Lobster Article on British Prime Ministers and the Secret State

The Winter 2016 issue of Lobster also has a very disquieting review by John Newsinger of a book on the relationship between British Ministers and the intelligence services, The Black Door: Spies, Secret Intelligence and British Prime Ministers by Richard Aldrich and Rory Cormac. This discusses not only the way British prime ministers have co-operated with the secret services in the bugging and surveillance of the Left, and how they used the services in a series of foreign operations, including Iraq, but also how the same intelligence services also worked against them, including interventions by foreign espionage services in Britain. In doing so, several reputations are left tarnished and some convenient myths destroyed.

One of the keenest supporters of British intelligence against his domestic opponents was Harold Wilson. When he was in office in the 1960s, Wilson had had leftwing trade unionists put under surveillance, taps placed on their phones, and bugged. This included the participants in the 1966 strike by British merchant seamen. Others kept under very close watch included, naturally, the Communist party. He also encouraged other rightwing union leaders to cooperate with MI5. Those, who did so included Harry Crane, the head of the GMWU, who passed information onto Sarah Barker, the Labour Party’s national agent, who in turn passed it on to the spooks.

Wilson also continued the secret wars the Tories had begun in Yemen and Indonesia. The British, Saudis and Israeli secret services provided aid and assistance to rebels, who perpetrated the same kind of atrocities as ISIS. Unlike ISIS, they didn’t cause a scandal and international terror by posting them online. Newsinger notes that Aldrich and Cormac state that the extent of the British involvement in the 1965 massacre of the Left in Indonesia is a mystery. As this also involved the commission of atrocities, besides which those of ISIS seem pale by comparison, this is a very convenient mystery. It’s widely believed that Wilson kept Britain out of the Vietnam War, but this is not the case. Wilson actually wanted to send a token force, but was prevented from doing so because of the extent of British public opinion against the War and the opposition of the left wing within the Labour party itself. This did not prevent him from providing the Americans with intelligence support. This involved not only GCHQ, but also MI6, who provided reports on the effect of American bombing campaigns from the British embassy in Hanoi. The Americans were also allowed to operate their biggest CIA station in that part of Asia from Hong Kong. In addition to this, Wilson also wanted MI6 to assassinate Idi Amin, but they refused. Considering the carnage wrought by this monster, it’s a pity that they didn’t.

Wilson himself was the subject of various intelligence plots and smears against him, despite his collaboration with the intelligence services. This involved not only MI5, but also the South African intelligence service, BOSS. This got to the point where it was literally spies watching other spies, with BOSS spying on the anti-apartheid campaign, while themselves being spied on by MI5. BOSS were allowed to get away with their espionage, however, as it was claimed that they had a film of MPs taking part in an orgy and a dossier on a sex scandal that was far more shocking and compromising than Christine Keeler.

Ted Heath in the 1970s had Jack Jones, the leader of the TGWU put under surveillance. Joe Gormley, the head of the NUM, was also an informant for special branch throughout the decade. The usual practice at MI5 when a company requested assistance monitoring radical trade unionist was to pass the case on to the Economic League, a private outfit specialising in blacklisting trade unionists. But Ford also demanded that Special Branch vet their workforce, to which Heath agreed. This led to more firms demanding information on trade unionists, including Massey Ferguson. Not only was the British government under Heath actively compiling blacklists of trade unionists, Heath himself demanded that MI5 should have some of the militant activists ‘done’.

Under Thatcher the number of private intelligence agencies tackling her domestic enemies, like CND, increased. But Newsinger observes that the book does not cover at all the involvement of this agencies in the machinations against the NUM in the Miners’ Strike, and the establishment of the scab Union of Democratic Mineworkers. Newsinger comments

Perhaps the official material is not available, but not to have any discussion of the great miners’ strike at all is a serious shortcoming. The very absence of material, if this was indeed the case, is tremendously significant and deserved discussion. This was, after all, the decisive engagement that shifted the balance of class forces and made everything that has followed possible.

The book also covers Blair’s wars, which Newsinger does not cover in his review, finding the book’s revelations about Cameron’s own warmongering in Libya and Syria more interesting. MI6 and the Defence chiefs advised Cameron not to try to bring down Gaddafi. This didn’t stop him, and Cameron had the agency and SAS give the rebels training, arms and body armour. MI6 wanted the Libyan dictator sent into exile into Equatorial Guinea, where his own links to them would not be placed in any danger by him having to appear before an international human rights court. But this problem was, as Newsinger notes, solved by his death.

