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| − | The Clandestine Caucus
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| − | Part 1
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| − |
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| − | ==Clearing the ground: the unions, socialism and the state==
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| − |
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| − | A surprising number of Labour Party members believe
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| − | that it was once a socialist party, began as a
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| − | socialist party, and was then seduced from the golden
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| − | pathway. This engenders the language of betrayal and
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| − | sell-out which is so familiar and depressing a part of
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| − | life in the Labour Party and on the British Left in
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| − | general.(1) But the view of the Labour Party as
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| − | originally socialist is just wrong. The history of
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| − | Britain's union and labour movement is one of
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| − | continuous conflict between socialist and
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| − | anti-socialist wings; and within that conflict the bit
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| − | of the story that is usually not told is that
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| − | describing the relationship between the anti-socialist
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| − | section of the labour movement and British and US
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| − | capital and their states.
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| − |
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| − | The conflict between the anti- and pro-socialist wings
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| − | of the labour movement sharpened markedly after the
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| − | 1918 Bolshevik revolution and the subsequent formation
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| − | of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Although we
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| − | have surprisingly little information on the turbulent
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| − | years between 1918 and 1926, and, in particular, on
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| − | the British Right's preparation to meet the Bolshevik
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| − | 'threat',(2) we know that much of the early effort was
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| − | put into groups aimed at the exploitation of so-called
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| − | 'patriotic labour', such as the British Workers
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| − | League.(3)
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| − |
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| − | World War 1 produced the modern British state - the
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| − | Cabinet Office etc. - and mobilisation: things were
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| − | run from the centre and new relationships were formed.
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| − |
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| − | :'By the end of 1919, a new form of political activity
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| − | was growing up, as yet only half understood, but
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| − | radically different from the pre-war system ..... but
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| − | there now existed formal, powerful, employers'
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| − | institutions, a fully fledged Ministry of Labour, and
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| − | a TUC [Trades Union Congress] increasingly accustomed
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| − | to dealing in the political arena, wedded to a major
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| − | political party which, almost alone in Europe,
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| − | encompassed the majority of the non-Conservative
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| − | working class. At the same time, the government's
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| − | apparatus for manipulating public opinion had grown
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| − | inordinately, enabling it - on its own estimate - to
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| − | confront the spectre of Bolshevism and survive. Lloyd
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| − | George himself, searching always for a middle way in
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| − | politics, had shifted away from Liberal radicalism
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| − | towards a corporatism best described as the creation
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| − | in Parliamentary politics of a staatspartei, composed
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| − | of Liberals and mainstream Conservatives (leaving a
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| − | fringe right wing and a much larger, but powerless
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| − | Labour Left); complemented in industrial politics by a
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| − | triangular collaboration in which employers'
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| − | organisations and TUC should make them-selves
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| − | representative of their members and in return receive
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| − | recognition as estates by government.'(4)
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| − |
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| − | The [[British Commonwealth Union]], the FBI ([[Federation of
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| − | British Industry]], precursor of today's CBI) and the
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| − | other predominantly Midlands manufacturing group, the
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| − | [[National Union of Manufacturers]], were set up during
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| − | the first World War and they mark the origins of the
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| − | British corporate movement.(5) One of the leading
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| − | figures of the group, Sir [[Dudley Docker]], envisaged
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| − |
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| − | :'a completely integrated society and economy in which
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| − | industry would have its organisation of workers and
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| − | management, the two sets of organisations united by
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| − | peak federations and all finally capped by a great
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| − | national forum of workers and managers and employers,
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| − | embraced by the protection of an Imperial Tariff.'(6)
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| − |
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| − | Another of the corporatist groups financed by Midlands
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| − | industrialists, the [[British Commonwealth Union]] (BCU),
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| − | led by the Birmingham MP, Sir [[Patrick Hannon]], began
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| − | funding MPs to form an Industrial Group in Parliament.
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| − | The first 11 candidates were subsidised by the BCU in
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| − | the 1918 election: by 1924 the group in parliament
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| − | consisted of 105 (mostly Tory) members. Hannon's
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| − | Industrial Group chiefly wanted government protection
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| − | of British industry against foreign competition, but,
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| − | to quote Hannon, they also 'wanted the largest measure
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| − | of freedom in the relationship between capital and
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| − | labour and the least state intervention possible.'(7)
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| − |
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| − | These early corporatist dreams failed for a number of
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| − | reasons. Employer organisations were none too happy at
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| − | the idea of the trade unions as some kind of
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| − | partners.(8) And vice versa. Too much was being
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| − | expected; it was too big a change, happening too
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| − | quickly. In any case, the corporatists among the
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| − | members of the [[Federation of British Industries]] (FBI)
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| − | were a minority strand in the thinking of the Tory
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| − | Party and British industrial capital; and even among
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| − | the corporatists there were divisions.(9)
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| − |
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| − | Frank Longstreth called this network of BCU,
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| − | Industrial Group, FBI and other employer propaganda
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| − | groups of the period, such as the [[Economic League]], the
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| − | Preference Imperialists, and noted their links to the
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| − | earlier Midlands manufacturing-based Tariff Reform
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| − | League.(10)As Longstreth suggested, it is possible to
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| − | view the British economy since 1900 as a protracted
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| − | struggle between British manufacturing (domestic
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| − | capital) and the City of London (international finance
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| − | capital), with the City in control for most of the
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| − | century.(11) [[Oswald Mosley]]'s movement in the 1930s was
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| − |
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| − | :'in effect, the perverted continuation of the social
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| − | imperialism of an earlier generation of
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| − | industrialists, supporting imperial autarchy, social
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| − | reform, conversion from a bankers' to a producers'
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| − | economy, protectionism, public control of credit, and
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| − | the suppression of the class struggle through the
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| − | state'.(12)
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| − |
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| − | Although the great schemes of corporatism failed, the
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| − | cooperation between the state and the trade unions
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| − | which began during the First World War, continued
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| − | after the General Strike and was deepened by the first
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| − | two Labour governments.(13) Peter Weiler quotes Ernest
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| − | Bevin's view in the 1930s that that the TUC had
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| − | 'virtually become an integral part of the State, its
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| − | views and voice upon every subject, international and
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| − | domestic, heard and heeded.'(14) This statement of
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| − | Bevin's is an exaggeration: no doubt the TUC's views
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| − | were heard; but heeded?
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| − |
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| − | The powers-that-be set about educating and socialising
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| − | these new leaders. In 1938, for example, one of the
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| − | most important of the trade union leaders, Ernest
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| − | Bevin, with his wife, was taken off on a tour of the
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| − | empire, at the behest of the Royal Institute of
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| − | International Affairs.(15) Trade union leaders they
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| − | might be, seeking justice and a better deal for the
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| − | British worker, but they remained patriots and
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| − | imperialists for the most part, and not socialists.
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| − | The gentlemen (mostly men) of the TUC did not dream -
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| − | publicly or secretly - of taking over British
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| − | capitalism, or of destroying the British empire. The
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| − | institutional links with the British state begun
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| − | before World War 2 were solidified enormously by the
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| − | war. The trade unions were in the national coalition
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| − | government, and some of their leaders were Ministers
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| − | of the Crown - very important people.
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| − |
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| − |
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| − | After the war
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| − | In the immediate post-war period the TUC was dominated
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| − | by what Lewis Minkin called a 'praetorian guard'
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| − | against the left; Arthur Deakin of the Transport
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| − | Workers, Will Lawther of the Mineworkers and Tom
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| − | Williamson of the General and Municipal. Minkin
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| − | describes in detail how this trio ran the what he
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| − | calls 'an unprecedented period of "platform" dominance
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| − | at Party conference';(16) but noted that this alliance
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| − | was defensive in nature and saw a communist conspiracy
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| − | behind all criticism.
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| − |
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| − | The political beliefs of the leaders of trade unions
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| − | in this period was mixed. Some were supporters of
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| − | Moral Rearmament (MRA). At the 1947 MRA World Assembly
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| − | at Caux-sur-Martreux in France, delegates from Britain
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| − | included E.G. Gooch MP, President of the Agricultural
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| − | Workers. An MRA press release on October 15, 1947
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| − | noted that signatories to a message of support for the
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| − | Caux assembly included trade union leaders Andrew
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| − | Naesmith, (General Secretary of the Amalgamated
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| − | Weavers' Association), G. H. Bagnall (TUC General
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| − | Council representative; former General Secretary of
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| − | the National Union of Dyers, Bleachers and Textile
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| − | Workers), George Chester (General Secretary of the
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| − | National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives), W. B.
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| − | Beard and J. W. Stephenson (Chair of Building Trade
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| − | Operatives).Some trade union leaders supported
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| − | campaigns by avowedly anti-socialist groups such as
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| − | Aims of Industry and the Economic League. In 1952 the
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| − | New Statesman reported that recent Aims of Industry
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| − | literature had included essays by - or under the name
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| − | of, perhaps - Florence Hancock of the TUC General
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| − | Council and Bob Edwards, the General Secretary of the
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| − | Chemical Workers' Union, who was later to be found on
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| − | the Advisory Council of the anti-communist
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| − | organisation, Common Cause.(17)
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| − |
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| − |
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| − | The Trades Union Congress and the state
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| − | Bevin's 'integration' into the British state meant a
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| − | role for the TUC in the overseas state, the empire, as
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| − | well as in Britain itself; and before and during the
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| − | war the TUC began working with the Foreign and
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| − | Colonial offices - a relationship about which few
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| − | trade unionists knew - or know - anything at all.(18)
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| − | As one of the Colonial Office officials quoted by
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| − | Weiler said, with the clarity of simpler times, the
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| − | TUC could be relied upon to guide young trade unions
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| − | in the empire into becoming
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| − |
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| − |
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| − | 'trades unions which the employers in the colony would
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| − | feel they could respect and trust and which could be
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| − | relied upon loyally to keep an agreement.'(19)
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| − |
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| − | In 1948, a member of the US State Department, Third
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| − | Secretary at the London Embassy, Herbert E. Weiner,
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| − | reported from London on 'Attitude of Trades Union
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| − | Congress Towards World Federation of Trade Unions and
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| − | American International Trade Union Leaders', and
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| − | wrote:
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| − |
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| − |
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| − | 'When asked how the Trades Union Congress hoped to
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| − | prevent the Communists from using the technique of
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| − | bona fide forms of trade union action in order to
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| − | infiltrate unions in Germany and in "undeveloped"
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| − | (colonial) areas, my informant said ........:in areas
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| − | where trade unionism is undeveloped e.g. colonial
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| − | areas, the Trades Union Congress through the British
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| − | Labour Attaches keeps in close touch with Communist
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| − | union activities'.(20)
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| − |
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| − |
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| − | In the 1970s the TUC seconded two of its international
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| − | staff to the Foreign Office. This caused a minor
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| − | furore when it was brought to the attention of the TUC
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| − | members.(21) Alan Hargreaves, TUC International
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| − | Secretary in the 1970s, came to the TUC from the
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| − | Foreign Office and refused to discuss his Foreign
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| − | Office work.(22)
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| − |
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| − | Attacked by the socialists - and communists - on the
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| − | left at home, and working against the left abroad with
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| − | the Colonial and Foreign Offices, little wonder that
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| − | the TUC slipped so comfortably into the Cold War role
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| − | allotted to it.
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| − |
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| − |
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| − | Notes
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| − | Please note: details of the books and articles cited
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| − | in these footnotes are in the bibliography at the end
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| − | of the essay, indexed by author's surname.
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| − |
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| − |
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| − | 1. There is wide-spread confusion about whether or not
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| − | to capitalise the 'L' in left or the 'R' in right. I
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| − | will try to stick to this rule: capital letters only
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| − | when proper nouns; thus British Left and the left.
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| − | 2. Or am I being naive to be surprised that the one
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| − | period in British twentieth history when there may
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| − | have been something like a pre-revolutionary climate
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| − | seems under researched? Stephen White, in 1975,
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| − | offered a glimpse
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| − | of a dense hinterland of largely short-lived parties
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| − | and groups forming on the right in Britain in this
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| − | period. Stephen White, 'Ideological Hegemony and
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| − | Political Control: the sociology of anti-Bolshevism
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| − | 1918-1920' in Scottish Labour History Society Journal,
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| − | No. 98, June 1975. See also Webber 1987, and John
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| − | Hope's 'Fascism, the Security Service and the Curious
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| − | Career of Maxwell Knight and James McGuirk Hughes' in
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| − | Lobster 22.
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| − | 3. See, for example. 'In The Excess of Their
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| − | Patriotism: the National Party and Threats of
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| − | Subversion' by Chris Wrigley in Wrigley (ed.). Of the
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| − | groups which appeared in this period only the Economic
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| − | League survived into Mrs Thatcher's era.
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| − | 4. Middlemas p. 151.
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| − | 5. This mirrored what was happening elsewhere in
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| − | Europe, notably Germany and Italy. See, for example,
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| − | Scott Newton's 'The economic background to appeasement
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| − | and the search for Anglo-German detente before and
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| − | during World War 2', in Lobster 20.
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| − | 6. Blank p. 14
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| − | 7. Farr, thesis, p. 179. See also Wrigley, 'In The
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| − | Excess' pp. 108 and 9, and 'Sir Allan Smith, the
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| − | Industrial Group and the Politics of Unemployment
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| − | 1919-24' by Terence Rodgers, in Davenport-Hines (ed.).
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| − | 8. Ibid. pp. 222-5
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| − | 9. Patrick Hannon's abortive attempt to create an
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| − | Industrial Group of MPs and union leaders using the
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| − | British Commonwealth Union is in Barbara Lee Farr's
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| − | thesis. Her information came from the Hannon papers in
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| − | the House of Lords. I was alerted to this remarkable
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| − | piece of work by John Hope.
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| − |
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| − | Rodgers, in note 7, does not cite Farr's work and
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| − | gives slightly different figures for the size of the
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| − | Industrial Group of MP's, while quoting the same
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| − | source, namely the Hannon papers. See his footnotes 13
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| − | and 16. Hannon's obituary appeared in The Times, 11
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| − | January 1963.
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| − | 10. Frank Longstreth, 'The City, Industry and the
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| − | State' in Crouch (ed.).
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| − | 11. See, for example, Newton and Porter.
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| − | 12. Longstreth, ibid. p. 171.
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| − | 13. This is a major theme of the Alan Bulloch
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| − | biography of Ernest Bevin, for example.
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| − | 14. Weiler p. 19
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| − | 15. I discussed this in Lobster 28, p. 11.
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| − | 16. Minkin, Contentious Alliance, p. 83
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| − | 17. New Statesman, 12 January 1952. See also H.H.
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| − | Wilson, 'Techniques of Pressure - Anti-Nationalisation
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| − | Propaganda' in Public Opinion Quarterly, Summer 1951.
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| − | Edwards' obituary in The Independent, 25 June 1990
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| − | noted that he had been a member of the ILP and was an
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| − | enemy of the Communist Party. His was thus an
| |
| − | improbable name on the list of labour movement figures
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| − | who had allegedly helped the KGB supplied by former
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| − | KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky. See Gordievsky pp. 286
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| − | and 7.
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| − | 18. 'At least since the foundation of the
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| − | International Affairs Department, TUC staff have kept
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| − | close contact with the Foreign Office, a practice
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| − | which persists to the present day.' Harrod p. 105. The
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| − | study by Marjorie Nicholson of this subject does not
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| − | mention the International Affairs Department, though
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| − | as Anthony Carew pointed out, this may tell us nothing
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| − | as she worked in the Colonial/Commonwealth Department.
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| − | For a more critical view see Peter Weiler, chapter 1.
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| − | 19. Ibid. p. 29
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| − | 20. My thanks to John Booth for this document. On the
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| − | origins of this see Majorie Nicholson, chapter 6,
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| − | especially pp. 209-11, and Weiler chapter 1.
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| − | 21. See Thompson and Larson pp. 27-8, and New
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| − | Statesman, 16 November, 1979, 'FO reinforces TUC
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| − | links', for two examples. I do not know if this
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| − | practice pre-dates the 1970s.
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| − | 22. See the New Statesman, 20 April 1979 for the TUC's
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| − | response, and 'TUC's foreign policy' by Patrick
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| − | Wintour, New Statesman, 2 March 1979.
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| − |
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| − |
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| − |
| |
| − | ----------------------------------------------------------------
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| − |
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| − |
| |
| − |
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| − | U.S. influence after the war
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| − | I do not want to re-run the long debate about the
| |
| − | origins of the Cold War or - in particular - the
| |
| − | causes of the break-up of the World Federation of
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| − | Trade Unions (WFTU) in 1949, except to say that it is
| |
| − | pretty clear now, with this much hindsight, that by
| |
| − | then the British trade union leaders were determined
| |
| − | to break the WFTU - whatever the Soviet bloc had done
| |
| − | - and this would have been pushed through, supported
| |
| − | by the Americans.(23) As Dennis MacShane MP
| |
| − | demonstrates in his book,(24) the European social
| |
| − | democratic trade union movement was not going to
| |
| − | coexist with the Soviet bloc, either. If the USA
| |
| − | leaned on the door, as Peter Weiler and what might
| |
| − | loosely be called 'the left' believe, it was half open
| |
| − | already - and was never going to shut again. Into this
| |
| − | domestic anti-communist climate came the USA's loans -
| |
| − | and the people and ideas, the strings attached to the
| |
| − | money.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | From the first request from Churchill for clandestine
| |
| − | assistance before America had officially entered the
| |
| − | war, the US 'aid' had come with strings attached.
| |
| − | Despite his famous remark that he had not taken office
| |
| − | to oversee the destruction of His Majesty's empire,
| |
| − | Churchill had actually done precisely that to pay for
| |
| − | the war: and the process continued after it. It was
| |
| − | left to some of the Tory Right and some of the Labour
| |
| − | Left - the same groups that are still sceptical of the
| |
| − | European Union - to oppose the acceptance of the
| |
| − | conditions attached to the post-war US loans.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The Council on Foreign Relations
| |
| − | Planning for the US takeover of the countries of
| |
| − | non-communist Europe was done, during the war, in the
| |
| − | Council on Foreign Relations, the informal,
| |
| − | semi-secret, think tank-cum-social club of the East
| |
| − | Coast elite - the bankers, the lawyers and managers of
| |
| − | US international capital.(25) But when the war ended
| |
| − | the details had not been worked out, and there was
| |
| − | significant domestic opposition to be taken into
| |
| − | consideration. The result was that in the chaos of the
| |
| − | post-war years the American 'interventionists', as
| |
| − | Pisani calls them, had to improvise.(26) The
| |
| − | 'coordination of public and private efforts was
| |
| − | achieved by using the Council on Foreign Relations
| |
| − | (CFR) as a clearing house for projects'.(27) It was
| |
| − | CFR personnel, for example, who raised money to
| |
| − | intervene in the Italian elections of 1947.(28) And in
| |
| − | the immediate post-war years the political
| |
| − | interventionist picture is complicated: there was
| |
| − | nothing like the clear-cut overt/covert dichotomy
| |
| − | which we think characterised US foreign policy when
| |
| − | things settled down into the State Department/ CIA mix
| |
| − | perceived after the sixties.(29)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The Economic Cooperation Agency
| |
| − | At the most overt level, there was the Economic
| |
| − | Cooperation Agency (ECA) which doled out the dollars
| |
| − | in support of what is known as multilateral trade:
| |
| − | that is, the ECA sought to break down barriers against
| |
| − | American goods. A former acting head of the ECA said
| |
| − | that:
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'In everything we did we sought to change or to
| |
| − | strengthen opinions - opinions about how to build free
| |
| − | world strength, about America's role, cooperative
| |
| − | effort by Europeans, investment, productivity, fiscal
| |
| − | stability, trade measurement, industrial competition,
| |
| − | free labour unions etc.'(30)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | But ECA also had what we would call a covert arm and
| |
| − | ran psychological warfare operations.(31) In France,
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'The ECA mission chief wore two hats. He was the
| |
| − | conduit for economic assistance and defense
| |
| − | mobilisation, as well as for psychological and
| |
| − | economic warfare components provided by the Office of
| |
| − | Policy Coordination (OPC).'(32)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | As part of that psychological warfare programme, for
| |
| − | example, the ECA persuaded the British TUC to produce
| |
| − | - a least put its name to - a report on productivity
| |
| − | subsequently used all over Europe. 'The ECA mission in
| |
| − | London distributed a large number of copies abroad,
| |
| − | urged its translation into foreign languages and
| |
| − | prepared numerous press releases and feature articles
| |
| − | for planting in the British and foreign press.' The US
| |
| − | London Embassy's Labour Information Officer William
| |
| − | Gausmann reported that 'from a trade union point of
| |
| − | view, this is the most valuable document that has been
| |
| − | produced under ECA auspices to date.'(33)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC)
| |
| − | The OPC, the first of the euphemistic cover names of
| |
| − | US covert action agencies in the post-war era, was
| |
| − | formed in 1948, staffed and run by the newly created
| |
| − | CIA but nominally under the control of the State
| |
| − | Department. In effect the CIA's covert arm, by 1952
| |
| − | the OPC had forty-seven stations, 2,812 staff and a
| |
| − | budget of $84 million.(34) Much of this growth had
| |
| − | been funded by money from the Marshall Plan.(35) What
| |
| − | we now think of as the CIA, that is the covert
| |
| − | operation, intervention arm of US multi-national
| |
| − | capital - the post-war bogey man supreme for the left
| |
| − | - began as the enforcement arm of the Marshall Plan,
| |
| − | engaged in operations against the left and the trade
| |
| − | unions of Europe, communist or non-communist. The OPC
| |
| − | was the US administration's recognition that the ECA
| |
| − | alone couldn't 'get the job done'.(36)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Labour Attaches
| |
| − | Another weapon in the post-war US armoury was the
| |
| − | Labour Attache programme which was established towards
| |
| − | the end of the war. In the words of one its creators,
| |
| − | Philip Kaiser, 'the labor attache is expected to
| |
| − | develop contacts with key leaders in the trade union
| |
| − | movement, and to influence their thinking and
| |
| − | decisions in directions compatible with American
| |
| − | goals....' (Emphasis added)(37) The first Labour
| |
| − | Attache in London was Sam Berger, who, in the words of
| |
| − | Denis Healey,
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'By developing good personal relations with many key
| |
| − | figures in the British Labour movement at the end of
| |
| − | the war, including Sam Watson and Hugh Gaitskell,
| |
| − | exerted an enduring influence on British foreign
| |
| − | policy.'(38)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Philip Kaiser commented that Berger
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'had extraordinary access to many members of the
| |
| − | [Attlee] cabinet, including the prime minister. It was
| |
| − | universally recognised that he was the key member of
| |
| − | our embassy.'(39)(emphasis added)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | There were also 'Labour Information Officers' attached
| |
| − | to the Marshall Plan staff in the US Embassy in
| |
| − | London. One such, William Gausman,
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'in May 1950 began discussions with a section of the
| |
| − | leadership of the Clerical and Allied Workers Union on
| |
| − | how to eliminate communists from the union.....
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'cultivated the leadership of the Birmingham Labour
| |
| − | Party, whose journal, The Town Crier, closely
| |
| − | supported Atlanticism and American foreign policy
| |
| − | objectives in general.....
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'convened a group in South Wales....to launch a
| |
| − | Labour-oriented newspaper, The Democrat....
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'worked unofficially on Socialist Commentary"'
| |
| − | .....and became a founder member of its offshoot, the
| |
| − | Socialist Union, 'which served as a think tank for the
| |
| − | emerging Gaitskellite wing of the Labour Party.....
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'liaised, advised, wrote, lectured, published - and
| |
| − | helped IRD [the Information Research Department] with
| |
| − | the distribution of one of their early publications,
| |
| − | The Curtain Falls.'(40)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The US post-war penetration of the British Labour
| |
| − | Party and wider trade union movement climaxes with Joe
| |
| − | Godson, who was Labour Attache in London from 1953-59.
| |
| − | Godson became very close to the Labour Party leader
| |
| − | Hugh Gaitskell - to the point where Gaitskell and
| |
| − | Godson were writing Labour Party policies and planning
| |
| − | campaigns against their enemy, Aneuran Bevan. For
| |
| − | example, after a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour
| |
| − | Party to discuss the expulsion of Bevan, Gaitskell
| |
| − | recorded how he 'drove to the Russell Hotel, where I
| |
| − | saw Sam Watson with Joe Godson, the Labour Attache at
| |
| − | the American Embassy.'(41)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The leader of the Labour Party is discussing Executive
| |
| − | Committee tactics with the US Labour Attache! This is
| |
| − | one of the dividing lines of this essay. You either
| |
| − | think is this unexceptional, uninteresting - even a
| |
| − | good thing - or you do not. I do not. I think it is
| |
| − | rather shocking; and I think that would have been the
| |
| − | reaction of most of the Executive Committee at the
| |
| − | time had they been made aware of it. In a footnote on
| |
| − | p. 384 of the Gaitskell Diaries, editor Philip
| |
| − | Williams writes,
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'Godson, Sam Watson's close friend....thanks to his
| |
| − | trade union post was, like many labour attaches, seen
| |
| − | as representing his country's workers rather than its
| |
| − | government. But Gaitskell came in time to feel that he
| |
| − | was involving himself too deeply in Labour Party
| |
| − | affairs.'(42)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | It may even be more complex than this for there is
| |
| − | evidence that the Labour Attache posts have been used
| |
| − | as cover by the CIA. Jonathan Kwitney of the Wall
| |
| − | Street Journal tracked down one Paul Sakwa, who told
| |
| − | him that he had been the case officer for Irving
| |
| − | Brown, the most important CIA agent in the labour
| |
| − | movement in Europe, handling Brown's budget of between
| |
| − | $150,000 and $300,000 a year, between 1952 and 1954.
| |
| − | From being Brown's case officer in Washington, Sakwa
| |
| − | went on to a post under cover as the Assistant Labour
| |
| − | Attache at the US embassy in Brussels.(43)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | It was about the CIA - but not just them. The CIA was
| |
| − | only one of many agencies working in Britain in the
| |
| − | post-war years. Labour Attaches reported, formally
| |
| − | anyway, to the State Department. In the end, would it
| |
| − | make any difference to know that Joe Godson had really
| |
| − | been a genuine employee of the State Department, and
| |
| − | not CIA under cover as we might have once suspected?
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Notes
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 23. This thesis has been most convincingly articulated
| |
| − | by Peter Weiler.
| |
| − | 24. International Labour and the Origins of the Cold
| |
| − | War, Clarendon, Oxford, 1992
| |
| − | 25. See Shoup and Minter.
| |
| − | 26. I guess 'interventionist' is less offensive to the
| |
| − | American academic ear than imperialist. 'The
| |
| − | determination to intervene in Europe between 1945 and
| |
| − | 1948 was fragmented, uncoordinated.' Pisani pp. 40 and
| |
| − | 41.
| |
| − | 27. Ibid. p 4.
| |
| − | 28. 'James Forrestal raised private money for the
| |
| − | Italian elections of 1947. His initiative 'signalled
| |
| − | an end to the notion that redemocratizing European
| |
| − | countries could be accomplished simply by regenerating
| |
| − | their economies'. Ibid. p. 67.
| |
| − | 29. I put it as 'think' because the reality was never
| |
| − | that neat and tidy
| |
| − | 30. Cited in Carew p. 84
| |
| − | 31. Pisani p. 91
| |
| − | 32. Ibid. p. 96. ECA 'does engage in some gray and
| |
| − | black propaganda' but 'the programmes represent a very
| |
| − | small percentage of the total effort and are
| |
| − | coordinated with the CIA' Ibid . p. 12
| |
| − | 33. Carew p. 153
| |
| − | 34. Ranelagh p. 135
| |
| − | 35. 'From its creation in 1948 until 1952 when the
| |
| − | Marshall Plan was terminated, the OPC operated as the
| |
| − | plan's complement.' Pisani p. 70.
| |
| − | 36. Ibid. p. 67
| |
| − | 37. Kaiser p. 113 'The labor attache...had...an
| |
| − | unusual opportunity to enhance American influence
| |
| − | among individuals and institutions that historically
| |
| − | have no contact with U.S. diplomatic missions'. Ibid.
| |
| − | p. 119
| |
| − | 38. Denis Healey p. 113. Berger has two innocuous
| |
| − | entries in the Gaitskell Diaries, and the footnote
| |
| − | from the editor, Philip Williams, on p. 120 that he
| |
| − | was 'first secretary at the U.S. Embassy'.
| |
| − | 39. Kaiser p.120
| |
| − | 40. Carew pp. 128 and 9
| |
| − | 41. Godson obituary in The Times, 6 September 1986.
| |
| − | See Gaitskell Diary ed. Philip Williams, pp. 339-41.
| |
| − | Carew p. 129 notes that there was some conflict
| |
| − | between Gausmann and Joseph Godson, apparently
| |
| − | reflecting divisions within the US labour movement. He
| |
| − | discusses these differences on pp. 84-5.
| |
| − | 42. Godson's son, Roy, who appears on the same trade
| |
| − | union/spook circuit in the 1970s, married Sam Watson's
| |
| − | daughter. Watson was one of the most important trade
| |
| − | union leaders in the post-war period, chairman of the
| |
| − | National Executive Committee's International Committee
| |
| − | and a 'liaison officer' between the Parliamentary
| |
| − | Labour Party and the major unions.
| |
| − | 43. Kwitney pp. 334-5
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ----------------------------------------------------------------
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Post-war: private sector propaganda begins to regroup
| |
| − | As the war ended domestic politics returned to normal.
| |
| − | The propaganda organisations of domestic capital
| |
| − | restarted, though without the frenzy which had marked
| |
| − | the post 1918 period. Their big issue was the threat
| |
| − | of nationalisation of companies. The so-called Mr Cube
| |
| − | Campaign of 1949/50, against the possibility of the
| |
| − | nationalisation of the sugar industry, spent an
| |
| − |
| |
| − | been jointly organised by the sugar company, Tate and
| |
| − | Lyle, and Aims of Industry, an anti-socialist pressure
| |
| − | group formed in 1942 by a group of well known British
| |
| − | industrialists. The Aims original Council had
| |
| − | representatives from Fords, English Electric, Austin,
| |
| − | Rank, British Aircraft, Macdougall's and Firestone
| |
| − | Tyres.(45) There were also smaller campaigns by the
| |
| − | Cement Makers Federation, the Iron and Steel
| |
| − | Federation and by the insurance companies represented
| |
| − | by the British Insurance Association.(46) The Road
| |
| − | Haulage Association sponsored anti-nationalisation
| |
| − | campaigns by the British Housewives' League, led by
| |
| − | Dorothy Crisp.(47)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | By 1949 Aims of Industry had 'twelve area offices
| |
| − | blanketing the industrial sections of Britain. For the
| |
| − | fiscal year 1949-50 expenditures were budgeted for an
| |
| − |
| |
| − | pre-war tradition, discussed below, of newspapers
| |
| − | reprinting anti-left briefings from Conservative Party
| |
| − | groups or fronts, continued with Aims of Industry.
| |
| − | Aims estimated that they had gained 93,178
| |
| − | column-inches of editorial space in 1949, worth over
| |
| − |
| |
| − | claims to have had 41 radio broadcasts on the Home or
| |
| − | Light programmes of the BBC; and just before the
| |
| − | election of 1950 in January, 362 magazines and
| |
| − | newspapers gave 11,269 column inches to Aims-inspired
| |
| − | stories. Aims magazine, The Voice of Industry, thanked
| |
| − | the British press for their 'impartial partnership',
| |
| − | in March 1950, noting that 'News about the
| |
| − | achievements of private enterprise and the failures of
| |
| − | nationalisation and state control has been of
| |
| − | sufficient value to editors for them to have given it
| |
| − | space in their columns free.'(50)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The Economic League survived the war. In 1951 it
| |
| − | claimed to have held 20,058 meetings and 57,505 group
| |
| − | talks in the previous year; distributed 18 million
| |
| − | leaflets, and obtained 31,064 column inches of press
| |
| − | publicity; it employed 50 full-time speakers, 27
| |
| − | part-time speakers and 37 leaflet distributors; had a
| |
| − | full-time staff of 135, owned 43 vehicles etc.(51)
| |
| − | These figures apparently describing massive campaigns
| |
| − | by Aims and the League have to be treated with
| |
| − | caution. They might well be exaggerated and it is not
| |
| − | clear how successful they were. For all this
| |
| − | anti-Labour propaganda, Labour's total vote went up in
| |
| − | the 1951 General Election.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The Information Research Department
| |
| − | In the labour movement the Trades Union Congress was
| |
| − | working with the newly-formed, Foreign Office-based,
| |
| − | political warfare executive, operating under cover as
| |
| − | the Information Research Department (IRD), in an
| |
| − | anti-communist drive. IRD was not an innovation.
| |
| − | British politics since World War 1 is studded with
| |
| − | clandestine propaganda operations involving the mass
| |
| − | media of the day. The claims of massive post-World War
| |
| − | 2 media penetration by Aims of Industry and the
| |
| − | Economic League are reminiscent of the operations of
| |
| − | the post World War 1 propaganda network operated by
| |
| − | Sydney Walton, described in Keith Middlemas' wonderful
| |
| − | book about British political history.(52) In the great
| |
| − | Bolshevik panic following the First World War, funded
| |
| − | by the industrial sources like the Engineering
| |
| − | Employers' Federation, Sydney Walton
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'took the main propaganda role from a variety of front
| |
| − | organisations, set up during the war, such as the
| |
| − | British Empire League, the British Workers' League,
| |
| − | the National Democratic and Labour Party, and the
| |
| − | National Unity Movement, all of whom had been in
| |
| − | receipt of industrial subscriptions'.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | million in today's money? - Walton's 'information
| |
| − | service' was supplied with information by the Special
| |
| − | Branch and the intelligence services of the day.
| |
| − | Walton eventually claimed to be able to put
| |
| − | 'authoritative signed articles' in over 1,200
| |
| − | newspapers.(53) Parallel to the Walton network,
| |
| − | another group of major employers formed National
| |
| − | Propaganda,(54) which evolved into the Economic
| |
| − | League.(55) McIvor tells us that the League by 1926
| |
| − | had formed an Information and Research Department,(56)
| |
| − | was organising in 'cells',(57) and was forming 1000
| |
| − | study groups a year.(58)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The state followed suit. In 1919 it formed the Supply
| |
| − | and Transport Committee and prepared to run two
| |
| − | separate propaganda organisations in an emergency,
| |
| − | headed by..... Admiral Blinker Hall of National
| |
| − | Propaganda and Sydney Walton.(59) After 1922, this
| |
| − | network had largely been abandoned, and Middlemas
| |
| − |
| |
| − | in the first six months of the 1926 General Strike,
| |
| − | this was spent on publicity, advertising and speakers
| |
| − | - not on the bribing of journalists and his earlier
| |
| − | techniques.(60) Out of this milieu - and the changes
| |
| − | in tactics it went through - emerged the Economic
| |
| − | League.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The Conservative Party had also been busy between the
| |
| − | wars developing propaganda systems through which it
| |
| − | issued, sometimes under its own name, sometimes under
| |
| − | cover of fronts, pro-Conservative material to the
| |
| − | newspapers for them to 'top and tail' and present as
| |
| − | normal, internally-generated copy.(61)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | These examples of how to manipulate the media had been
| |
| − | learned by others in the British state system and a
| |
| − | few years later Neville Chamberlain and other
| |
| − | supporters of the appeasement policy secretly bought
| |
| − | and ran the weekly newspaper Truth. This was largely
| |
| − | an operation run by the former MI5 officer and
| |
| − | eminence grise of the time, Sir Joseph Ball. Ball used
| |
| − | the official government information machine to push
| |
| − | the Chamberlain line, formed the National Publicity
| |
| − | Bureau to do the same and, in 1937, through a
| |
| − | frontman, Lord Luke of Pavenham, bought Truth, and
| |
| − | proceeded to use it to denigrate the opponents of
| |
| − | Chamberlain and appeasement.(62)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | IRD's genesis
| |
| − | Former Labour Minister Christopher Mayhew still thinks
| |
| − | he was responsible for the creation of IRD.(63) In
| |
| − | fact its origins are a good deal earlier. In March
| |
| − | 1946 Frank Roberts in the British Embassy in Moscow
| |
| − | began sending telegrams to London warning of Soviet
| |
| − | imperialism and aggression.(64) In April the Russia
| |
| − | Committee of the Foreign Office was formed. In its
| |
| − | second meeting on May 7 1946, the Committee decided to
| |
| − | set up a propaganda organisation.(65) It was then just
| |
| − | a question of getting the Labour Cabinet to approve
| |
| − | the proposal. On the way junior Foreign Office
| |
| − | Minister, Christopher Mayhew, proposed such a
| |
| − | propaganda offensive in October 1947, and the
| |
| − | combination of deteriorating political circumstances
| |
| − | and a proposal from within the Party itself swung the
| |
| − | day and the Cabinet approved the formation of this
| |
| − | outfit in January 1948. In the second volume of his
| |
| − | Diaries, Robert Bruce-Lockhart, who had been a part of
| |
| − | the war-time clandestine propaganda system, records on
| |
| − | 4 February 1948 that he dined with Christopher Warner
| |
| − | who had just become the Assistant Under-Secretary at
| |
| − | the Foreign Office in charge of 'our Information
| |
| − | Services'. Warner offered a new version of the origins
| |
| − | of IRD, telling Lockhart that 'As a result of a paper
| |
| − | put up by the Imperial Defence College, F.O. [Foreign
| |
| − | Office] have decided to renew political warfare on a
| |
| − | limited scale.' (emphasis added)(66)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | In Foreign Secretary Bevin's presentation to the
| |
| − | Cabinet he spoke of Britain as a 'third force', who
| |
| − | would 'give a lead in the spiritual, moral and
| |
| − | political sphere to all democratic elements in Western
| |
| − | Europe'. The line was to be neither Washington nor
| |
| − | Moscow, apparently.(67) How seriously Bevin intended
| |
| − | this we do not know. But however nicely it was being
| |
| − | dressed up, this was pretty clearly part of the
| |
| − | developing anti-communist struggle. Mayhew said so in
| |
| − | a memo to Bevin. In any case, why would propaganda in
| |
| − | favour of social democracy have to be hidden?(68)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | IRD was in a kind of management limbo between MI6, who
| |
| − | supplied it with some of its information and tasks,
| |
| − | and the Foreign Office, whose budget concealed it. IRD
| |
| − | was, very clearly, simply the Political Warfare
| |
| − | Executive (PWE) reborn - another example of the
| |
| − | ability of intelligence agencies, once established, to
| |
| − | survive the vagaries of their nominal masters in the
| |
| − | political system.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | IRD was a triple layer. On the surface was its formal
| |
| − | cover within the Foreign Office as an information and
| |
| − | research department. Beneath that was IRD's role as a
| |
| − | propaganda organisation, dispensing white (true) and
| |
| − | grey (half true) propaganda in briefings to
| |
| − | journalists and politicians. But beneath that was the
| |
| − | third layer, the 'black' or psychological warfare
| |
| − | (psywar) tier. This third tier is hinted at in the
| |
| − | Foreign and Commonwealth Office''s recently published
| |
| − | history of IRD's origins . On p. 7 it notes that in
| |
| − | September 1948 - i.e. almost immediately - 'part of
| |
| − | the costs of the unit [were] transferred to the secret
| |
| − | vote......the move would.....avoid the unwelcome
| |
| − | scrutiny of operations which might require covert or
| |
| − | semi-covert means of execution.'(69)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | There is little evidence of Bevin's 'third force'
| |
| − | notions in IRD's work once the politicians' backs were
| |
| − | turned and they had moved on to another item on the
| |
| − | agenda. The minutes of a 1950 meeting between IRD
| |
| − | officials and their U.S. counterparts show no evidence
| |
| − | at all such concepts. Christopher Warner, one of the
| |
| − | 'fathers' of IRD, talks exclusively of anti-communist
| |
| − | activities.(70)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | IRD eventually had representatives in all British
| |
| − | Embassies abroad. In the recollection of a former MI6
| |
| − | officer of the period, IRD was involved in 'some of
| |
| − | the more dubious intelligence operations which
| |
| − | characterised the early years of the cold war.'(71)
| |
| − | Former Ambassador Hilary King was told by a former SIS
| |
| − | officer who had worked in Germany after the war trying
| |
| − | to estimate Soviet bloc tank strength, that IRD
| |
| − | circulated a paper on the subject over-estimating that
| |
| − | strength by a factor of 40.(72) When the SIS officer
| |
| − | complained about the inaccuracy of the estimate he was
| |
| − | told by an IRD official 'what does it matter old boy
| |
| − | as long as the Labour government [i.e. of Attlee] push
| |
| − | through rearmament.' At home, in its second level
| |
| − | role, IRD wrote papers and briefing notes, and planted
| |
| − | stories in the media. Mayhew remembers that 'at home,
| |
| − | our service was offered to and accepted by, large
| |
| − | numbers of selected MP's, journalists, trade union
| |
| − | leaders, and others, and was often used by BBC's
| |
| − | External Services. We also developed close links with
| |
| − | a syndication agency and various publishers.'(73) The
| |
| − | 1950 minutes of the IRD-US talks include Ralph
| |
| − | Murray's comment that 'Trade Union organisations and
| |
| − | various groups are used to place articles under the
| |
| − | by-line of well known writers.'(74) Among individuals
| |
| − | who received IRD material were Percy Cudlipp of the
| |
| − | Co-operative Movement, Herbert Tracey, pub-licity
| |
| − | director of the TUC and the Labour Party, and Denis
| |
| − | Healey, then the Party's International Secretary.(75)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The Freedom and Democracy Trust
| |
| − | Part of this anti-communist programme was the creation
| |
| − | of 'an influential group, including several members of
| |
| − | the [TUC] General Council, which was determined to
| |
| − | root out the communists.'(76) Among the group were
| |
| − | George Chester (General Secretary of the National
| |
| − | Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives), George Gibson
| |
| − | (former TUC chair), Lincoln Evans (General Secretary
| |
| − | of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation [ISTC])
| |
| − | Andrew Naesmith (General Secretary of the Amalgamated
| |
| − | Weavers' Association), Alf Roberts (General Secretary
| |
| − | of the National Association of Card, Blowing and Ring
| |
| − | Room Operatives, later on the Board of the Bank of
| |
| − | England), G. H. Bagnall (TUC General Council
| |
| − | representative; General Secretary in 1939 of National
| |
| − | Union of Dyers, Bleachers and Textile Workers), John
| |
| − | Brown (ISTC) and Tom O'Brien (Kine Employees).(77) In
| |
| − | April 1948 this group became the Freedom and Democracy
| |
| − | Trust, and began publishing a periodical called
| |
| − | Freedom First. with the help of IRD.(78)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Unfortunately for all concerned, mixing with the
| |
| − | founders of the Trust was an American businessman
| |
| − | called Sydney Stanley, and the whole enterprise was
| |
| − | 'blown' when Stanley became the centrepiece of the
| |
| − | infamous Lansky Tribunal hearings into civil service
| |
| − | corruption during the winter of 1948. Not only did
| |
| − | Stanley have many pre-war contacts with the U.S
| |
| − | unions, he adopted the robust American attitude to
| |
| − | officialdom: bribe it when you have to. But he got
| |
| − | caught.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Notes
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 44. Finer p. 94
| |
| − | 45. See H.H. Wilson for an account of the Mr Cube
| |
| − | campaign. Aims Council personnel is from Kisch p. 28.
| |
| − | 46. See Crofts, chapter 14 for these examples.
| |
| − | 47. See ibid. pp. 99-109, especially p. 106 where the
| |
| − | League's funding by the Road Haulage Association, then
| |
| − | distantly threatened with nationalisation, is
| |
| − | discussed. Best account is Hinton's. Dorothy Crisp is
| |
| − | the historical figure who most resembles Margaret
| |
| − | Thatcher.
| |
| − | 48. H.H. Wilson p. 228
| |
| − | 49. Crofts p. 216. For more details of alleged
| |
| − | activities, see also the pamphlet The FBI, (Federation
| |
| − | of British Industry) Labour Research Department, 1949.
| |
| − | 50. H.H. Wilson pp. 229 and 238. Kisch p. 37 claims
| |
| − | that by the late 1950s Aims 'controlled no less than
| |
| − | twenty-six monthly, weekly and quarterly publications
| |
| − | [and] edited and produced forty-five house magazines
| |
| − | for the Tate and Lyle organisation, the Express Dairy
| |
| − | and other organisations as well as the house magazines
| |
| − | of most of the leading members of the 4,000 or so
| |
| − | companies who constituted its chief supporters'.
| |
| − | 51. Labour Research, July 1952. As late as 1981 it had
| |
| − | 130 full-time employees. See the Daily Telegraph, 26
| |
| − | January 1981.
| |
| − | 52. Politics in Industrial Society, Andre Deutsch,
| |
| − | 1979
| |
| − | 53. Ibid. pp. 131/2.
| |
| − | 54. Ibid.
| |
| − | 55. See, for example, McIvor's essays.
| |
| − | 56. Echoed - intentionally? - twenty years later by
| |
| − | the state's IRD.
| |
| − | 57. McIvor 'A Crusade...' p. 641
| |
| − | 58. Ibid p. 646
| |
| − | 59. Middlemas pp. 153/4
| |
| − | 60. Ibid p. 354
| |
| − | 61. See 'The Party, Publicity and the Media' by
| |
| − | Richard Cockett in Seldon and Ball (eds.), especially
| |
| − | pp. 550-553.
| |
| − | 62. Cockett pp. 9-12
| |
| − | 63. Mayhew p.107 where he cites the memo he wrote in
| |
| − | late 1947 to Bevin. Philip M. Taylor in his 'The
| |
| − | Projection of Britain Abroad, 1945-51', writes that
| |
| − | 'The IRD was formed at the Foreign Office as a direct
| |
| − | response to increasingly hostile Soviet propaganda in
| |
| − | the wake of the communist coup in Prague, the
| |
| − | escalating blockade of West Berlin and mounting
| |
| − | pressure on Finland.' Taylor in Michael Dockrill and
| |
| − | John W. Young (eds.) 1989
| |
| − | 64. See, for example, Ray Merrick; and, more recently,
| |
| − | the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's own publication,
| |
| − | IRD: Origins and Establishment of the Foreign Office
| |
| − | Research Department 1946-48, (History Notes, August
| |
| − | 1995)
| |
| − | 65. Ibid. p. 458 This is before the Cominform
| |
| − | rejection of the Marshall Plan, for example, over a
| |
| − | year away in 1947; before even the March arrest of Dr
| |
| − | Allan Nunn May and the revelation of the
| |
| − | Canadian-based Soviet spy ring; and before Churchill's
| |
| − | American speech in which he first used the term 'Iron
| |
| − | Curtain'.
| |
| − | 66. Kenneth Young (ed.) p. 648
| |
| − | 67. Merrick p. 465
| |
| − | 68. Best account of IRD's early years is in Lucas and
| |
| − | Morris.
| |
| − | 69. See note 21 above.
| |
| − | 70. Notes on a meeting between Christopher Warner and
| |
| − | Edward Barnett, in London, Saturday May 20, 1950, in
| |
| − | Foreign Relations of the United States, Government
| |
| − | Printing Office, Washington DC, 1977, pp. 1641-6
| |
| − | 71. Verrier, Looking Glass, p. 52 . Someone might
| |
| − | usefully re-examine all the forgeries in the first
| |
| − | phase of the Cold War and what influence - if any -
| |
| − | they had on policy-making. Two examples are discussed
| |
| − | in Sulzberger pp. 345-7. In 1948, having discovered
| |
| − | that something called 'Protocol M', alleging secret
| |
| − | Comintern instructions to the West German communists
| |
| − | was a forgery, a month late he is offered another one
| |
| − | in Italy, 'Plan K', plans for an alleged communist
| |
| − | insurgency. He comments that there is 'a network of
| |
| − | forgers and falsifiers ...busily peddling allegedly
| |
| − | secret documents to embassies, intelli-gence officers,
| |
| − | ministries and correspondents'. (p. 346) 'Protocol M'
| |
| − | is reproduced in Appendix II of Heilbrunn.
| |
| − | 72. Telephone conversation with author, June 27, 1987.
| |
| − | 73. Mayhew p. 111. There are some details of this in
| |
| − | the FCO publication in footnote 64 above.
| |
| − | 74. Foreign Relations op. cit.
| |
| − | 75. Weiler p. 216
| |
| − | 76. Ibid. p. 217 citing The Times, February 10, 1948.
| |
| − | 77. Weiler op. cit. fn 184, p. 369
| |
| − | 78. Ibid. fn 189 citing The Times, 2 December 1948.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ----------------------------------------------------------------
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Common Cause and IRIS
| |
| − | The failure of the Freedom and Democracy Trust seems
| |
| − | to have deterred the TUC members from creating another
| |
| − | body so directly linked to the TUC General
| |
| − | Council.(79) Instead, some individual members of the
| |
| − | General Council, who had been involved in the Freedom
| |
| − | and Democracy Trust fiasco, joined a private group
| |
| − | with the same anti-communist aims. This was Common
| |
| − | Cause, whose origins are to be found in the merging of
| |
| − | two quite distinct political strands.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The AEU's 'Club'
| |
| − | One strand was the clandestine anti-communist (and
| |
| − | anti-socialist) organisation in British trade unions,
| |
| − | of which the best example is to found within the
| |
| − | Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU). Within the AEU,
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'An anti-Communist organisation was established at
| |
| − | meetings of the fifty-two-member national committee,
| |
| − | their ruling body in 1943 and 1944, and was followed a
| |
| − | few years later by a loose national organisation,
| |
| − | working in secret and known as "the side" or the
| |
| − | "antis" which succeeded in removing a good many
| |
| − | communists from office.'(80)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | This was the organisation which later came to be known
| |
| − | as 'the Club' or 'the Group', and 'defined its purpose
| |
| − | in terms of preventing a Communist takeover of the
| |
| − | union'.(81)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'In the mid 1950s ..... the Right-wing members of the
| |
| − | Executive Council began attending the factional
| |
| − | meeting. In this period also a National Committee
| |
| − | "Club" organiser was discreetly appointed from amongst
| |
| − | the regular delegates to tighten the organisation of
| |
| − | the Right-wing faction(82)....At all National
| |
| − | Committee meetings during the period from 1956 to 1970
| |
| − | the right-wing controlled all places on the Standing
| |
| − | Orders Committee, and J. Ramsden, organiser of the
| |
| − | National Committee "Club" for nine years, was also
| |
| − | Chairman of its Standing Orders Committee for seven of
| |
| − | them. With [President] Carron in the Chair at the
| |
| − | National Committee and the union Secretaryship also
| |
| − | held by a "Club" member for the whole of the period,
| |
| − | procedural control by the Right was overwhelming.'(83)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The late Ernie Roberts MP quotes from a report of a
| |
| − | 1951 meeting of 'the Club' (infiltrated by a member of
| |
| − | the left in the union), and notes that the principal
| |
| − | figure was Cecil Hallett, then AEU General
| |
| − | Secretary.(84)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Common Cause
| |
| − | This clandestine trade union anti-socialism joined up
| |
| − | with an Anglo-American anti-communist group called
| |
| − | Common Cause. The American group was formed in January
| |
| − | 1947 as Common Cause Incorporated, by Mrs Natalie
| |
| − | Wales Latham (nee Paine). Among the great and the good
| |
| − | on its letterhead National Council were Adolph Berle
| |
| − | Jnr, Max Eastman, Sumner Welles and Hodding Carter.
| |
| − | Another well-known member was Clare Booth Luce, wife
| |
| − | of the owner of Time, Henry Luce, and later US
| |
| − | Ambassador to Italy. In his biography of Mrs Luce,
| |
| − | Alden Hatch notes that as early as 1946, before its
| |
| − | official launch, Common Cause had established liaison
| |
| − | with the anti-Soviet group, Russian Solidarists,
| |
| − | better known as NTS, and that John Foster Dulles was
| |
| − | the organisation's 'unofficial adviser'.(85) Hatch
| |
| − | also notes that Mrs Wales Latham became Lady Malcolm
| |
| − | Douglas-Hamilton - the only link I am aware of between
| |
| − | the US and UK groups. For when the British Common
| |
| − | Cause was formally launched in 1952, its first joint
| |
| − | chairs were John Brown, ex General Secretary of the
| |
| − | Iron and Steel Trades Confederation and member of the
| |
| − | TUC General Council and the self-same Lord Malcolm
| |
| − | Douglas-Hamilton MP.(86)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The British Common Cause, however, had been in
| |
| − | existence for some years before its official launch,
| |
| − | originally very much as the vehicle of Dr. C. A.
| |
| − | Smith, one of the more interesting mavericks of the
| |
| − | British Left in the 20th century. Smith met Trotsky in
| |
| − | the 1933, was Chairman of the Independent Labour Party
| |
| − | from 39-41, quit and joined Common Wealth as its
| |
| − | Research Officer in 1941. When some of the Common
| |
| − | Wealth party left to join the Labour Party, Smith
| |
| − | became Chair of Common Wealth. As the nature of the
| |
| − | Stalinist takeover of Eastern Europe became clear in
| |
| − | 1947, Smith tried to take Common Wealth with him in
| |
| − | his increasingly anti-Soviet stance. They baulked and
| |
| − | eventually Smith left the party and joined or formed -
| |
| − | which is not clear - Common Cause in Easter 1948.(87)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The British League for European Freedom
| |
| − | Whatever the British Common Cause amounted to in 1948,
| |
| − | four years before its official launch, it had joined
| |
| − | forces with the British League for European Freedom
| |
| − | (BLEF), the first organisation formed in this country
| |
| − | in direct response to the Soviet Union's takeover in
| |
| − | Eastern Europe. The BLEF had been initiated in 1944 by
| |
| − | a quartet of Tory MP's, including Victor Raikes, a
| |
| − | pre-war member of the Imperial Policy Group.(88)
| |
| − | Despite the dominance of Tory MPs, the BLEF attracted
| |
| − | a trio of Labour MPs: Ivor Thomas (who defected to the
| |
| − | Tories in 1950 after the publication of his book The
| |
| − | Socialist Tragedy); George Dallas, former TUC General
| |
| − | Council member and Labour MP, Chair of the Labour
| |
| − | Party's International Committee during the war; and
| |
| − | Richard Stokes MP. Stokes was a 'socialist' of the
| |
| − | most idiosyncratic kind, having been a member of the
| |
| − | anti-Semitic Right Club before the war.(89) Although
| |
| − | information on these groups in this period is very
| |
| − | thin, it is clear that Common Cause and the BLEF were
| |
| − | very close. In 1950, for example, Common Cause
| |
| − | published a pamphlet, Communism and Democracy, by
| |
| − | Smith, in which he said he was writing as a member of
| |
| − | the BLEF. The two groups shared an office in Elizabeth
| |
| − | Street in London donated by the wealthy Duke of
| |
| − | Westminster.(90)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The Duchess of Atholl, one of the founders of the
| |
| − | BLEF, notes in her autobiography that the decline in
| |
| − | the BLEF's 'political work' was attributable to the
| |
| − | arrival of Common Cause, and from then on the BLEF
| |
| − | 'concentrated its efforts on bringing home to people
| |
| − | the unhappy plight of the many Displaced Persons still
| |
| − | in Germany.'(91) This is something of a euphemism for
| |
| − | the BLEF's role as support group for Eastern European
| |
| − | exile groups such as the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of
| |
| − | Nations (ABN) then being run by the Secret
| |
| − | Intelligence Service (SIS). The BLEF produced an
| |
| − | offshoot, the Scottish League for European Freedom,
| |
| − | headed by Victor Raikes' colleague in the Imperial
| |
| − | Policy Group, the Earl of Mansfield. In 1950 the
| |
| − | Scottish League organised a conference in Edinburgh
| |
| − | for Eastern European exiles, many of them Nazi war
| |
| − | criminals and collaborators, who had been recruited by
| |
| − | SIS. They had been moved to the UK during the scramble
| |
| − | at the end of World War 2 by the British and American
| |
| − | governments for good, reliable, anti-Soviet 'assets'.
