Chris Brian, Undercover Research Group, January 2020

This is a companion piece – and to some extent a sequel – to State Subversion in the North East: 1944.

The British intelligence services’ “Subversion in Public Life” Committee[1] had been formed in 1972 to spy on communist groups involved in the industrial ferment of the era. It reconvened in 1984 but not, as we might have thought, because of the large and more politically significant Miners’ Strike. Instead, the spur to resume surveillance was a much smaller and localised industrial action at the Computer Centre of the Department of Social Security offices in Newcastle (and Washington in Tyne & Wear).

However, whilst this was the immediate cause for this government secret commission, the political and geographical centre of this story moved to the heart of the secret state – Whitehall. One of the organisations involved in promoting the strike would be the intelligence services’ new obsession, the subversive threat apparently posed by Militant Tendency.

Civil Service Strike in Newcastle              

The strike by civil servants centered on the office of the Department of Health and Social Security in the Newcastle’s Longbenton area and focused on issues around shift patterns and pay. At the time, it was the longest civil service strike at 9-months and was bitterly fought – extending beyond the offices and into the wider city itself.

As mentioned above, the “Subversion in Public Life” [2] (SPL) committee was initially brought into being in 1972, during the Heath (Conservative) administration which was worried about communist influence in the widespread industrial disruption of the time.[3] However, in its 1984 incarnation, the committee’s main concern was narrower: the influence of Militant’s radical Trotskyist politics within ‘white collar’ civil servants union(s).

The committee was run by representatives from MI5 and the Home Office,[4] (including future MI5 chief Stella Rimmington – see below). It was chaired by a Home Office official and was staffed by senior civil servants from each Whitehall department – Education, Ministry of Defence, Inland Revenue, Environment and Transport.

The main justification for secretly monitoring Militant was its influence over the British Labour Party. Interestingly – and providing another link between link between  1944 and 1984 – both Bill Landles (a former Tyneside apprentice) and Ted Grant (a prominent and founding member of Militant) were members of both Militant in the 1980s and the RCP in the 1940s.[6]

Notes from a meeting of the Committee, in January 1985, laid-out the argument for the reconvening of the SPL:

Sir Kenneth Stowe [Senior Civil Servant from the Department of Health and Social Security] said that it had become apparent during negotiations in the Newcastle dispute that the strikers’ negotiators were being dominated behind the scenes by a small group of MT [Militant Tendency] members whose object was to undermine any progress towards a settlement. As a result, DHSS had sought and received, on a highly restricted basis, a very helpful brief from the Security Service on MT methods. As a result of the briefing he had also discovered that nearly one third of DHSS ‘facility timers’[7] were identified as probable MT activists and there had proved to be a close correlation between their location and offices where there had been industrial relations difficulties.[8]

Stowe asserted there was also a close connection between MT in Newcastle and in Liverpool (where they controlled the local council). He also found that they “appeared to be an expanding force, well financed and highly motivated, and targeted specifically on white collar unions”.[9]

Against this conspiratorial take on the dispute, an MP at the time who had visited the picket line reported: There was no evidence that I could see of any Left-wing militancy or of any other influences. It seemed to me to be a perfectly straightforward dispute.”[10]

Militant and the Surveillance State

It was in the 2002 BBC documentary series True Spies that the surveillance of Militant members, including MP’s was first publicly mentioned. This was revealed in an interview with Tony Robinson of Lancashire Special Branch. This also helped answer another long-standing question (and pertinent to the Undercover Policing Inquiry): where did the information collected by infiltrators end up? We know that the data was rarely used in prosecution, but quite often was passed to blacklisting firms such as the Economic League and The Consulting Association (see: Operation Reuben Unpicked). The SPL documents suggest another use it was put to, closely related to blacklisting – the vetting of civil servants.

Subversives by Government Department

This archive, as well as revealing the number of identified subversives in each civil service department and their political affiliation, also places the total number of subversives in the UK as 50,000. However, the fact that the number of subversives in each department is recorded to single digits figures (see table above) implies access to privately held information. This suggests that MI5, either directly or indirectly, had means of accessing the membership list and knowledge participants in each group. From current knowledge, this is now unsurprising as an examination of the list of ‘subversive’ political groups shows that these are now known to have had either MI5, or, more often, Special Branch (via the SDS) infiltrators[11] (see below and compare to: Spycops Targets: A Who’s Who).