The book also reveals that a number of people within MI6 and the CIA did not believe that Assad’s regime in Syria was responsible for the Sarin attack in Ghoutta. They believed that the real perpetrators were the al-Nusra Front, backed by Turkey, which hoped to provoke the US into starting a bombing campaign. The US was ready with a fleet of aircraft, which Britain was also set to join, but the operation was cancelled due to the disagreements over responsibility for the atrocity within the US secret services.

The authors also report that Mossad has also been responsible for kidnappings and murders in London, but give no further information.

Newsinger concludes that ‘after reading this book we not only know more than we
did, but also how much more we need to know and unfortunately how much we are likely to never know….’

What is also clear from reading this is not only the extent of the involvement of British prime ministers in covert operations, against left-wingers and trade unionists in Britain and a series of foreign regimes abroad, but also the weakness of parliament in restraining them. British involvement in the bombing of Syria was stopped because of dissension within the American intelligence community, not because of opposition from parliament. As for Heath targeting British trade unionists for surveillance and possible assassination, Newsinger remarks on how this is ‘dynamite’, which should be investigated by the Commons Intelligence Select Committee. There is not the most remote chance of this happening, however, as the Commons Intelligence Select Committee is really
just a parliamentary spittoon into which the intelligence agencies occasionally feel obliged to gob.

Lobster’s entire raison d’etre is the belief that western, and particularly the British intelligence services are out of control and responsible for immense crimes that otherwise go undocumented and unpunished. Newsinger’s review of this book and its potentially explosive contents bear out this belief. It also hints by its omissions that there is more buried yet deeper, which may never be brought to light.

The article’s at: http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster72/lob72-black-door.pdf

Private Eye on the Blacklisting of Trade Unionists in the Construction Industry

I found this article in the 23rd August – 5th September 2013 issue of Private Eye.

Blacklisting
Blame Game

No honour among thieves in the construction industry. Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd (SRM) has decided that if it is to go down for illegally blacklisting trade unionists and other “troublesome” workers, it will take its competitors with it.

SRM is being sued in the high court by more than 100 workers who claim their lives and careers were blighted by being placed on a blacklist operated on behalf of the construction trade by the Consulting Association (Eyes passim). Last month the company decided to dish the dirt and name nine other major contractors, responsible for 34 companies, as co-defendants to the action. It alleges that two of the giants – Balfour Beatty and Skanska – adopted a particularly hardline approach when it came to refusing to employ people who found themselves on the Consulting Association list, often for simply raising safety issues.

SRM says that if it were to be found guilty of a conspiracy to put together a blacklist aimed at preventing people from earning a living-an allegation it denies – the others were, too. As well as Balfour Beatty and Skanska, it has added Amec, Bam, Carillion, Costains, Laing O’Rourke, Kier and Vinci Skanska to the legal action. With individual claims running from £10,000 up to around £300,000, it could see the workers win millions in damages between them, with others to follow if the case is successful.

SRM claims the named companies were all paid-up members of the Consulting Association, which was closed after it was raided by the Information Commissioner’s Office in 2009. The ICO) uncovered details of around 3,000 workers, many of whom, it is claimed, were effectively banned from using their skills.

The original action brought by the workers, all part of the Blacklist Support Group (BSG), targeted SRM because it was believed to have the worst record of blacklisting. SRM even paid legal and other costs for Ian Kerr, who ran the Consulting Association and was fined £5,000 for holding the illegal database.

SRM says that some of the other signed-up members of the Consulting Association, who paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for membership fees and “usage” charges, were “more inclined than the others” to refuse to give work to individuals on its books. “It appears that the Balfour Beatty companies were particularly ‘hard-nosed’ and took a particularly hard line in this regard compared to other members,” SRM alleges.

It says the evidence unearthed by the ICO suggests Balfour Beatty refused workers on it various sites around 187 times. It also handed information on workers to the Consulting Association on more than 300 occasions.

Of the Laing group, SRM alleges that the 85 times its companies provided information to the Consulting Association and the 87 times it refused work “are high compared to other members”. And it accuses Skanska of refusing to permit workers on its sites on approximately 103 of the 127 times it had made enquiries to the Consulting Association.

