Something rotten in the state of Britain

A plot by the state against a weak government of the day, unable to govern on its own, amidst a grave economic crisis. Sounds familiar? Well, this is not actually about “plebgate” and the Tories – though it could just as well be - but Harold Wilson and Labour.

Wilson was prime minister from 1964-70 and again from 1974 to his sudden and dramatic resignation in 1976. Later he would claim that the spy agency MI5 had wanted him out. And that army officers had been plotting a takeover.

Wilson was right on both counts.

In 1968, a period of mass upheavals in Britain and worldwide, senior army officers, together with press baron Lord Cecil King, Lord Mountbatten and intelligence agency figures, discussed staging a coup in to overthrow a Labour government thought to be in the pockets of the trade unions.

A global economic crisis followed America’s decision in 1971 to end the system of fixed currencies established at Bretton Woods after the Second World War. Inflation spiralled out of control. Oil prices tripled and miners took industrial action. Much of Britain was on a three-day week in 1973-4 as power supplies dwindled.

The plans for a coup were dusted down when Labour was returned to office in 1974 after miners’ industrial action had brought down the Tory government of Edward Heath. Heath asked voters to say “who rules Britain?”. A minority Labour government took office.

Out of the blue, a series of joint police/army exercises were held at Heathrow Airport. The first of these was held in January 1974, while Heath was still in power but the remaining three were held in June, July and September. They were labelled “anti-terror” operations.

The troops at Heathrow in 1974 were part of a dry run for a coup. Six years later, Field Marshall Lord Carver, during a Cambridge Union debate, admitted that “not very senior, but fairly senior, officers were ill advised enough to make suggestions that perhaps if things got terribly bad, the Army would have to do something about it."

The army and MI5 had already shown their contempt for Wilson’s government. MI5 had vetoed the appointment of a number of his colleagues to the cabinet on the grounds of "security", while in Northern Ireland the spy agencies and the army had seized control of events.

In May 1974, right-wing Protestant forces organised a strike to break the power-sharing agreement politicians had agreed. The army pointedly refused to carry out instructions from Wilson’s government to intervene to maintain electricity generation.

Former MI5 officer, Peter Wright, whose book Spycatcher was banned by the Thatcher government, wrote extensively about MI5’s plot to force Wilson out on the fantastic grounds that the prime minister was a Soviet agent!  

Weeks after Wilson’s shock departure, journalists Barrie Penrose and Roger Courtiour, interviewed him. "Wilson spoke darkly of two military coups which he said had been planned to overthrow his government in the late 1960s and in the mid 1970s," Penrose wrote in 2006.

"Both were said to involve high-ranking elements in the British army, eager to see the back of Labour governments.” Penrose concludes his Radio Times article:

"You may ask, at the end of the programme, how much of it can be believed. My view now, as it was then, is that Wilson was right in his fears.... in answer to the question 'how close did we come to a military government' I can only say - closer than we'd ever be content to think."

Fast forward to 2012 and we are bang in the middle of a plot by sections of the police to destabilise the Tory government, no doubt spurred on by cut-backs that have weakened pension and other conditions. The economy is on a knife-edge and the Coalition divided and weak.

There is something deeply rotten at the heart of the British state, as the plots against Wilson and fake “evidence” produced against former Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchell demonstrate. There can be no real democracy until we revolutionise the state from top to bottom. Until then, we can answer the question “Who rules Britain?” by saying for certain that it is not the people.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Met 'institutionally corrupt' says ex-spy

It’s a plum number: £260,000 a year salary, Thames-side flat, luxury car complete with chauffeur and a bullet-proof pension. And there’s a vacancy if you feel like applying.

The Metropolitan Police are currently seeking a new boss in the wake of hackgate which brought down its top two officers last month. Former Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson and counter-terrorism chief Assistant Commissioner John Yates resigned within the same 24 hours on July 18.

Both were seen as being compromised by their too-intimate relationship with News of the World deputy editor Neil Wallis. More and more evidence of the web of connections and cover-ups is still emerging.

Top contenders include Cressida Dick who replaced Yates as head of the anti-terrorism section. She remains best known for her role in the killing of Brazilian electrician Jean de Menezes as he travelled to work on the Underground. Dick was commander of the operation that resulted in de Menezes being executed as he sat reading his paper.

Joint favourites are Sir Hugh Orde, president of the unaccountable and secretive Association of Chief Police Officer and Deputy Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe. But as yesterday’s London Evening Standard notes, the position is actually a poisoned chalice. The Met is clearly in disarray and losing credibility by the day.

Yesterday it had to chastise its own colleagues in the City of Westminster’s “counter-terrorist focus desk” (whatever that may be when it’s at home). Under the auspices of Project Griffin, which is supposed to raise awareness of security issues, a police station in Belgravia last week asked citizens to inform on any anarchists they might spot, stating:

"Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local police”.