Subversives in the UK – 1984

Political Bias

Figure 5 also shows another curious snippet: the “extreme right wing” grouping. For some reason only 500 of the 3000 who were members of the National Front and British National Party are considered subversives. The inference perhaps being that fascism is not subversive? It does seem odd that it is for only this group that a nuance is added. This obviously adds to the substantial evidence that both the security services and special branch had a historically right-wing bias[12].  This bias is long standing and is illustrated by the overlap between state surveillance apparatchiks and right-wing organisations.

Most infamously, Maxwell Knight, MI5’s agent runner, was previously a member of an early British Fascist group, the British Fascisti (later British Fascists), who were inspired by Benito Mussolini.[13][14] Meanwhile, up until the outbreak of World War II, MI5 was still receiving information from the Nazi intelligence service – the Gestapo – on communists. [15][16] That the list of the groups infiltrated by various Special Branch units, including such as SDS and NPIOU, contains almost all left-wing and progressive political campaigns, gives weight to this bias existing among the various State agencies. Further, comments by officers in senior positions in the NPIOU era (1999-2005) suggest that right-wing extremists were decisively not a priority: in 2011, Adrian Tudway, National Co-ordinator for Domestic Extremism, said he formed the view that the English Defence League were not extreme after reading their website.

The Newcastle strike in 1984 was sparked by a worsening of working conditions but was as far as the state was concerned the result of a Militant conspiracy. Similarly, in 1944, the strike by 26,000 apprentices in Tyneside was seen not as a reasonable expression of workers’ power in the face of a drastic negative change in their working conditions but a Trotskyist plot. Both episodes of state surveillance were aimed at those who dared to organise -and also held ”subversive” (or non-conforming left-wing) political opinions.

From Militant Newspaper 18 May 1984

Radicals’ Suspicions at the time

As an aside, it is worth noting that the deployment of covert state assets against political activists did not go unnoticed by those who were targeted. Reports by a parliamentary select committee, Merseyside County Council and the Welsh Civil Liberties Committee (all published in 1984)  addressed concerns around the activities of Special Branch.[17] What these reports have in common is the very small amount of official information on which they had to base their allegations on –a handful of anecdotal reports by activists,  and a total refusal by the police to comment on their concerns at the time.[18]

In their submission to the 1984 Home Affairs Committee, the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty) called for a full judge-led public inquiry into Special Branch’s activities. At that point in time, there was not the disclosure of their activities that we have now so political pressure to have such an inquiry was unsuccessful.[19]

Special Branch activity within the anti-nuclear movement was acknowledged by this CND badge from the 1980’s but official confirmation of infiltration had to wait until 2018, although MI5 infiltration had already been revealed

The end of the Age of Subversion?

As the 1980’s drew to a close and the Berlin wall fell, MI5 declared that the threat from subversion was ‘very low’.[20] In 1993, Militant members left the Labour Party. More generally, there was a sharp decline in strikes.[21] So, with the threat of civil unrest and political upheaval passing at least for the moment, it seems that the major justification for the surveillance by the government of its own populace had substantially lessened. However, since such monitoring did continue – how did the state continue to justify the surveillance?

Whilst MI5’s remit was supposedly related to issues of ‘national security’; for the police, the bar was far lower: it was merely the threat from public disorder, rather than revolution, which gave them the justification for intrusive surveillance. Their definition of disorder was broad enough to include pretty much any serious complaint against the state, or protest of any kind.

Staying with the example of Militant (later the Socialist Party), we know that from 1993 they were infiltrated by at least two undercover police officers – Peter Francis and Carlo Sorrachi who both engaged in sexual relations within women they spied upon.[22]   Sorrachi, as well as acting as an agent provocateur also engaged in three serious sexual relationships with women within his ‘target group’ – which have had serious repercussions for those women.[23] Their surveillance also extended to prominent trade union members, such as Steve Hedley of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT).[24]

As the 20^th Century drew to a close, the police created a new label to replace ‘subversive’ – ‘domestic extremist’. Domestic extremism was defined as “criminality and public disorder associated with cause-led groups”.[25] The fact that the justification also included “potential” rather than present threats made it a catch-all for political campaigners. Throughout the 20^th and 21^st century it seems then that the state has always found  justification to keep a watch on and undermine those who dare to criticise and  protest.