SRM denies the workers’ claims of conspiracy and breaches of the Data Protection Act, and is contesting the action. However, it says that should it fail, the other companies should pay a contribution to any damages and costs awarded to the workers in proportions to be decided by the court. Watch this space.

This has been going on for a very long time. One of my cousins was turned down for a job years ago, because his father was a Communist. This was also a major issue back in the 1990s, when Panorama or one of the other documentary programmes ran an edition on the Economic League. This was set up as another trade organisation to compile blacklists of trade unionists and other bolshie workers back in the 1920s, when it was founded as the Economic League against Industrial Subversion. Then it was succeeded by another blacklisting organisation, Hakluyt. Both organisations have appeared in Lobster at various times. They had links to the Tory party, and, I believe, British intelligence.

Republicans Attacked Unions as Terrorist Supporters after 9/11

This afternoon I put up a piece showing the continuity between Trump’s plans to exclude Muslims from the US and compel the registration of those already in the country with the round up of Arabs and other Middle Easterners as ‘suspicious persons’ under George Dubya after 9/11.

I’ve also been alarmed that Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic will move from interning Muslims and persecuting other minorities, such as Mexicans and Blacks in America, to incarcerating left wing and labour activists. In the 1970s at the head of the paranoia about Harold Wilson MI5 and MI6, along with elements in the Tory party, were planning a coup. They investigated the possibility of setting up an internment camp for 40 MPs, ‘not all Labour’, and a total of 5,000 others, including journalists, youth, minority and senior citizens’ activists, as well as trade unionist, and members of the Socialist Workers and Communist parties.

It seems that after 9/11, certain sections of the Republican party also wanted to do the same. John Kampfner in his book Freedom for Sale: How We Made Money and Lost Our Liberty describes how in 2003 the office of the House majority leader, Tom DeLeay, sent out a letter appealing for donations to supporters of the National Right to Work Foundation. This is an anti-union pressure group. The letter stated that organised labour ‘presents a clear-and-present danger to the security of the United States at home and the safety of our Armed Forces overseas’. It attacked ‘big labour bosses’ who were ‘willing to harm freedom-loving workers, the war effort, and the economy to acquire more power.’ (p. 244.)

Kampfner traced the DeLay’s office’s assault on the unions to the Red Squads that were set up by the police forces in major cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles in the 1920s to combat ‘subversives’. These included Communists, Anarchists, civil rights activists, feminist activists, trade unionists and just about anybody else they thought was a threat to good, Right-wing patriotic American values. (p. 243).

I blogged the other day about the Tories’ plans to build a special prison for radical Islamists following Mike’s article on this. Mike considered this approaching the Nazi concentration camps. I concur. It looks very much like the first steps towards creating internment camps. And it won’t just be Muslims that will eventually be interned. There are enough people on the British Right, who share the Republicans’ attitudes that trade unionists and organised Labour are a subversive threat.

Much has been written recently about the various employers’ groups, who compile black lists of trade unionists and other ‘disruptive’ workers and pass them on to firms so that those same workers don’t get jobs. There have been a number of excellent documentaries on them since the 1980s. One of them was Hakluyt, but there are others. Hakluyt was the successor of a much older organisation dating from the 1920s, the Economic League against Industry Subversion.

And several of the national papers have also demanded that striking workers should be jailed. I can remember reading a piece in the 1980s in the Sunday Express, which recommended that laws should be passed preventing workers in essential industries from going on strike. Those who did, like air traffic control personnel in America, should then be arrested and jailed.

Cameron has already passed a series of legislation designed to emasculate the trade unions. In the latest of these, he allowed employers to hire scab labour from agencies, though reducing the right to strike to being merely symbolic. This has been criticised by the International Labour Organisation in the UN. It also follows a long line of anti-union legislation passed by the Tories, and similar actions intended to break up strikes by the Italian Fascists and Nazis in Germany. And members of his own party attacked part of his anti-union legislation. This was the clause demanding that trade unionists on pickets should give their names to the police. Even David Davies, the right-winger’s right-wing, found that a step too far and called it ‘Francoist’.

Given the authoritarianism and intolerance of Cameron and his aristo cronies and the way they and their Lib Dem enablers pushed through the establishment of secret courts to try accused terrorists, I think it is all too possible that after the Republicans in America and Tories over here have finished rounding up the Muslims, they’ll start on trade unionists and organised labour. All while loudly claiming that they stand for freedom, transparency and democracy, of course.