The appeal provoked accusations that this amounted to the criminalisation of anyone with an anarchist bent of mind. Some called on people to report suspect police officers to their local anarchist branch. Now the Met has had to soothe its critics, stating that it “does not seek to stigmatise those people with legitimate political views”.

Serious divisions within the Met and between Scotland Yard and the military also came to light yesterday. Met detectives have sat on documents showing that the News of the World had been snooping on an army intelligence officer’s emails for four years. Ex-army spy Ian Hurst complained that his computer was secretly hacked for three months after he wrote a book alleging that an IRA member was actually working as a double agent for British intelligence.

Hurst complained that he was shocked to find that these crimes were not investigated by the Met, “which, given everything else that happened reinforces my belief that that Met is institutionally corrupt”.

Apart from more revelations about its incestuous relationship with the media, there is another serious issue. When the London Olympic Games open in July 2012, the Met will face its biggest-ever challenge.

The current “ring of steel plan” involves an army of 27,000 police and security officials. Assistant police commissioner Chris Allison has announced that there will be 300 search and scanning entry points in the main Olympic stadium alone.

Not surprisingly, he anticipates that security threat levels will rise to “severe” before and during the games. The Olympics organising committee LOCOG will be installing thousands of CCTV cameras and hundreds of search arches, which will mean an average 20-minute wait for spectators.

The Olympics will be certainly be a target for those seeking everything from publicity to revenge. Recent history demonstrates only too clearly that existing have huge difficulties in preventing those who have no qualms targeting innocent civilians.

It is a misplaced hope to rely on the forces of the capitalist state to protect the population from possible acts of terror or protect human rights. A deconstructed and re-shaped democratic state is a realistic and positive approach to this issue.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Uncovering the “dark arts”

It has taken an American newspaper, The New York Times, to ferret out the corrupt relationship between Scotland Yard and the Murdoch-owned media empire.

You could be forgiven for not considering ex-deputy Prime Minister Lord John Prescott an object of sympathy when he grumbles about the News of the World’s hacking his phone back in 2006.

Or for seeing New York Times’ sordid story (now taken up by the British media) as just opposition New Labour politicians trying to pull one over on Cameron, who appointed ex-News of the World editor Coulson as his head of communications in May.

But the truth is that Murdoch’s journalists’ snooping is only the tip of a gigantic spider’s web. The New York Times’ detailed 6,100-word investigation provides an inside view of the connivance between the police and the News International media empire which should be required reading for all state-watchers.

Just like last-year’s MPs expenses scandal, this glimpse is thanks to the determined efforts of non-British news hounds. They have revealed “industrial scale” eavesdropping which according to MP Tom Watson says, goes “to the heart of the British establishment”.

Watson is a member of the Parliamentary committee appointed to investigate the phone hacking scandal. The committee, headed by Tory MP John Whittingdale, released its findings last February.

Whittingdale said he felt misled when News International executives testified that two of its employees, royals reporter Clive Goodman and phone-hacker Glenn Mulcaire, had acted alone when they listened in to Prince Harry’s voicemails.

Goodman and Mulcaire were arrested in August 2006 and convicted to several months in prison. They soon got compensation for their spell inside, however. News International paid Mulcaire £80,000 for wrongful dismissal and Goodman received an undisclosed amount.

The NYT’s investigation shows beyond a shadow of doubt that Scotland Yard’s inquiry “focussed almost exclusively on the royals case, which culminated with the imprisonment of Mulcaire and Goodman”. Several investigators said that “Scotland Yard was reluctant to conduct a wider inquiry in part because of its close relationship with the News of the World”.

Coulson, who became NoW editor in 2005, maintained that he had been unaware of illegal activities, “Nor do I have any recollection of incidences where phone hacking too place”, he claimed at new parliamentary hearings in July 2009.

The new hearings took place after Guardian journalists discovered that News of the World paid £1m to settle a lawsuit pursued by Football Association’s executive Gordon Taylor and two of his associates whose phones had been tapped. At this point, the Commons committee criticised Scotland Yard’s investigation and accused NoW executives of “deliberate obfuscation”.

In a further (and lucrative) twist, PR executive Max Clifford took on the News of the World in March this year, he extracted another cool £1m from Murdoch’s company in exchange for feeding the paper exclusive stories for several years. Clifford dropped his lawsuit against the paper after a lunch with its then editor, Rebakah Brooks.

The New York Times reporters say that “Scotland Yard only notified a small fraction of the hundreds of people whose messages may have been illegally accessed – effectively shielding the News of the World from a barrage of civil lawsuits”.

The anti-Murdoch media is performing a good service in exposing the shenanigans of the gutter press and the web of connections that work to strengthen the status quo. But the whole degrading spectacle is much more serious than it may appear. We have been told about the snooping on the “great and the good”, the Royals and the Lord Prescotts of this world.

But, by implication, equally illicit methods are used to obtain information – the dark arts – on anyone who seeks to change the status quo. We have been warned.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary