The Defence of the Realm

by Christopher Andrew

  The section of the peace movement which attracted the greatest international media attention was the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp set up in September 1981 outside the airbase near Newbury in Berkshire which had been selected as a site for cruise missiles. For the next two years, the women protesters attempted – in the end unsuccessfully – to disrupt the construction of the missile site by blockading the base and cutting down parts of the perimeter fence. In May 1983 a temporary file on the Camp was converted into a permanent file on the grounds that it was ‘subject to penetration by subversive groups’.19 No significant subversive penetration, however, came to light.20 The dominant element in the Peace Camp was believed to be militant feminists who saw nuclear arms as a problem created by a male-dominated world order. Though Communists, Trotskyists and their sympathizers (all members of male-dominated organizations) had an important role in organizing mass demonstrations in support of the protest, they were reported to disapprove of the Camp’s exclusion of men. F2R/1 (whose responsibilities involved investigating possible subversion in the peace movement) minuted in March 1984, four months after the first cruise missiles were deployed at the airbase, that ‘we are now able to state with some authority, that the subversive influence on the founding and continuing life of the camp has been slight’.21

  KGB directives passed by Oleg Gordievsky to SIS after he arrived at the London residency in the summer of 198222 demonstrated that Moscow regarded the anti-nuclear movement in Britain (as in the rest of the West) as ‘our natural allies’ and believed it could exercise considerable influence over it.23 When ‘C’ gave Mrs Thatcher her first briefing on Gordievsky on 23 December, at Security Service request he made no mention of his reporting on the peace movement – presumably because of fears that the Prime Minister would take too literally exaggerated KGB claims of its ability to influence the movement. After the briefing, however, ‘C’ reported to Smith’s successor as DG, John Jones, that the Prime Minister had herself in passing raised the issue of KGB involvement with the CND and the peace movement. In these circumstances he had asked SIS to discuss with Director K whether any of Gordievsky’s reports needed to be rewritten and whether substantive desk comments should be added before they were presented to the PM. In the meantime Gordievsky would be asked to clarify and update his information on KGB attempts to manipulate the peace movement.24

  On 25 February 1983 the DDG, Cecil Shipp, and the Deputy Chief of SIS presented to Sir Robert Armstrong, the cabinet secretary, a résumé of Gordievsky’s intelligence on the Soviet Union and the British peace movement which they had jointly prepared for Mrs Thatcher.25 The Security Service added a commentary designed to emphasize the contrast between some KGB claims for its ability to influence the peace movement and what it had actually achieved. Gordievsky’s intelligence on the paucity of effective KGB contacts in the movement, as well as the limited influence of the Soviet embassy, was, it reported, both reassuring and in line with previous Service assessments. When the London residency was urged by the Centre in the autumn of 1982 to increase its efforts, the only ‘confidential contact’ it was able to cite with substantial influence on the peace movement was the ninety-four-year-old left-wing Labour politician Lord Brockway, co-founder three years earlier of the World Disarmament Campaign, whose efforts to persuade local authorities to declare themselves ‘nuclear-free zones’ were applauded by the Centre. Brockway was estimated to agree with 70 to 80 per cent of Soviet policy decisions. He had monthly meetings with Mikhail Bogdanov, a Line PR (political intelligence) officer operating under journalistic cover, and accepted presents from him – though it was thought that Brockway probably did not realize he worked for the KGB.26 Bogdanov, then in his early thirties and the son of a Leningrad musician, was rated by Gordievsky as ‘the most polished and sophisticated member’ of the London residency.27

  The joint SIS–Security Service brief for the Prime Minister also emphasized some of the failures of KGB and other Soviet attempts to influence the peace movement. The KGB was so suspicious of the willingness of the European Nuclear Disarmament Movement (END), founded by Professor E. P. Thompson, to criticize Soviet as well as Western policy that it concluded perversely that END was inspired by Western intelligence. In January 1983 the chairman of the Soviet Peace Committee sent a letter to CND accusing it and other British groups of dividing the world peace movement and playing into the hands of the Americans. Gordievsky reported that Bruce Kent visited the Soviet embassy to register his disagreement.28 Service investigation of attempted Soviet penetration of the peace movement eventually reached the reassuring conclusion that efforts by KGB officers and other Soviet officials to enter into a dialogue with its leading figures achieved little, since most – like Joan Ruddock and Bruce Kent – were fiercely independent and critical of some aspects of Soviet policy.29

