster Secretary reported that a ceasefire announced by the Provisional IRA on 10 February was still holding, and there had been no major incidents between the security forces and republican terrorists. But violent feuds between the breakaway Irish Republican Socialist Party and the Official IRA were continuing. Fourteen people had died in inter- and intra-sectarian killing in the previous month, but the government was determined to press ahead with the phased release of internees. Eighty more would go by Easter, and more would follow if there was ‘a genuine and sustained cessation of violence’. Rees rejected the notion of a ‘ready-made textbook solution’ of the kind propounded by some of Neave’s dubious friends on the far right. Neave asked four questions, all seeking support for the RUC. Rees welcomed him to his Shadow post. It was not an effusive greeting. The two men never did get on. Garret FitzGerald subsequently noted Rees’s ‘dismissive attitude’ towards Neave, whom he described as knowing nothing about Northern Ireland and showing no ability to learn about it quickly.

  Later in the debate Neave asked more questions about the supervision of released internees. If it was not an impressive start to the handling of a highly charged political responsibility, it did set his style. On 26 March, he clashed with the Minister of State Stan Orme on the future of Belfast shipbuilders Harland and Wolff. The ailing company – builders of the Titanic – was brought into public ownership, with a measure of worker participation in management. The yard, employing almost 11,000 men (mostly Protestants), was the mainstay of employment in east Belfast and many other businesses depended on it. Neave asked a series of questions but raised no principled objections. A few weeks later, he complained that the release of internees was frustrating the work of the army, especially on the intelligence side. During Northern Ireland Questions on 15 May, he challenged the government’s view that violence had genuinely ceased, since fifty people had been assassinated in less than six months.

  That month, Neave announced a comprehensive review of Conservative policy on Northern Ireland. One of the options to be considered would be ‘full integration’ of the province within the United Kingdom, with more MPs at Westminster. Meanwhile, he demanded an end to internee releases, saying that the situation was ‘too explosive’. The Irish Times exploded in a leading article that described Neave’s tenure of the Ulster portfolio as ‘undistinguished, ambiguous, ignorant and possibly dangerous’ which could break up the bipartisan approach with Labour. ‘It would be a mistake to exaggerate the personal impor
tance of Mr Neave. He is, to be blunt, a lightweight whose appointment is owed to past favours for the party leader, Mrs Thatcher.’11

  As the summer progressed, Neave became more confident with his brief. In June he handled the complex Criminal Jurisdiction Bill, which improved cross-border cooperation against terrorism. On 27 June, in a Commons debate on the Northern Ireland Bill, which made terrorism a specific offence, ended special category (political) status for convicted prisoners and introduced non-jury trials for terrorist offences, he spoke with composure and at length. He was also contemptuous of the IRA and their methods – ‘we are talking about gangsterism, not “open and honourable warfare”’ – and supported a new power of detention as a legitimate weapon. Whatever the merits of his arguments, Neave must have realised that in making such statements he was raising his profile in the demonology of the republican movement and making himself a likely candidate for assassination. Moreover, the fragile IRA ceasefire was in the process of breaking down. In the second week of July, the Provisionals bombed the Crown Buildings in Londonderry and claimed responsibility. They also acknowledged that two bombings in April in Belfast were their work, as was the murder of a police constable in Londonderry in May. Neave put down a Private Notice Question, a device rarely granted by the Speaker, which compels the Secretary of State to make a statement to the Commons. Rees refused to halt the release of internees. Four days later, on 14 July, Neave spoke late in the evening on the Third Reading of the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Bill, which sought a gradual return to civilian policing in the province. Neave strongly objected to the Ulster Secretary’s use of the term ‘prisoners of war’ in the context of IRA violence, however indirectly. He also called for the arrest of ‘known terrorists’ on criminal charges, such as membership of a proscribed organisation. Three days later, four British soldiers were killed by an IRA bomb at Forkhill, in the bandit country of south Armagh. The Crossmaglen Provisionals claimed responsibility. In the Commons, Neave condemned ‘this contemptible ambush’ and again demanded the arrest of ‘known terrorist leaders’. He was at it again on 24 July, criticising Merlyn Rees’s policy of releasing the last 200 internees (Neave invariably referred to them as terrorists) before Christmas.