| |
| − | (92)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Common Cause USA
| |
| − | In the USA the fledgling CIA had sponsored a front
| |
| − | organisation, the National Committee for a Free Europe
| |
| − | (NCFE). NCFE's 'sister organisation' was Common Cause
| |
| − | Inc., which included among its personnel 'many of the
| |
| − | men - Adolf Berle, Arthur Bliss Lane, and Eugene
| |
| − | Lyons, among others - who simultaneously led
| |
| − | CIA-financed groups such as the NCFE and, later, the
| |
| − | American Committee for Liberation from
| |
| − | Bolshevism.'(93) Christopher Simpson notes that it was
| |
| − | Common Cause Inc. which, in 1948, sponsored the NTS
| |
| − | founder on a tour of the United States. (94) Just as
| |
| − | the British League for European Freedom became the
| |
| − | sponsor for the British exile groups in the
| |
| − | Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), Christopher
| |
| − | Emmet, Chairman of the American Common Cause Inc,
| |
| − | turns up later as head of the American Friends of the
| |
| − | Captive Nations, the domestic support group for the
| |
| − | CIA-sponsored Assembly of Captive Nations (ACEN).(95)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The BLEF's George Dallas was one of those who stayed
| |
| − | close to American interests. He became preoccupied
| |
| − | with the danger of a communist take-over in China, and
| |
| − | formed the Friends of Free China Association, with
| |
| − | himself as chair and the Duchess of Atholl as
| |
| − | president. Dallas eventually attended the 1958
| |
| − | foundation meeting of what became the the World
| |
| − | Anti-Communist League. The one time socialist farm
| |
| − | labourer had come a long way. With him at that meeting
| |
| − | were Marvin Liebman, one of the key members of the US
| |
| − | 'China Lobby', the late Yaroslav Stetsko, Ukranian
| |
| − | collaborator with the Germans and head of the ABN, and
| |
| − | Charles Edison of the John Birch Society.(96)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Common Cause UK
| |
| − | The official, 1952-launched Common Cause was
| |
| − | apparently founded by Neil Elles, Peter Crane (on both
| |
| − | of whom, more below) and C.A. Smith. Lord Malcolm
| |
| − | Douglas-Hamilton, then a Scottish Tory MP, and John
| |
| − | Brown were joint chairs. Brown had been the Treasurer
| |
| − | of the Freedom and Democracy Trust which had tried to
| |
| − | launch Freedom First five years before. It set up a
| |
| − | national structure with local branches - in 1954 there
| |
| − | were 14 - published a monthly Bulletin, and
| |
| − | distributed many of the standard anti-communist texts
| |
| − | of the time, for example Tufton Beamish's Must Night
| |
| − | Fall?; some, such as the 'Background Books' series,
| |
| − | published and/or subsidised by IRD; and leaflets from
| |
| − | the CIA labour front in Europe, the International
| |
| − | Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).(97)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | In 1955 Common Cause's 'Advisory Council' included:
| |
| − |
| |
| − | * Tom O'Brien and Florence Hancock, both past TUC
| |
| − | presidents;(98)
| |
| − | * Bob Edwards, General Secretary of the Chemical
| |
| − | Workers Union, 1947-51;(99)
| |
| − | * Cecil Hallett, Assistant General Secretary of the
| |
| − | AEU 1948-57; General Secretary 1957-64;
| |
| − | * Philip Fothergill, ex President of the Liberal
| |
| − | Party;
| |
| − | * Admiral Lord Cunningham;(100)
| |
| − | * a coterie of other retired senior military, the
| |
| − | Duchess of Atholl and Lord Ammon.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Such 'advisory bodies' may mean very little: this
| |
| − | might just be a notepaper job. Nonetheless, some of
| |
| − | the 'advisory body' were people with rather
| |
| − | specialised interests. For example, at one point the
| |
| − | name of General Leslie Hollis appeared on it. Hollis
| |
| − | had been the Secretary of the Chiefs of Staff
| |
| − | committee which 'considered, with Sir Stewart Menzies,
| |
| − | the head of MI6, and Warner [of IRD] and William
| |
| − | Hayter of the Foreign Office, what form of
| |
| − | organisation was required to establish a satisfactory
| |
| − | link between the Chiefs of Staff and Foreign Office on
| |
| − | matters connected with the day-to-day conduct of
| |
| − | anti-Communist propaganda overseas.'(101)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | In the Autumn of 1955 the Common Cause Bulletin
| |
| − | reported that there had been moves at the Labour Party
| |
| − | conference that year to get it proscribed - but the
| |
| − | motion to that effect 'was among the many crowded out
| |
| − | from discussion'.(102)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The Labour Party's intelligence-gathering
| |
| − | Common Cause was one of the sources of information
| |
| − | used by the Labour Party in its anti-communist
| |
| − | activities in the 1950s. While no central unit was
| |
| − | ever formally established 'for collecting information
| |
| − | or monitoring the activities of communist-inspired or
| |
| − | pro-Soviet groups', in practice the National Agent's
| |
| − | Department at Labour headquarters, Transport House,
| |
| − | did the job, using as sources the publications of
| |
| − | proscribed organisations, regional organisers'
| |
| − | reports, 'Foreign Office' material - i.e. IRD - and
| |
| − | Common Cause.(103) The National Agent's Department
| |
| − | [NAD] had 'lay responsibility for compiling the
| |
| − | [proscription] list'. Shaw notes that in 1953 the
| |
| − | proscription list was expanded by the addition of
| |
| − | eighteen fresh groups.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'What happened was rather unusual. Without consulting
| |
| − | the NAD the International Department had submitted a
| |
| − | report to the Overseas Subcommittee on "peace" and
| |
| − | "friendship" societies. In response the Subcommittee
| |
| − | recommended that they all be proscribed. NAD officials
| |
| − | were never told the source of the International
| |
| − | Department's information though they assumed it to be
| |
| − | the Foreign Office [i.e. IRD] and Special
| |
| − | Branch.'(104)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | A glimpse of the content of the NAD's
| |
| − | intelligence-gathering has been provided by the late
| |
| − | Ian Mikardo MP, who saw 'dossiers' in the possession
| |
| − | of National Agent Sarah Barker At a meeting of a
| |
| − | subcommittee of the NEC in 1955, Sara Barker objected
| |
| − | to Konni Zilliacus and Ernie Roberts as prospective
| |
| − | Parliamentary candidates. When Barker began quoting
| |
| − | derogatory comments from files she had in her
| |
| − | possession, Mikardo demanded to see the files.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'They were an eye-opener. No MI5, no Special Branch,
| |
| − | no George Smiley could have compiled more
| |
| − | comprehensive dossiers. Not just press-cuttings,
| |
| − | photographs and document references but also notes by
| |
| − | watchers and eavesdroppers, and all sorts of
| |
| − | tittle-tattle. I'm convinced that there was input into
| |
| − | them from government sources and from at least a
| |
| − | couple of Labour Attaches at the United States embassy
| |
| − | who were close to some of our trade union leaders,
| |
| − | notably Sam Watson.'(105)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Common Cause splits - IRIS is formed
| |
| − | The pretty unstable-looking mixture of admirals,
| |
| − | generals and trade union leaders that was Common
| |
| − | Cause, disintegrated in 1956. C.A.Smith resigned along
| |
| − | with Advisory Council members Fothergill, Edwards,
| |
| − | Ammon, Professor Arthur Newell and Sydney Walton.(106)
| |
| − | This group complained that the organisation had become
| |
| − | 'reactionary' and that the promised democratic
| |
| − | structure had never materialised. In August 1956
| |
| − | Common Cause Ltd was registered, owned and controlled
| |
| − | by the 'reactionary' faction.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The original directors of Common Cause Ltd were:
| |
| − |
| |
| − | * the new chair, Peter Crane, the director of a number
| |
| − | of British subsidiaries of American companies,
| |
| − | including Collins Radio of England, whose American
| |
| − | headquarters had connections with the CIA.(107)
| |
| − | * David Pelham James - Conservative MP, and Director
| |
| − | of the Catholic publishing house, Hollis and Carter.
| |
| − | There were a number of Catholics prominent in the
| |
| − | Common Cause network, including the man who ran IRIS
| |
| − | for any years, Andy McKeown. This is discussed below.
| |
| − | * Neil Elles, barrister and later a member of the
| |
| − | European-wide anti-subversion outfit, INTERDOC.(108)
| |
| − | * Christopher Blackett - a Scottish landowner and
| |
| − | farmer and, I presume, but cannot prove, a relative of
| |
| − | Frances Blackett, the original secretary of the
| |
| − | British League for European Freedom, discussed
| |
| − | above.(109)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | IRIS
| |
| − | More or less in parallel with the formation of Common
| |
| − | Cause Ltd., an industrial wing, Industrial Research
| |
| − | and Information Services (IRIS) Ltd. was formed and
| |
| − | set up in the headquarters of the National Union of
| |
| − | Seamen, Maritime House. Initially, IRIS Ltd listed
| |
| − | three directors:
| |
| − |
| |
| − | * Jack Tanner, the recently retired President of the
| |
| − | AEU;
| |
| − | * William McLaine, General Secretary of the AEU from
| |
| − | 1938-47;
| |
| − | * and Charles Sonnex, the Secretary and Managing
| |
| − | Director, and the link with the parent body Common
| |
| − | Cause.(110) Also it had a manager, James L. Nash.(111)
| |
| − | According to Labour Research (January 1961), Nash left
| |
| − | to join the CIA labour front, the ICFTU.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | In an interview with Richard Fletcher in 1979, C. A.
| |
| − | Smith, attributed the formation of IRIS to Common
| |
| − | Cause's discovery of just how careful they had to be
| |
| − | about interfering in union affairs.(112) Another
| |
| − | proximate cause for the formation of IRIS is suggested
| |
| − | by the comment from the Common Cause Bulletin of
| |
| − | January 1956 (pp. 4/5) that 'only a near-miracle can
| |
| − | prevent the Executive of the AEU from passing under
| |
| − | communist control during 1956.....already there are
| |
| − | clear signs of an all-out Communist effort to put Reg
| |
| − | Birch in this top trade union job'.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | However, another interpretation of the Common Cause
| |
| − | split and the formation of IRIS is possible. In April
| |
| − | 1955 SIS (MI6) were forced to acknowledge that their
| |
| − | networks of 'agents' inside the Soviet Union had all
| |
| − | been penetrated. Worse, the Soviets had been running a
| |
| − | deception operation with uncomfortable parallels with
| |
| − | the 'Trust' deception in the 1920s in which the Soviet
| |
| − | intelligence service created and ran a fake resistance
| |
| − | group to which the British government gave a lot of
| |
| − | money.(113) SIS had been using agents from Bandera's
| |
| − | OUN in Ukraine and from NTS.(114) Some time later that
| |
| − | year, SIS gave up all its emigre groups and in
| |
| − | February 1956 SIS handed over control of NTS to the
| |
| − | CIA.(115) What follows is what I surmise happened but
| |
| − | for which I have no evidence. Having taken control of
| |
| − | the British networks, new people were put in to run
| |
| − | things. The NTS support group in the United States was
| |
| − | Common Cause Inc. - with its British counterpart. In
| |
| − | London, the limited company Common Cause was formed
| |
| − | and all the trappings of members and branches were
| |
| − | dumped; a CIA officer or agent, under cover, the
| |
| − | cut-out to the Agency, was installed. (If this sounds
| |
| − | banal, it has to be remembered that in 1956 none of
| |
| − | this had ever been made public and there was no reason
| |
| − | for them to be anything but banal.) The American
| |
| − | assessment of the group's activities was that its most
| |
| − | important work had been, and should continue to be, in
| |
| − | the British trade union movement. The previous year's
| |
| − | attempt to have Common Cause put on the Labour Party's
| |
| − | proscription list was noted and a spin-off, trade
| |
| − | union subsidiary, was formed. Common Cause would fund
| |
| − | it - and act as another layer of insulation between it
| |
| − | and the Agency.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | IRIS activities to 1963
| |
| − | IRIS published a newsletter and a variety of
| |
| − | pamphlets. They formed 'cells' - their word - to
| |
| − | combat communists in the trade unions. How many cells,
| |
| − | we do not know; nor in how many unions other than the
| |
| − | AEU. They intervened in union elections. A member of
| |
| − | ASSET, (which became ASTMS and is currently a part of
| |
| − | MSF) sued IRIS and won in 1958 after IRIS News called
| |
| − | him a communist. In the report of the TUC annual
| |
| − | conference in 1960, delegates describe IRIS personnel
| |
| − | intervening in the Association of Engineering and
| |
| − | Shipbuilding Draughtsmen (AESD) and the Association of
| |
| − | Supervisory Staff and Technicians (ASSET). The
| |
| − | delegate of the latter describes IRIS News publishing
| |
| − | the allegation that a candidate in a union election
| |
| − | was a communist. Labour Research alleged an IRIS role
| |
| − | in the National Union of Mineworkers and the Foundry
| |
| − | Workers (as well as AESD and ASSET).(116) Reporting
| |
| − | these events, Labour Research commented on IRIS News
| |
| − | that 'the main feature in the paper however is and
| |
| − | always has been news and advice about union elections.
| |
| − | In most cases the paper reports that certain
| |
| − | candidates are "receiving communist support" '. It
| |
| − | seems reasonably certain - though unproven - the IRIS
| |
| − | was receiving some of its information from IRD.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | In putting out information - its monthly magazine and
| |
| − | pamphlets - and telling its readers who to vote for
| |
| − | and not vote for in union elections, IRIS behaved as
| |
| − | an exact mirror image of the groups on the left: start
| |
| − | a paper and put out a 'line'. The late Ernie Roberts
| |
| − | MP, for many years the only left-winger in the senior
| |
| − | ranks of the AEU - the union from whence came two of
| |
| − | the IRIS directors in 1956 - describes how the left in
| |
| − | the union and IRIS/and 'the Club' spent their time
| |
| − | infiltrating and reporting on each other's
| |
| − | meetings.(117)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | In February 1966 the left-wing magazine Voice of the
| |
| − | Unions, part of the opposition to IRIS within the AEU,
| |
| − | asked where the IRIS money was coming from and
| |
| − | commented, 'At one time we are told IRIS employed an
| |
| − | office staff of six to ten.' Almost thirty years later
| |
| − | we learned that some of the money had come from the
| |
| − | British government after Lord Shawcross had contacted
| |
| − | Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and asked for funding
| |
| − | for IRIS.(118)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Shawcross had approached Macmillan at the right time,
| |
| − | for 'Supermac' had become infected with the fear of
| |
| − | the 'communist threat'. The Radcliffe Tribunal had
| |
| − | reported in 1962, devoting a whole section to the
| |
| − | Civil Service staff associations and trade unions,
| |
| − | expressing concern at the number of communists and
| |
| − | communist sympathisers holding positions in the
| |
| − | unions;(119) and his administration was being
| |
| − | afflicted by the espionage scandals of George Blake
| |
| − | and Vassell - and the Profumo Affair which Macmillan
| |
| − | apparently believed was part of a communist conspiracy
| |
| − | the bring him down.(120)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Catholic Action?
| |
| − | There is a distinct Catholic tinge to Common Cause and
| |
| − | IRIS. Hollis and Carter, the company which published
| |
| − | the Common Cause Bulletin, was a Catholic publishing
| |
| − | house. Catholics among the leading figures in Common
| |
| − | Cause included chairs David Pelham James(121) and
| |
| − | Peter Crane, Brigadier George Taylor, a director of
| |
| − | Common Cause circa 1958,(122) and Sir Tom O'Brien.
| |
| − | Catholics among the AEU/IRIS network include AEU
| |
| − | President Bill Carron and Jim Conway, IRIS's Cecil
| |
| − | Hallett, and the man who ran IRIS for nearly twenty
| |
| − | years, Andy McKeown.(123) So was there, as some on the
| |
| − | British Left believed,(124) a national Catholic Action
| |
| − | organisation operating in Britain, as it had in other
| |
| − | countries, such as Australia? Joan Keating
| |
| − | investigated this belief in the course of her doctoral
| |
| − | thesis, and though she found quite a thriving
| |
| − | Association of Catholic Trade unionists - the Catholic
| |
| − | Worker was selling 25,000 copies in 1956 - she found
| |
| − | no evidence at all of any national, co-ordinated
| |
| − | organisation.(125)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Notes
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 79. Though there is a hint that such activities may
| |
| − | have been continued abroad. In Coleman's book on the
| |
| − | Congress for Cultural Freedom (discussed below) there
| |
| − | is a reference to an Indian anti-communist politician,
| |
| − | Minoo Misani, who in the early post-war years, founded
| |
| − | the Democratic Research Service and published a
| |
| − | magazine called..... Freedom First. Coleman p. 150.
