Phone-tapping
Phone-tapping of CND (Observer 9 December 1984; Daily Telegraph 10 December.) Telegraph piece includes claim that people phoning CND office have been connected to Ministry of Defence and local police stations.
Police Review (15 February 1985) quotes “a source inside British Telecom” on the question of warrants for taps:
‘When it is a police matter, we always see the warrant. When the tap is being made for the Security Services, we never see the warrant. We never know if there is one.’
David Stirling claims he was phone-tapped in 1975 while setting up his para-military organisation GB 75 (Daily Telegraph 27 February 1985)
Large, important piece on the tapping of internal and external communications, much of it in search of “economic intelligence”
Article claims:
- British Telecom can monitor thousands of calls per day
- overseas calls are sent to GCHQ which runs them through a ‘voice print’ library to identify the speaker. (New Scientist 28 February 1985)
Interesting background support to this in Andreas Whittam Smith in Telegraph (16 February 1985) who quotes on history of British tapping. Claims all Britain’s cable traffic goes through computers programmed to record sections triggered by key words; eg gold, OPEC etc.
Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in Northern Ireland excluded from new (minimal) rules on phone-tapping. (Irish News 16 December 1984)
In the wake of the Cathy Massiter revelations about MI5 operations a temporary flood of information on activities like phone-tapping appeared. Those who have been tapped, or claim to have been tapped include:
- ASLEF members in 1970s (Guardian 5 March 1985)
- Civil Servants at Atomic Weapons Research Establishment in 1960s (Guardian 2 March 1985)
- National Council for Civil Liberties (Guardian 30 March 1985)
- National Union of Mineworkers in Kent (Guardian 23 March 1985)
- Greenpeace (Guardian 23 March 1985)
- Clive Ponting and his lawyers (Times 14 March 1985)
- Caithness Nuclear Reprocessing Concern (in Scotland) (Guardian 10 June 1985)
- Duncan Campbell; Fire Brigades Union in 1970s; officials of Civil and Public Services Association; Derek Robinson (British Leyland shop steward); members of CPGB and Socialist Workers Party; Arthur Scargill (NUM); Syd Haraway (shop steward at Ford’s, Dagenham); John Cox of CPGB and CND; Ken Gill (TASS) – all in Massiter TV programme transcript, In Guardian,1 March 1985.
- Carol Brickley (City of London Anti-Apartheid Group); leaders of National Union of Public Employees and Society of Graphic and Allied Trades; Chris Mullin (ex editor of Tribune); – all in Leveller (Monochrome) April 1985
Political break-ins
- Friends of the Earth (Bristol) (Guardian 17 May 1985)
- Member of Clive Ponting law team (Times 14 March 1985)
- Leader of Labour group on Brent council (Guardian 19 January 1985)
- Cecil Woolf, publisher of books by Tam Dalyell among others (Guardian 21 February 1985)
- Member of Christian CND (Daily Telegraph 10 December 1984)
- Dora Russell (New Statesman 12 April 1985)
- Two members of National Front and pathologist Dr Jenny Martin (both in Leveller April 1985)
- National Union of Students (Guardian 27 June 1985)
MI5 agents exposed
- Harry Newton (Guardian 1 March ’85 – Massiter transcript); see also Guardian 4 March 1985.