  In 1982, however, Ruddock, then CND chairman, had a temporary file opened on her by Cathy Massiter, which was converted into a PF (personal file) in 1983 because of her meetings with Mikhail Bogdanov, whom Ruddock was doubtless unaware was a KGB officer.30 After reviewing several years later the claims made by Massiter of excessive surveillance of the peace movement, a senior MI5 officer (a future DDG) concluded that there was some force to her argument that the case for beginning a telephone check in 1983 on John Cox, a member of the CPGB National Executive Committee and one of the CND vice chairmen, was inadequate: ‘I am not sure what I think. There were certainly solid and respectable reasons at the time for proceeding as we did but I feel in retrospect that Massiter may be right in questioning whether the warrant was strictly justified.’31 At the time, however, the telephone check on Cox was viewed as the Service’s ‘most important source on Communist involvement in the peace movement and a useful source of intelligence on Trotskyist activities within CND and on Soviet attitudes towards CND’:

  It enabled us to conclude, among other things, that members of the CPGB were not manipulating CND or exercising decisive influence within it. The warrant was cancelled in 1985 when we were in a position to make a full assessment of the level of subversive influence in CND and, in that light, reduce our coverage.32

  The Security Service reported that, because of the KGB’s failure to influence the leading figures within CND, its London residency tended to rely instead on less influential contacts more receptive to the Soviet viewpoint. None, apart from Fenner Brockway, had a significant influence on CND or public opinion. The Service found no evidence that KGB funding to the British peace movement went beyond occasional payment of fares and expenses to individuals.33

  As with industrial disruption, there was some ministerial pressure on the Security Service to go beyond the terms of its charter in investigating the peace movement. According to a later internal investigation, prompted by Cathy Massiter’s allegations: ‘It was plain to the Service in 1983 that MoD was anxious to obtain ammunition against CND and would have liked us to assist actively. But our response was very cautious . . . If there was political pressure on us to do more than was justified, we appear to have resisted it.’34 At the time, however, some members of the Service believed that the resistance was inadequate. Director FX later claimed that the DG, John Jones, gave into MoD pressure to provide unclassified ‘dirt’ on CND.35 In March 1983 the Service provided the MoD with open-source material on the political affiliation of seven leading members of CND.36 One of the desk officers at the time recalls her and some of her colleagues’ ‘discontent’ at the decision to do so.37

  Like its Labour predecessor, the Thatcher government’s main fears about subversion centred on industrial disruption. Its fears reached a climax during the year-long miners’ strike of 1984–5, the longest in British history. The Service was less alarmed than the Prime Minister. Director F told the Directors’ Meeting on 13 March 1984 that ‘so far there did not appear to be significant subversive involvement in the current miners’ strike.’38 He reported on 4 April that ‘subversive organisations were not making a significant impact on events.’39 Mr
s Thatcher and some of her ministers seem to have been unpersuaded. Though the Service continued to monitor contacts between the CPGB and the miners’ leader, Arthur Scargill, Director F believed that the Party was seeking – unsuccessfully – to exert ‘a moderating influence’ on him, rather than to inflame the dispute further. ‘In general,’ he told his fellow directors on 4 June, ‘the prospect of a settlement of the strike appeared to be remote.’40 Scargill had been the subject of an HOW, continued by successive home secretaries since November 1973, on the grounds of his contacts with the CPGB.41 The former MI5 officer Cathy Massiter later recalled that Scargill ‘would occasionally shout abuse into the phone at the people who were tapping him’. The NUM’s Communist vice president Mick McGahey had been subject to an HOW for most of the period since 1970.42 According to Massiter:

  The tapping of his home telephone . . . gave rise to an office joke about the girls who had to listen to Mrs McGahey’s interminable telephone conversations with friends and relatives. But we were able to get information from her chatting about his movements, which he himself was careful to conceal.43

  It has been claimed that during the miners’ strike ‘Every single NUM branch and lodge secretary had his phone monitored. So did the entire national and area union leaderships, as well as sympathetic trade unionists and support-group activists all over the country.’44 These claims are fanciful. Most phone tapping, authorized in every case by HOWs, was limited to leading Communist and Trotskyist militants and those judged to have close links with them. Stella Rimington, then F2, later recalled ‘agonising’ over the justification for continuing the HOW on Scargill, before categorizing him as ‘an unaffiliated subversive’ on the grounds that, after calling a strike without a ballot, his declared aim was to overthrow the democratically elected Thatcher government.45

  The Service’s regular (often daily) Box 500 situation reports on the miners’ strike were originally sent only to senior Whitehall officials. In late June 1984, however, Mrs Thatcher discovered their existence and it was agreed that henceforth copies of all the reports should be sent to her through the cabinet secretary.46 She seems to have read them attentively, complaining on one occasion that a Box 500 report of 4 September that Scargill was planning a statement blaming the National Coal Board (NCB) for withdrawing from proposed talks had arrived too late for the government to be able to counter it immediately. The government, said the Cabinet Office, ‘were anxious not to lose propaganda points’ during a strike which was unusual in ‘being to a large extent conducted through the media’.47 Rimington recalls a visit to the Gower Street headquarters by Leon Brittan, after he succeeded Whitelaw as home secretary in June: ‘I remember telling him, “We will accumulate information and, in so far as it is our responsibility, pass [it] to Whitehall but then it is up to you and you must decide how you are going to deal with it.”’ 48

  A best-selling history of the miners’ strike later claimed that Rimington was heavily involved in orchestrating dirty tricks against the NUM. According to a Commons motion by a group of Labour MPs, Roger Windsor, the NUM chief executive officer during the strike, was ‘an agent of MI5 under Mrs Rimington, sent into the NUM to destabilize and sabotage the union at its most critical juncture’. After the allegation had been denied by both Rimington and the Prime Minister, John Major, Windsor won substantial damages from the Sunday Express for repeating the claim that he had been an MI5 ‘mole’ during the miners’ strike.49 As during many previous industrial disputes, though the government was anxious for a wide range of intelligence, the Security Service refused to violate its charter by targeting union leaders and activists who were not Communists, Trotskyists or assessed by the Service as sympathizers. It was also unwilling to monitor picket lines or the miners’ wives’ association.50

  Rimington noted in September that, according to Peter Gregson, deputy secretary at the Cabinet Office responsible for ‘civil contingencies’, Service reports, though not ‘of vital significance to HMG’, ‘were of value as background information and some were of particular interest’:

  The Government regarded it as a dispute that they must win. If the Nottinghamshire coalfield continued to work and the power stations continued to receive fuel, the Government felt confident that coal stocks would last through the winter. In March [1985] new nuclear and oil burning power stations came on stream and coal supplies would become of decreasing significance. It followed that the intelligence of greatest interest to the Government would be on the following subjects:–

  a. Indications of the strike spreading to Nottinghamshire

  b. Information about the return to work movement

  c. Indications of action likely to prevent the movement of coal into the power stations

  d. Any advance information that Scargill was planning a propaganda coup of any kind which might have the effect of causing an all out strike.51

  From the viewpoint of the Thatcher government, the most critical moment of the miners’ strike came in the autumn of 1984 with the threat of a strike by the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS), who bore the main responsibility for mine safety.52 Since the law required that coal could be mined only in the presence of trained safety personnel, a NACODS strike threatened to bring the whole coal industry to a halt. Because there were no Communists or Trotskyists at the top of NACODS, however, the Security Service had no HOWs on its leaders and could provide little useful intelligence on their intentions. The government thus had to rely largely on the rather ill-informed assessments of the NCB, which was initially far too optimistic about the likely outcome of a strike ballot in late September. Contrary to NCB predictions the ballot produced a pro-strike majority of 82.5 per cent. After negotiations with the NCB, however, the NACODS executive called off the strike before it was due to begin on 24 October. The absence of Box 500 reports on NACODS left Mrs Thatcher ‘unclear’ about what had caused the change of heart.53

  Until (and, in lesser degree, even after) NACODS called off its strike, Arthur Scargill seemed in confident mood. The Economist believed he had some reason to be so, declaring on 6 October, ‘Mrs Thatcher is not now going to win the miners’ strike outright.’ One of the recurrent themes in Box 500 reports was Scargill’s intransigence. The situation report for 24 October 1984 concluded: ‘He remains determined not to concede any points to the National Coal Board (NCB) and expects the strike to continue until the NCB meets all the NUM’s demands.’54 Box 500 reports also kept the government informed about Scargill’s successful attempts to obtain funds for the NUM from Colonel Qaddafi. After reports of his Libyan connections appeared in the Sunday Times on 28 October, Scargill, even ‘in private . . . appeared unconcerned and highly amused by the publicity, claiming not to understand what the fuss was about’.55 ‘Leading Communists and Communist sympathisers within the NUM’ were, however, reported to be ‘privately critical of the union contacts with the Libyans’. Though the NUM’s Communist vice president Mick McGahey supported Scargill in public, in private he was ‘extremely angry and embarrassed’ about the contact with Libya.56 By contrast, McGahey was happy to take part, with Scargill and other NUM leaders, in contacts with Soviet representatives. ‘It seems likely’, the Service reported on 1 November, ‘that the Soviet Union may also provide funds for the NUM.’57 As during previous industrial disputes, transcribing McGahey’s telephone and other conversations was complicated by the effect of his phenomenal drinking on what seemed to English ears his already difficult Scottish accent.58 On 5 November the Service reported that McGahey was ‘ill in bed from alcohol poisoning’.59

  The main intelligence source on these contacts was almost certainly Oleg Gordievsky, by then head of political intelligence (Line PR) in the KGB London residency. ‘I see the Russian connection has now come out [in the press],’ McGahey told a Scottish miners’ rally. ‘In case you don’t know, I’m the guy. I had discussions with Soviet comrades. I will tell you the figure – it’s $1,138,000. It’s coming from Soviet trade unionists
.’60 Gordievsky revealed, however, that the decision to give the money to the NUM – against the advice of the KGB – had in reality been made by the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party.61

  After the resolution of the NACODS crisis, the Security Service reported increasing pessimism among both Communists and Trotskyists at the likely outcome of the strike. A Communist on the NUM South Wales executive committee was reported to believe that ‘the loyalty of striking miners in South Wales is . . . being seriously undermined by the intransigence of the national leadership.’62 A Box 500 situation report on 29 November declared: ‘Although they are still encouraging their full-time workers to continue their efforts to support the NUM, some leading [Militant Tendency] figures, including Peter Taaffe, editor of “Militant”, are beginning to admit privately that the strike may be a lost cause.’63 Service reports in the closing weeks of 1984 emphasized the CPGB’s increasing pessimism about the prospects for the strike and the growing rift between Scargill and the Party leadership. Scargill privately complained of CPGB attacks on him. Bert Ramelson, the Party’s former industrial organizer to whom Scargill had once been close, was asked by the Party leadership to meet him ‘to try to persuade him of the importance, for public relations, of his being seen to be flexible and reasonable’. Ramelson produced a paper outlining a basis for resumption of talks between the NUM and NCB which he claimed was welcomed by McGahey. Scargill’s reaction to the paper, when Ramelson met him on 12 December, was hostile: ‘Ramelson found Scargill tired and strained. He recognises that Scargill is unable to admit when his strategy is wrong but hopes that he will read the document seriously. He hopes to meet Scargill again to continue to try to exert influence on him.’64