| |
| − | 80. Wigham, p. 128
| |
| − | 81. Minkin p. 180
| |
| − | 82. Ibid.
| |
| − | 83. Ibid.
| |
| − | 84. Roberts pp. 124/5
| |
| − | 85. Hatch, p. 187
| |
| − | 86. The Times 25 February, 1952
| |
| − | 87. Details on Smith from J.C. Banks, Editor of the
| |
| − | Common Wealth Journal. In the obituary of Smith in the
| |
| − | The Libertarian, the Common Wealth journal, no. 25,
| |
| − | Summer 1985, Smith is said to have formed Common
| |
| − | Cause. I believe this to be mistaken.
| |
| − | 88. The Imperial Policy Group was largely the work of
| |
| − | Kenneth de Courcy. De Courcy edited and published the
| |
| − | Review of World Affairs during the Second World War.
| |
| − | The IPG and de Courcy in particular were much disliked
| |
| − | by the Soviet government of the time. Since then de
| |
| − | Courcy has published the newsletters Intelligence
| |
| − | Digest and Special Office Brief. De Courcy had some
| |
| − | influence on the right of the Tory Party into the
| |
| − | 1960s. See index references in Highams on De Courcy.
| |
| − | 89. This information from John Hope who has had access
| |
| − | to the Right Club's membership list. It is possible
| |
| − | Stokes had joined for reasons other than agreement
| |
| − | with the Club's aims.
| |
| − | 90. Duchess of Atholl p. 252
| |
| − | 91. Ibid.
| |
| − | 92. Loftus p. 204
| |
| − | 93. Simpson p. 222
| |
| − | 94. Ibid p. 223
| |
| − | 95. Ibid. p. 222. 'Christopher Emmet is a classic
| |
| − | example of those who ran the British Intelligence
| |
| − | fronts before and during World War II and who, having
| |
| − | proven themselves faithful and competent, went on to
| |
| − | run the CIA/MI6 fronts of the Cold War.' Mahl, thesis,
| |
| − | p. 198.
| |
| − | 96. Details of the WACL meeting is in Charles
| |
| − | Goldman's 'World Anti-Communist League', adapted from
| |
| − | Under Dackke, ed. Frik Krensen and Petter Sommerfelt
| |
| − | (Demos, Copenhagen, 1978). I am unsure of the source
| |
| − | of this Goldman article but it appears to be an early
| |
| − | edition of Counterspy. Dallas' career, with some of
| |
| − | the later associations glossed over, is described by
| |
| − | his son in the Dictionary of Labour Biography eds.
| |
| − | Saville and Bellamy, vol. 4 1977.
| |
| − | 97. On ICFTU and the CIA see the comments of former
| |
| − | CIA officers Joseph Smith (p. 138) and Philip Agee
| |
| − | (CIA Diary) (p. 611). For a more general discussion
| |
| − | see Winslow Peck. The rival but much less significant
| |
| − | World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) was, of
| |
| − | course, funded and run by the Soviet Union.
| |
| − | 98. Hancock had been Chief Woman Officer of the TUC.
| |
| − | 99. Edwards had been chair of the ILP. During 1948 the
| |
| − | Chemical Workers Union had been involved in protracted
| |
| − | proceedings over alleged forged ballot papers by
| |
| − | communists.
| |
| − | 100. In 1945, as Chief of the Defence Staff he had
| |
| − | threatened Attlee with resignation over proposed
| |
| − | defence cuts.
| |
| − | 101. Scott Lucas and Morris p. 101.
| |
| − | 102. For which, perhaps, read 'our friends fixed the
| |
| − | agenda'.
| |
| − | 103. Shaw p. 58
| |
| − | 104. Ibid. pp. 58 and 9 Shaw notes in footnote 44 p.
| |
| − | 314 that 'at least one NAD official was approached by
| |
| − | a member of the Special Branch [and brother of a
| |
| − | future International Secretary] offering
| |
| − | "assistance".'
| |
| − | 105. Mikardo p. 131.
| |
| − | 106. The Times, April 6, 1957
| |
| − | 107. Collins Radio was first linked with CIA
| |
| − | operations by Peter Dale Scott in his unpublished
| |
| − | manuscript, The Dallas Conspiracy, ch. 11 p. 3. More
| |
| − | recently, 'Collins Radio' by Bill Kelly, in Back
| |
| − | Channels, (USA) Vol. 1, Number 4, lists a number of
| |
| − | links between the company and the CIA-controlled
| |
| − | anti-Castro milieu of the early 1960s
| |
| − | 108. On INTERDOC see Crozier pp. 49 and 81.
| |
| − | 109. Frances Blackett in Duchess of Atholl, p. 250.
| |
| − | 110. The Times, 6 April 1957
| |
| − | 111. IRIS News, vol. 1, no 1, 1956. According to
| |
| − | Anthony Carew, Nash was also a member of the AEU.
| |
| − | 112. Fletcher's notes of the conversation say that
| |
| − | that 'wealthy people got at [Common Cause executive
| |
| − | member Charles] Sonnex (without telling CAS) asked him
| |
| − | to lead IRIS. S.[onnex] remained on CC exec. Rich
| |
| − | people attached more importance to IRIS.'
| |
| − | 113. See Tom Bower's Red Web on the SIS post-war
| |
| − | operations and chapter 8, in particular, on the
| |
| − | dawning realisation that they had been taken for a
| |
| − | ride - again. On 'the Trust' see Andrew, Secret
| |
| − | Service pp. 445-8
| |
| − | 114. Ibid p. 165
| |
| − | 115. Yakovlev p. 105. Soviet publications in this
| |
| − | field are not famously accurate, but this account has
| |
| − | since been confirmed by Tom Bower's biography of SIS
| |
| − | chief Dick White The Perfect English Spy, pp. 206 and
| |
| − | 7. Yakovlev quotes from what purports to be an SIS
| |
| − | document, 'A Proposed Statement to the NTS
| |
| − | Leadership', which, presuming it to be genuine, may
| |
| − | have been given to the Soviets by Kim Philby or George
| |
| − | Blake. Bower quotes a brief section from the same
| |
| − | document.
| |
| − | 116. Labour Research, January 1961, p. 10
| |
| − | 117. See Roberts pp. 101, 122-4, 131 157, 203.
| |
| − | The left-wing Engineering Voice, Christmas 1966,
| |
| − | reported having received 'an anonymous and undated
| |
| − | document purporting to describe the proceedings of a
| |
| − | secret meeting recently convened by supporters of the
| |
| − | present leadership of the AEU.' The document referred
| |
| − | to a 'National Group meeting' and said attending it
| |
| − | had been fourteen full-time officers of the AEU.
| |
| − | 118. Guardian, 2 January 1995, based on papers
| |
| − | released under the 30 year rule. See also 'Anti-red
| |
| − | and alive' in New Statesman, 10 February 1995.
| |
| − | 119. Pincher, Inside Story p. 335
| |
| − | 120. On Macmillan's paranoia about the 'communist
| |
| − | conspiracy' see Bower, Perfect English Spy pp. 308-9.
| |
| − | 121. A director of Hollis and Carter
| |
| − | 122. Keating, PhD thesis, p. 350
| |
| − | 123. Ferris, p. 85. Engineering Voice, March 1969,
| |
| − | reported a two-day conference of the Association of
| |
| − | Catholic Trade Unionists, at which were H.E. Matthews,
| |
| − | a director of Cable and Wireless and some time
| |
| − | director of IRIS, and Andy McKeown of IRIS. Keating
| |
| − | quotes McKeown as suggesting that originally IRIS was
| |
| − | anti-Catholic because 'Freemasonry' had a 'strong
| |
| − | hold' on the organisation, and claiming that the man
| |
| − | who initially ran IRIS, Charles Sonnex, was a Mason!
| |
| − | 124. One of those who believes there was a national
| |
| − | Catholic Action is former President of the Trades
| |
| − | Union Congress, Clive Jenkins. Conversation with the
| |
| − | author, 1995.
| |
| − | 125. Keating thesis, p. 335.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ----------------------------------------------------------------
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Part 2
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Atlantic Crossings
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the Campaign for
| |
| − | Democratic Socialism and the CIA
| |
| − | As well as the programmes to inculcate American
| |
| − | notions of free market economics and union-management
| |
| − | relations - and good feelings about America - there
| |
| − | were operations aimed at the wider public and the
| |
| − | Labour Party. Large numbers of Labour MPs and trade
| |
| − | unionists were paid to visit the United States. Among
| |
| − | the Gaitskellite grouping in the Parliamentary party,
| |
| − | Gaitskell, George Brown, Anthony Crosland and Douglas
| |
| − | Jay all made visits.(1) Under the umbrella of just one
| |
| − | minor aspect of the Marshall Plan, the Anglo-American
| |
| − | Council on Productivity, 900 people from Britain -
| |
| − | management and unions - went on trips to the United
| |
| − | States to see the equivalent of 'Potemkin
| |
| − | villages'.(2) Hundreds of trade unions officers went
| |
| − | on paid visits to the US in the fifties under the
| |
| − | auspices of the European Productivity Agency and
| |
| − | groups of British union leaders were sent on three
| |
| − | month trade union programme run twice yearly by the
| |
| − | Harvard Business School.(3)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The Congress for Cultural Freedom
| |
| − | There was a European-wide - and world-wide - programme
| |
| − | to boost the social democratic wings of socialist
| |
| − | parties and movements.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'At Thomas Braden's suggestion and with the support of
| |
| − | Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner [then head of the Office
| |
| − | of Policy Coordination], the CIA began its covert
| |
| − | support of the non-Communist political left around the
| |
| − | world - trade unions, political parties and
| |
| − | international organisations of students and
| |
| − | journalists.'(4)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The biggest of these programs that we are aware of was
| |
| − | the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF from here on),
| |
| − | which began in 1950 with a large conference in the US
| |
| − | zone in Berlin, a demonstration of the strength of
| |
| − | anti-Soviet feeling among some of the West's
| |
| − | intellectuals and a response to the Soviet 'Peace
| |
| − | offensive' then underway.(5) At the time funds for
| |
| − | these gatherings were said to have come from the
| |
| − | American Federation of Labour, via Jay Lovestone - a
| |
| − | story offered up again recently by CCF apologist Peter
| |
| − | Coleman in his The Liberal Conspiracy. In fact they
| |
| − | came from the CIA, something alleged by the Soviet
| |
| − | bloc's media at the time but not believed.(6) The one
| |
| − | thing the Congress for Cultural Freedom's paymasters
| |
| − | were not interested in was cultural freedom. Peter
| |
| − | Coleman does his best. Of the first big 1950 jamboree
| |
| − | he writes,
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'almost all the participants were liberals or social
| |
| − | democrats, critical of capitalism and opposed to
| |
| − | colonialism, imperialism, nationalism, racism and
| |
| − | dictatorship'.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | If the British delegation is anything to go by, this
| |
| − | is not true. Of the four British delegates named by
| |
| − | Coleman, one was Christopher Hollis, a right-wing
| |
| − | Catholic and some time Tory MP, (7) and another was
| |
| − | Julian Amery, one of the Tory Party's leading
| |
| − | imperialists! In any case 'cultural freedom' was a
| |
| − | euphemism for 'American capitalism'.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Encounter
| |
| − | The CCF began publishing journals - in Britain,
| |
| − | Encounter, which first appeared in 1953. Encounter
| |
| − | became a major outlet for the 'revisionist' - i.e.
| |
| − | anti-socialist, anti-nationalist - thinking of the
| |
| − | younger intellectuals around Labour leader Hugh
| |
| − | Gaitskell, such as Peter Jay, Patrick Gordon-Walker,
| |
| − | Roy Jenkins and Anthony Crosland, all of whom were in
| |
| − | Harold Wilson's first cabinet in 1964. The 1955 CCF
| |
| − | conference in Milan, 'The Future of Freedom', was
| |
| − | attended by Crosland, Richard Crossman, Denis Healey,
| |
| − | Roy Jenkins and W. Arthur Lewis MP.(8) Anthony
| |
| − | Crosland was a member of the International Council of
| |
| − | the CCF: his role, said the CIA officer who was
| |
| − | running CCF, was 'encouraging sympathetic people' to
| |
| − | attend CCF conferences.(9) There is no evidence that
| |
| − | Crosland was witting of the CIA connection. (And none
| |
| − | that he was wasn't, either.) Peter Coleman(10) lists
| |
| − | Gaitskell, Jenkins, Crosland, Rita Hinden, Patrick
| |
| − | Gordon-Walker, John Strachey, Dennis Healey and
| |
| − | Roderick Macfarquhar as Labour writers published in
| |
| − | Encounter. In 1960 editor Melvin Lasky wrote to fellow
| |
| − | CCF officer, John Hunt, referring to 'an enormous
| |
| − | friendly feeling for Encounter' in the centre and
| |
| − | right wing of the Labour Party.(11)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The revisionist wing of the Labour Party also had
| |
| − | Forward, the less glamorous (and poorer) Labour
| |
| − | weekly, set up to combat the influence of Tribune.