Notes

[1] The Threat of Subversion in Public Life. CAB 105/485 Available at: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C16747870

[2] The Threat of Subversion in Public Life. CAB 105/485 Available at: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C16747870

[3] Note: Other than the 2018 release of the 1984  of the SPL, no other details have been released via the Home Office or other government sources. Instead, we are reliant on the officially sanctioned history if MI5 by Christopher Andrew. In this volume he mentions that it first came into existence in 1972 (However, it appears to have a forerunner in the similar sounding Subversion at Home Committee (See: PREM 15/458). It was then reconvened in 1974, alongside the  Subversion at Home Committee. This reincarnation lasted until at least 1979. It then appears from Andrew’s book that the final (?) chapter in the committee’s history stretched from 1984 until at least 1992. See:  Christopher Andrew. The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5. pp.596-597, 658-659 and 780.

[4] In civil service lingo –“The Secretariat”.

[5] Christopher Andrew. The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5. pp.681. Penguin. 2010;True Spies Episode 2 Transcript. pp. 2. Available at: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2771570-Transcript-True-Spies-E2-Proofed-Transcript.html

[6]See Chapter 2 in  The Rise of Militant,by Peter Taaffe.

[7] ‘Facility Timers’ are those  who were allowed by their employers  spend time on trade union business.

[8] The Threat of Subversion in Public Life. CAB 105/485 Available at: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C16747870 p.176

[9] Ibid.

[10] Mr. Archy Kirkwood  See: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1984/oct/25/social-security-office-newcastle

[11] One heading which is the exception to this is the “Foreign Communist Groups” which I have had not come across before in a surveillance context. It seems likely that MI5 would have had responsibility for monitoring these groups, as they were the British branches of Turkish or other non-UK political parties.

[12] MI5 were exchanging information with the German Political Police, Abteilung 1A  – soon to be known as the Gestapo. See: Frances Stonor Saunders. Stuck on the Flypaper. London Review of Books. 7-9 April 2-15. Available at https://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n07/frances-stonorsaunders/stuck-on-the-flypaper

[13] John G. Hope Surveillance or Collusion? Maxwell Knight, MI5 and the British Fascisti. Intelligence and National Security Volume 9, 1994 – Issue 4https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02684529408432275

[14] While Knight was later to claim, and Christopher Andrew   [?] that joining the Fascists was purely to gain intelligence for the British State, it was in fact his Knight’s role as head of intelligence for the BF that landed him a job at MI5. Further, it is without doubt that he held extreme right-wing views, as well as having worked for The Economic League and the Industrial Intelligence Unit See: John Hope, ‘Surveillance or Collusion? Maxwell Knight and the British Fascisti’, Intelligence and National Security 9, 4 (1994), 651–75.John Hope, ‘British Fascism and the State 1917–27: A Re-examination of the Documentary Evidence’, Labour History Review 57, 3 (1992), 72–83. John Hope, ‘Fascism and the State in Britain: The Case of the British Fascisti 1923–31’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 39, 3 (1993), 367–80.

[15] MI5 were exchanging information with the German Political Police, Abteilung 1A  – soon to be known as the Gestapo. See: Frances Stonor Saunders. Stuck on the Flypaper. London Review of Books. 7-9 April 2-15. Available at https://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n07/frances-stonorsaunders/stuck-on-the-flypaper

[16] MI5 also were in involved in large-scale vetting scheme which excluded suspected communists from some occupations. See: Patricia Luff. Covert and Overt Operations: Interwar Political Policing in the United States and the United Kingdom. American Historical Review. June 2017. pp747-750

[17] Special Branch: fourth report from the Home Affairs Committee, Session 1984-85, together with proceedings of the Committee, the minutes of evidence and appendices. HMSO; Special Branch: A report by Merseyside County Solicitor and Secretary.1984; Political policing in Wales. John Davies. Welsh Council for Civil Liberties. 1984

[18] Ibid.

[19]  Special Branch: fourth report from the Home Affairs Committee, Session 1984-85, together with proceedings of the Committee, the minutes of evidence and appendices. HMSO

[20] Christopher Andrew. The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5. pp.780. Penguin. 2010.

[21]Office for National Statistics.  History of Strikes in the UK. 2015. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/thehistoryofstrikesintheuk/2015-09-21

[22] Peter Francis, Carlo Sorrachi and Mark Cassidy. See: Spycops Targets: A Who’s Who

[23] For instance, see: Police Spies Out of Lives. Andrea’s Story. Available at: https://policespiesoutoflives.org.uk/our-stories/andreas-story-new/

[24] Undercover Research Group. Carlo Neri (alias). Available at: http://powerbase.info/index.php/Carlo_Neri_(alias)

[25] Rob Evans, Paul Lewis and Matthew Taylor.  The Guardian. How police rebranded lawful protest as ‘domestic extremism’, 25 October 2009. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/25/police-surveillance-protest-domestic-extremism