- Alfred Avison, ex official of Transport and General Workers Union (Tribune 29 March 1985)
- Deputy Director of MI5 named as Owen Shipp (Observer 16 June 1985)
- Stanley Bonnet, ex editor of CND magazine Sanity. (Observer 3 March 1985)
Special Branch
- Monitoring anti-racist groups in Bradford (Observer 16 December 1985)
- SB asked University of Keele for names of ‘militant’ students in ’84. (Guardian 6 May 1985)
- Plan for SB to absorb anti-terror branch. (Daily Telegraph 4 March 1985 and Guardian 5 March)
- SB liaison with South African Embassy – providing information on anti-apartheid activities. (Leveller April 1985)
State use of private intelligence agencies
- Three firms identified so far: used for intelligence gathering, infiltration and ‘pseudo gang’ operations. (New Statesman 17 May 1985 and Observer 27 January 1985). Two directors of the Institute of Professional Investigators claim private firms carrying out illegal bugging and break-ins have access to Special Branch and Police National Computer records, and have attended Military Intelligence training sessions.(Observer 3 February 1985)
POLICING
and violence against demonstrations
- Stonehenge ‘convoy’; assault on students at Manchester University (Guardian 7 March 1985); at an anti-racist demonstration in London (New Statesman 3 May 1985); at miners’ support march in London (Policing London No 17). At Molesworth peace campaigners’ vehicles vandalised in a police compound (Guardian 25 March 1985); and cars in anti-Cruise blockade trashed by police (Guardian 29 March 1985)
and restrictions on movement
- Police erecting roadblocks around Molesworth – as far as 20 miles from the base (Guardian 14 February and 6 March 1985)
- Police prevented coaches of animal rights protesters from entering village (Tribune May 3 1985)
and restrictive bail conditions
- Magistrates in London setting miners-style bail conditions, prohibiting movement to certain areas. So far only used on black citizens. (New Statesman 17 May 1985)
and vehicle identity cards
- Police issuing ID cards to residents living around Molesworth. (Guardian 6 March 1985)
and political information gathering
- Police in London have set up city-wide political intelligence unit – Central Intelligence Unit – with 24 district intelligence officers to monitor grassroots political activities.(Observer 19 May 1985)
- Police raid on offices of animal rights group – files, membership lists seized. (Guardian 21 March 1985)
- National intelligence unit set up to collect information on animal rights groups (Sunday Telegraph 31 December 1984)
and computers
- Chris Pounder (now with GLC Data Protection Unit) writing on police use of computers in Computing 14 February 1985 points out that the Police National Computer was used by SB during miners’ strike by the simple device of including miners’ cars in the PNC category ‘vehicles seen in noteworthy circumstances’ .
- Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) now fitting computer terminals to some of their cars. An Phoblacht (14 February 1985) suggests that this “will enable the RUC to get instant information from a centralised computer.” (This capacity already apparently in existence in West Germany.)
- Home Office computer storing data on immigrants to Britain includes minute details on income, mortgage, welfare payments etc – and is easily accessed illegally. (Observer 24 February 1985)
- Members of 20 of England and Wales police forces being investigated re claims of illegal use of Police National Computer. (Sunday Telegraph 16 June 1985)
- The joint Kent/Humberside police computer – a probable prototype for other UK forces still without computers – is now known to have intelligence-gathering capacity – computer storage of ‘collator records’. (letter from Deputy Chief Constable Halliwell of Humberside to Hull branch of NCCL)
- Scotland Yard new computer – said to be for anti-terrorist work – with storage capacity of 500 million words (Daily Telegraph 13 May 1985)
and increasing central control
- Home Office has reinterpreted a section of ’64 Police Act to give it control over appointment of Chief Constables (Police Review 11 January 1985)
- Police authorities seeking to suspend Chief Constables or other senior officers will now need permission of new Police Complaints Authority, which is centrally appointed. (Daily Telegraph 30 April 1985)
- Home Secretary issued rules limiting number of local councillors who can sit on police-community liaison committees in London (Guardian 30 March 1985)
- When Metropolitan Counties are abolished in 1986, the joint boards which will replace the existing police authorities will be under central government for the first three years. (Guardian 12 January 1985)
and miscellaneous items
- Prosecution witness in London race trial admits being police informer (Guardian 13 January 1985)
- Allegations that Lothian and Borders Police fiddling their crime figures (Police Review 11 January 1985)
- Police acknowledge that rise in crime in one area of London probably due to ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ operating in neighbouring area. (Daily Telegraph 26 March 1985)
- Two similar pieces by Duncan Campbell on police use of car-tracking bugs. (New Statesman 21 June 1985 and New Scientist 27 June 1985)
Changes in Civil Service ‘purge procedures’
- Purge procedures are the rules governing who can be sacked/suspended from Civil Service for political activities. Old regulations allowed a Minister to suspend a member of a ‘fascist or communist organisation’. Under new rules a minister can suspend anyone who is or has been in a “subversive group acknowledged as such by the minister, whose aims are to undermine or overthrow parliamentary democracy in the UK … by political industrial or violent means.” New procedures extended beyond actual government employees to include those working for firms with government contracts. (Guardian 6 April 1985)
- The headline to this story in Red Tape, the journal of the Civil and Public Services Association (May 1985) was “Is the Prime Minister taking leave of her senses?”
- On this see the recent NCCL pamphlet, The Purging of the Civil Service (1985) which includes a copy of the government’s actual statement.