| |
| − | Money for Forward came from Alan Sainsbury, Chairman
| |
| − | of the retailers Sainsbury (whose son was to fund the
| |
| − | Social Democratic Party in the early 1980s), Henry
| |
| − | Walston, the land-owner, and the restaurateur, Charles
| |
| − | Forte.(12) There was also the $3000 'expenses' paid
| |
| − | made to Hugh Gaitskell for a talk to the Jewish Labour
| |
| − | Committee in the USA.(13)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Socialist Commentary
| |
| − | As well as Encounter and Forward there was the monthly
| |
| − | Socialist Commentary as a vehicle for the
| |
| − | anti-socialists in the Labour Party. Socialist
| |
| − | Commentary began life as a journal of an obscure
| |
| − | revisionist group of German refugees but by the early
| |
| − | 1950s it had been absorbed by the revisionist wing of
| |
| − | the Labour Party. In 1953 a 'Friends of Socialist
| |
| − | Commentary' group was set up with Gaitskell as
| |
| − | Treasurer.(14) 'Socialist Commentary and the Socialist
| |
| − | Union were plugged in direct to the USA's Marshall
| |
| − | Plan operation in Britain by virtue of the fact that
| |
| − | William Gausmann, Labour Information Officer in the
| |
| − | London mission, was a member of the journal's
| |
| − | editorial board.'(15)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The dominant figure in Socialist Commentary was its
| |
| − | editor for 20 years, Rita Hinden, who had been
| |
| − | co-founder of the Fabian Colonial Bureau in 1940. The
| |
| − | Bureau, and Hinden in particular, became an important
| |
| − | influence on the thinking of the Labour Party - and,
| |
| − | to some extent of the British state - on post-war
| |
| − | management of the empire.(16) Hinden was also a
| |
| − | participant in CCF functions, wrote for Encounter, and
| |
| − | was described by the CIA officer in charge of CCF,
| |
| − | Michael Josselson, as 'a good friend of ours', on
| |
| − | whose advice the CIA 'relied heavily ...for our
| |
| − | African operations.'(17) On her death Denis Healey,
| |
| − | who had written widely for Socialist Commentary's
| |
| − | American counterpart, New Leader, said that 'Only Sol
| |
| − | Levitas of the American New Leader had a comparable
| |
| − | capacity for exercising a wide political influence
| |
| − | with negligible material resources.' But as Richard
| |
| − | Fletcher commented, 'He [Healey] obviously hadn't paid
| |
| − | a visit to Companies House whose register shows that
| |
| − | in recent years Socialist Commentary has been drawing
| |
| − |
| |
| − | apparently also unaware that Sol Levitas was also
| |
| − | taking the CIA shilling.)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Socialist Commentary has got to be CIA but there is
| |
| − | not a shred of direct evidence that I am aware of.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The social democratic network
| |
| − | By the mid 1950s there was a palpable social
| |
| − | democratic network operating in and around the Labour
| |
| − | Party in Britain and reaching out into the British and
| |
| − | American states, both overt and covert. The career of
| |
| − | Saul Rose in this period illustrates this. After
| |
| − | wartime service in Army Intelligence, Rose was a
| |
| − | lecturer at Aberdeen University, before becoming the
| |
| − | Labour Party's International Secretary for three
| |
| − | years. He then moved to the then recently established
| |
| − | St Antony's College at Oxford, one of two British
| |
| − | institutions which sponsored Congress of Cultural
| |
| − | Freedom seminars in the UK. The other was Ditchley
| |
| − | Manor, Oxford. Both were outposts of the Foreign
| |
| − | Office/MI6 network.(19) (Former MP Dick Taverne,
| |
| − | mentioned recently that as as young man he went to a
| |
| − | Young Fabian conference at the other major Foreign
| |
| − | Office country retreat, Wilton Park....(20))
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The same elements are visible in the contributors to
| |
| − | the short-lived Fabian International Review, begun in
| |
| − | 1953. In its three years its contributors included two
| |
| − | academics from St Antony's, Gausmann, the Labour
| |
| − | Information Officer at the US embassy in London,
| |
| − | Douglas Jay, William Rodgers, and Mary Benson of the
| |
| − | Africa Bureau.(21)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | It is easy at this distance to be indignant about
| |
| − | Labour politicians hobnobbing with the CIA. But in
| |
| − | 1955, say, when Saul Rose left his job as Labour's
| |
| − | International Secretary, the media simply did not
| |
| − | discuss the Anglo-American intelligence and security
| |
| − | services. There were Americans with money scattered
| |
| − | about the higher reaches of the Labour movement in
| |
| − | Britain; but Americans with money had been scattered
| |
| − | about Britain since the war years, they had been
| |
| − | Britain's allies only a few years before, they were
| |
| − | anti-Stalinist - and some of them, the labour officers
| |
| − | in one guise or another, were originally from the US
| |
| − | labour movement.(22) I think it likely that in the
| |
| − | 1950s the Labour revisionists, the Hindens and
| |
| − | Croslands, believed they were taking part in a
| |
| − | 'liberal conspiracy'(23) against the Soviet Union,
| |
| − | with progressive, democratic forces - people they
| |
| − | perceived to be like themselves. But from the CIA's
| |
| − | point of view, they were being run in one of the most
| |
| − | successful psy-war operations of the Cold War. This
| |
| − | operation had as one of its aims the struggle against
| |
| − | Stalinism; but the Americans sponsored and funded the
| |
| − | European social democrats not because they were social
| |
| − | democrats, but because social democracy was the best
| |
| − | ideological vehicle for the major aim of the
| |
| − | programme: to ensure that the governments of Europe
| |
| − | continued to allow American capital into their
| |
| − | economies with the minimum of restrictions. This aim
| |
| − | the revisionists in the Labour Party chose not to look
| |
| − | at. As the history of US imperialism since the war
| |
| − | shows, the US is basically uninterested in the
| |
| − | ideology of host governments, and has supported
| |
| − | everything from social democrats to the most feral,
| |
| − | military dictatorships in South and Central America.
| |
| − | But its other aims went largely unrecognised. (This,
| |
| − | perhaps, is a tribute to the skill of the US personnel
| |
| − | running the operations.) Looking at the networking of
| |
| − | the social democrats in the these post-war years, the
| |
| − | intimacy between US labour attache, Joe Godson, and
| |
| − | Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, which once looked so
| |
| − | extraordinary, now looks less some awful aberration -
| |
| − | and triumph for Godson - than business as usual.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The end-of-ideology ideology
| |
| − | The strategically important thing for the United
| |
| − | States about the revisionist's version of socialism
| |
| − | was its central conclusion that ownership of economic
| |
| − | assets was no longer of paramount importance. (In the
| |
| − | USA, sociologist Daniel Bell was arguing the same
| |
| − | thesis, sponsored by the same people, under the rubric
| |
| − | of 'the end of ideology'.) This was obviously the key
| |
| − | line for US capital which wanted to penetrate the
| |
| − | world's markets and was meeting resistance from people
| |
| − | who called them imperialists. Officially the US was
| |
| − | also opposed to colonialism - especially British and
| |
| − | French; imperialism - especially British;
| |
| − | totalitarianism (except where dictators were the best
| |
| − | allies US business could find) and nationalism -
| |
| − | except Americanism, which was a universal creed of
| |
| − | such perspicacity and moral purity as to be beyond
| |
| − | objection. The one to take seriously among that
| |
| − | quartet is nationalism. In democratic Europe the CIA
| |
| − | chiefly funded those who were not nationalists. To US
| |
| − | capital, socialism was functionally simply a form of
| |
| − | exclusionary, anti-American, economic nationalism:
| |
| − | communism the most extreme of all.(24) The
| |
| − | internationalists in democratic Europe in the
| |
| − | immediate post-war years were, mostly, on the liberal
| |
| − | or centre left; the European right was, mostly,
| |
| − | nationalist. In France De Gaulle opposed US capital.
| |
| − | (And the CIA was to help finance the OAS against him.)
| |
| − | In Britain it was the nationalist Tories and some of
| |
| − | the socialist left who voted against the Marshall Plan
| |
| − | in the House of Commons. The US government only had
| |
| − | one operating criterion where a foreign government was
| |
| − | concerned: is it willing to allow US capital in or
| |
| − | not? It was called anti-communism, but it was also
| |
| − | anti-nationalism. Yes, it was precisely 'Taking the
| |
| − | teeth out of British socialism', as Richard Fletcher
| |
| − | put it in his seminal piece in 1977;(25) but it could
| |
| − | just as accurately have been called 'Taking the teeth
| |
| − | out of British economic nationalism'.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The US-supported drive by the revisionists in the
| |
| − | Labour Party had its first major set-back with the
| |
| − | rise of CND, climaxing with the famous narrow majority
| |
| − | in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament at the
| |
| − | party conference in 1960. To the Gaitskellites in the
| |
| − | Labour Party it was little more than another communist
| |
| − | conspiracy. Gaitskell's leadership of the party had
| |
| − | largely been defined by the struggle with the left
| |
| − | (real and imaginary), and he believed the CPGB had
| |
| − | infiltrated the Labour Party, and was manipulating the
| |
| − | apparently Labour Left gathered round the newspaper
| |
| − | Tribune.(26) The Gaitskellites' response to the 1960
| |
| − | resolution had three dimensions: the formation of a
| |
| − | party faction, the Campaign for Democratic Socialism
| |
| − | (CDS); in the unions, the work of IRIS cells and other
| |
| − | anti-communist groups; and the use of the party
| |
| − | machine itself.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The Campaign for Democratic Socialism (CDS)
| |
| − | While the Gaitskellites dominated the PLP leadership,
| |
| − | and had the support of the major unions, they had
| |
| − | socialist opposition among the party's members.
| |
| − | Gaitskell needed a faction. What became the Campaign
| |
| − | for Democratic Socialism began before the pro-CND
| |
| − | Labour Party conference resolution in February 1960
| |
| − | when William Rodgers, Secretary of the Fabian Society,
| |
| − | a part of the social democratic network in the UK,
| |
| − | organised a letter of support for Gaitskell from
| |
| − | prospective parliamentary candidates. Among the
| |
| − | fifteen who raised their heads above the parapets in
| |
| − | this way were:
| |
| − |
| |
| − | * Maurice Foley, who had been secretary of the British
| |
| − | section of the European Youth Campaign from
| |
| − | 1951-59,(27) and later became a Foreign Office
| |
| − | Minister and trustee of the Ariel Foundation; (28)
| |
| − | * Ben Hooberman, a lawyer involved in the ETU
| |
| − | ballot-rigging case;
| |
| − | * Bryan Magee, who subsequently became a Labour MP and
| |
| − | then joined the SDP;
| |
| − | * Dick Taverne, who later stood against the Labour
| |
| − | Party as 'Democratic Labour' and joined the SDP;
| |
| − | * Shirley Williams, one of the 'Gang of Four', who
| |
| − | founded the SDP;
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Shortly after, a steering committee, containing
| |
| − | Crosland, Jenkins and Gordon-Walker, was set up with
| |
| − | Rodgers as chair. The group began working on a
| |
| − | manifesto to be released in the event of Gaitskell's
| |
| − | defeat in the forthcoming defence debate at the Party
| |
| − | conference. On 24 November 1960, after the narrow
| |
| − | defeat for Gaitskell's line at the conference, this
| |
| − | group announced itself as the Campaign for Democratic
| |
| − | Socialism, with Rodgers as chair.(29) Immediately
| |
| − | after the formation of CDS, after his speech at
| |
| − | Scarborough Gaitskell 'consulted Sarah Barker [the
| |
| − | party's National Agent] who advised him that the
| |
| − | Campaign could have his distant blessing'.(30)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | It set up permanent headquarters, officially 'financed
| |
| − | by contributions from individual members of the Labour
| |
| − | Party'. Ever since the Richard Fletcher article on CDS
| |
| − | et al in 1977 there have been questions about how this
| |
| − | operation was funded. In mid November 1960 - i.e. a
| |
| − | fortnight after the launch - Rodgers 'reported to the
| |
| − | steering committee that many small donations had been
| |
| − | received, together with a large sum from a source who
| |
| − | wished to remain anonymous.' As we saw above, Charles
| |
| − | Forte donated money to the founders of Forward, and in
| |
| − | his autobiography he quotes a letter from Gaitskell,
| |
| − | thanking him for his financial generosity. This is
| |
| − | undated unfortunately, but from the context it is 1961
| |
| − | or thereabouts.(31)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | This donation, whatever it was, enabled CDS to have
| |
| − | 'field workers in the constituencies and unions, whom
| |
| − | it supported with travelling expenses, literature and
| |
| − | organisational back-up, and other publications, plus a
| |
| − | regular bulletin campaign, circulated free of charge
| |
| − | to a large mailing list within the movement. And all
| |
| − | this was produced without a single subscription-paying
| |
| − | member.'(32) John Diamond was the CDS fund-raiser.(33)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | A 1961 letter in CDS Campaign announced support from
| |
| − | 45 MPs including Austen Albu (who wrote for IRIS),
| |
| − | Crosland, Diamond (who joined the SDP), Donnelly
| |
| − | (Desmond), who resigned in '68; Roy Jenkins (founder
| |
| − | and leader of the SDP), Roy Mason, Christopher Mayhew
| |
| − | (who joined the Liberals) and Reg Prentice (who joined
| |
| − | the Tories).(34) The following year were added new MPs
| |
| − | William Rodgers (another of the 'Gang of Four') and
| |
| − | Dick Taverne (who defected as a Democratic Labour MP,
| |
| − | later SDP) The Gaitskellites' historian, Stephen
| |
| − | Haseler noted, 'The whole Central Leadership of the
| |
| − | Party in Parliament, with the single exception of
| |
| − | Wilson, were Campaign sympathisers.'(35) In the
| |
| − | party's grassroots their significance is harder to
| |
| − | assess but a 1962 study found that CDS did have some
| |
| − | measurable effect in swinging perhaps as many as 1 in
| |
| − | 3 of the Constituency Labour Parties in which they
| |
| − | were active.(36)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | In the unions
| |
| − | Working in some of the unions were clandestine
| |
| − | anti-communist groupings, the best known of which was
| |
| − | the AEU's 'club', and IRIS discussed above.(37) One of
| |
| − | the people bridging the gap between the parliamentary
| |
| − | and trade union wings of the movement was Charles
| |
| − | Pannell, Secretary of the Parliamentary Trade Union
| |
| − | Group of MP's and an AEU-sponsored MP.(38) Pannell
| |
| − | told the American academic Irving Richter, of his
| |
| − | 'close relationship' with the General Secretary of the
| |
| − | AEU, Cecil Hallett,(39) and of their combined efforts
| |
| − | to defeat the Left in the industrial and political
| |
| − | wings of the movement, by building IRIS 'cells'.
| |
| − | Pannell told Richter that he, Hallet, and the IRIS
| |
| − | cells working inside the AEU, were crucial in
| |
| − | overturning the AEU's 1960 vote for CND and so
| |
| − | restoring Labour Party's policy to being pro-nuclear,
| |
| − | pro-NATO.(40) Birmingham MP Denis Howells 'devoted
| |
| − | himself full time from the beginning of the Campaign
| |
| − | until his reelection to Parliament and then after that
| |
| − | part time to reversing the votes in the Trade
| |
| − | Unions....[and] played a very important part.'(41)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | After the 1960 Party conference 20 members of the TUC
| |
| − | General Council signed a statement supporting NATO.
| |
| − | Four of them, James Crawford, Harry Douglass, John
| |
| − | Boyd and Sid Greene, were or were to become, officers
| |
| − | (on paper, at any rate) of IRIS: a fifth, Sir Tom
| |
| − | O'Brien, was still on the notepaper of Common Cause.
| |
| − | There were public gestures of support for CDS from
| |
| − | messrs Carron, Williamson and Webber, Ron Smith (Post
| |
| − | Office Workers), Dame Flora Hancock, Anne Goodwin, W.
| |
| − | Tallon and Jim Conway (both AEU), and Joe Godson's
| |
| − | friend, the NUM's Sam Watson.(42)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Using the party organisation
| |
| − | A committee 'consisting of the Party Leader, the Chief
| |
| − | Whip, Bill Rodgers, the secretary of the right-wing
| |
| − | ginger group the Campaign for Democratic Socialism,
| |
| − | and other influential figures' was formed and met
| |
| − | regularly 'to secure the selection of right-wing
| |
| − | candidates for winnable constituencies'.(43) Professor
| |
| − | George Jones, who had also been in CDS, commented that
| |
| − | 'the relationship between CDS and the regional
| |
| − | organisers of the Labour Party was very
| |
| − | important.'(44) The CDS had the support of at least
| |
| − | half of the Regional Organisers, though how many is in
| |
| − | dispute. Seyd suggests seven out of the party's
| |
| − | twelve. Shaw thinks that Seyd must have got this wrong
| |
| − | because one of the seven was left-winger Ron Hayward,
| |
| − | who denies it.(45) CDS organiser Bill Rodgers said
| |
| − | that the regional organisers
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'were fairly well disposed, including the youngest of
| |
| − | them who was called Ron Hayward, was very keen to have
| |
| − | CDS making a contribution in the areas in which he was
| |
| − | responsible..... We believed that the party could be
| |
| − | saved from itself and Hugh Gaitskell offered the best
| |
| − | prospect of saving it. Once we had established that
| |
| − | thought in the minds of the regional organisers, they
| |
| − | acquiesced in what we did.'(46)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Partnership of the two wings
| |
| − | There are glimpses of the two wings of the labour
| |
| − | movement working together. Cecil Hallett described a
| |
| − | meeting between IRIS and the Trade Union Group of MPs
| |
| − | in 1955 addressed by the CIA's labour man in Europe,
| |
| − | Irving Brown.(47) CDS member Bernard Donoughue
| |
| − | recalled how
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'In the summer of 1964, the MP for Finsbury died and I
| |
| − | was telephoned by a friend, a left-wing journalist,
| |
| − | and told that I must watch out, that there had been a
| |
| − | meeting of key left-wing people and they had decided
| |
| − | to capture Finsbury. They had a candidate, they had
| |
| − | approached a number of people in the constituency,
| |
| − | they had 27 votes, the candidate was going to be Clive
| |
| − | Jenkins. I contacted one or two friends and the list
| |
| − | of CDS people in Finsbury, including the Post Office
| |
| − | and Telegraph Union people and they organised very
| |
| − | actively. It emerged that the left, despite its
| |
| − | incompetence,(sic) had their candidate and had 27
| |
| − | potential votes. CDS campaigned in the constituency
| |
| − | and we won by 31 to 27, that was the summer of
| |
| − | 1964.'(48)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | In the recollection of the candidate concerned, Clive
| |
| − | Jenkins, it was 1963. He was 'approached by a number
| |
| − | of trade unions and ward Labour parties to stand for
| |
| − | selection'. At the TUC at Blackpool he was tipped off
| |
| − | that the General Management Committee of the
| |
| − | Shoreditch and Finsbury constituency had been sent a
| |
| − | document which described him as, among other things,
| |
| − | the 'chief Trotskyist in Great Britain'. This had been
| |
| − | given to journalists by none other than Jim Matthews,
| |
| − | the national industrial officer of the Municipal and
| |
| − | General Workers Union, and an officer of Common Cause.
| |
| − | Jenkins sued, collected damages and costs and later
| |
| − | speculated about a CIA connection:
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'I was told by reliable friends that the anonymous
| |
| − | letter, which had been mailed to every member of the
| |
| − | selection committee came from a man who was seemingly
| |
| − | a member of the CIA and operating under the cover of a
| |
| − | petty news agency.'(49)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | It is interesting to see Donoughue referring to 'the
| |
| − | Post Office and Telegraph Union people'. I presume he
| |
| − | means the Union of Post Officer Workers, one of the
| |
| − | British unions with which the CIA is known to have
| |
| − | worked in the 1960s. In the 1950s Peter D. Newell was
| |
| − | an active member of the Socialist Party of Great
| |
| − | Britain. He worked as a draughtsman but wanted a
| |
| − | change of career. It was suggested to him that he join
| |
| − | the Post Office Initially not keen on what he saw it
| |
| − | was a downward move, he has recalled how 'quite subtly
| |
| − | (I now realise) it was suggested that once in the PO,
| |
| − | I would soon be able to write forThe Post , the
| |
| − | official fortnightly journal of the UPW [Union of Post
| |
| − | Office Workers] - and be paid for it!'(50) He duly
| |
| − | joined the Post Office, was contacted by Norman Stagg,
| |
| − | the editor of the journal almost immediately, and
| |
| − | began writing an anonymous, anti-communist column for
| |
| − | it under the by-line of 'Bellman'. For his column
| |
| − | Stagg provided source material from the ICFTU, IRIS
| |
| − | and the AFL-CIO. At the time the Union of Post Office
| |
| − | Workers was a member of the trade union international
| |
| − | body Postal, Telegraph and Telephone International.
| |
| − | (PTTI) Like many of the these international trade
| |
| − | union organisations, the PTTI was penetrated - some
| |
| − | would say run - by the CIA.(51) Its president was the
| |
| − | late Joe Beirne of the Communication Workers of
| |
| − | America. Beirne was also founder and
| |
| − | Secretary-Treasurer of American Institute for Free
| |
| − | Labor Development (AIFLD), created and run by the
| |
| − | CIA.(52) As far as it is possible to be sure of
| |
| − | anything in this field without a confession from the
| |
| − | man himself or his case officer, Joe Beirne was a
| |
| − | major asset of the CIA in the American and world
| |
| − | labour movements.(53)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Social democratic centralism
| |
| − | What Eric Shaw wittily calls social democratic
| |
| − | centralism, the attempt by the right to police the
| |
| − | entire Labour Party and trade union membership, peaked
| |
| − | in 1962. In March 1961 five MPs, including Michael
| |
| − | Foot, were expelled from the Parliamentary party for
| |
| − | voting against the Tory government's defence
| |
| − | estimates. The Gaitskellites repulsed the
| |
| − | unilateralists at the annual conference that year; and
| |
| − | in the Labour Party its 'personnel committee', the
| |
| − | organisational subcommittee, was dominated by Ray
| |
| − | Gunter MP(54) and George Brown, a 'CIA source', and
| |
| − | serviced by the Party's National Agent's Department,
| |
| − | which received its information from IRD and others.
| |
| − | Then things went wrong. Determined upon a final purge
| |
| − | of the Parliamentary party, George Brown approached
| |
| − | MI5, via the journalist Chapman Pincher, for evidence
| |
| − | of Soviet links to Labour MP's believed to be 'fellow
| |
| − | travellers'. But MI5 declined, apparently because
| |
| − | afraid that to do so would reveal their sources within
| |
| − | the PLP;(55) and then, with the Macmillan government
| |
| − | in what appeared to be terminal decline, Gaitskell
| |
| − | died suddenly and the right in the Parliamentary Party
| |
| − | - and the Anglo-American intelligence and security
| |
| − | services - saw the party leadership slip from the
| |
| − | Gaitskellites' hands as Harold Wilson won the
| |
| − | leadership election - and then the general election of
| |
| − | 1964.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Notes
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 1. There is no detailed examination of this as far as
| |
| − | I know and I am not even sure how many such programmes
| |
| − | were run. Roy Hattersley recently commented that his
| |
| − | first visit to the US was paid for by 'something which
| |
| − | was laughingly called The Young Leaders' Program'. The
| |
| − | Guardian, 27 February 1995. In his memoir, A Bag of
| |
| − | Boiled Sweets (Faber and Faber, 1995) pp. 77-8, the
| |
| − | Conservative MP, Julian Critchley describes how, upon
| |
| − | letting the Tory Party Whips know that he had never
| |
| − | been to the United States, he was immediately fixed up
| |
| − | with a six week freebie courtesy of the US embassy in
| |
| − | London.
| |
| − | 2. Carew p. 137
| |
| − | 3. Ibid. pp.189/90. The British trade union whose
| |
| − | leadership responded most enthusiastically to these
| |
| − | American overtures was the General and Municipal
| |
| − | Workers' Union (GMWU) and it 'provided from among its
| |
| − | leading officials half the British participants in the
| |
| − | university trade union courses at Harvard and
| |
| − | Columbia...' Ibid. p. 191. GMWU General Secretary, Tom
| |
| − | Williamson, was one of the participants at the first
| |
| − | meeting of the Bilderberg Group in 1954. (Eringer p.
| |
| − | 49) Other British participants included Hugh Gaitskell
| |
| − | and Dennis Healey, who discusses the Bilderberg
| |
| − | meetings in his memoir, The Time of My Life.
| |
| − | 4. Smith, OSS p. 368.
| |
| − | 5. Lasch p. 332 The 1951 CCF conference in Delhi was
| |
| − | explicitly a reply to a 'World Peace Conference'
| |
| − | sponsored by the Soviet Union.
| |
| − | 6. Dittberner p. 112. Mr Coleman's objectivity on this
| |
| − | matter can be seen by his description of CIA officer,
| |
| − | Irving Brown, as 'European representative of the AFL',
| |
| − | the cover story even the Americans have abandoned.
| |
| − | Coleman p. 34.
| |
| − | 7. Later a member of the editorial board of the
| |
| − | Catholic magazine,The Tablet This is the Hollis family
| |
| − | in Hollis and Carter, the Catholic publishers of the
| |
| − | Common Cause Bulletin.
| |
| − | 8. Coleman p. 110 'Finally, Lasky moved Encounter
| |
| − | closer to the Hugh Gaitskell wing of the British
| |
| − | Labour Party.... Encounter became one of the principal
| |
| − | publications in which C.A.R. Crosland developed his
| |
| − | "revisionist" social democratic, Keynesian program'.
| |
| − | Coleman p. 185
| |
| − | 9. Hirsch and Fletcher pp. 59 and 60. Labour Party
| |
| − | leader Hugh Gaitskell attended the conferences in in
| |
| − | 1955, 57, 58 and 62.
| |
| − | 10. p. 73
| |
| − | 11. Coleman p. 185. Roy Jenkins, splendidly
| |
| − | insouciant,on Encounter: 'We had all known that it had
| |
| − | been heavily subsidised from American sources, and it
| |
| − | did not seem to me worse that these should turn out to
| |
| − | be a US Government agency than, as I had vaguely
| |
| − | understood, a Cincinnati gin distiller.' Jenkins,
| |
| − | Life, p. 118
| |
| − | 12. Francis Williams p. 309
| |
| − | 13. '...which helped him underwrite the costs of
| |
| − | Forward.' Carew pp. 129 and 30
| |
| − | 14. Haseler, Gaitskellites p. 68
| |
| − | 15. Carew p. 245
| |
| − | 16. The Bureau 'enjoyed a direct and amiable
| |
| − | relationship with the Colonial Office, its advice was
| |
| − | always considered if not always followed.' Pugh p.
| |
| − | 222. Another commentator's assessment was that
| |
| − | 'Officials at the Colonial Office came to respect her
| |
| − | knowledge, judgement and persistence.' Labour MP and
| |
| − | fellow Bureau member, W. Arthur Lewis, quoted in the
| |
| − | entry on Hinden in the Dictionary of Labour Biography,
| |
| − | vol. 2, Macmillan 1974.
| |
| − | 17. She visited India and Japan on a CCF-sponsored
| |
| − | trip after the Suez crisis. Fletcher in Agee, Dirty
| |
| − | Work p. 195
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'the small capital grant (a modest bequest) on which
| |
| − | it had so far survived' in the account of Desai.
| |
| − | Commenting on the closure of Socialist Commentary in
| |
| − | 1978, Desai writes (p. 174) that it 'had always
| |
| − | operated on a shoestring budget which had to be
| |
| − | supplemented by the dedication and persuasive power of
| |
| − |
| |
| − | was a lot of money in the mid 1970s when Fletcher
| |
| − | found this out. The accounts of Socialist Commentary
| |
| − | were prepared by the accountancy practice of John
| |
| − | Diamond MP, one of the leading Gaitskellites, who
| |
| − | later joined the SDP and is now in the House of Lords.
| |
| − | He was also, for example, the Honorary Treasurer of
| |
| − | the Labour Committee for Europe. See Finer, Appendix
| |
| − | 2. In this latter role John Campbell in his biography
| |
| − | of Roy Jenkins, p. 51, states that Diamond was
| |
| − | 'charged with raising money that did not come from the
| |
| − | City of London.
| |
| − | 19. Coleman p. 260 for the CCF connection. St
| |
| − | Antony's, Richard Deacon wrote in his The British
| |
| − | Connection, was 'an unofficial annex of MI6 in the
| |
| − | fifties.' p. 259
| |
| − | 20. Dick Taverne, Institute for Historical Research
| |
| − | (IHR) Witness Statement on CDS, 1990, p. 8
| |
| − | 21. Of the Africa Bureau, Anthony Verrier wrote:
| |
| − | 'liberal, UK-based....on which [Colonial Secretary]
| |
| − | Macleod relied greatly for detailed background
| |
| − | intelligence on African independence movements. Unlike
| |
| − | some liberal organisations, the Africa Bureau was
| |
| − | never troubled by the attentions of the security
| |
| − | services or the Metropolitan Special Branch.' Verrier,
| |
| − | The Road to Zimbabwe, p. 335. From an old SIS hand
| |
| − | like AV, this is running up a flag and shouting
| |
| − | 'spook'.
| |
| − | 22. There had been contacts between the British TUC
| |
| − | and the U.S. labour movement ever since the late 19th.
| |
| − | century. See Marjorie Nicholson pp. 27 and 28. These
| |
| − | contacts were sufficiently intimate for Sir Walter
| |
| − | Citrine to work with senior figures from the US AFL in
| |
| − | one of the many front groups set up by British
| |
| − | intelligence to persuade US public opinion to support
| |
| − | the war in Europe. Mahl, thesis, p. 75.
| |
| − | 23. The title of Coleman's study of CCF.
| |
| − | 24. The best exposition of this thesis is in Fred. L.
| |
| − | Block.
| |
| − | 25. Richard Fletcher, 'Who Were They Travelling with?'
| |
| − | in Hirsch and Fletcher.
| |
| − | 26. For this latter belief, to my knowledge, the
| |
| − | Gaitskellites produced no evidence. Some of the Labour
| |
| − | Right proved incredibly gullible when it came to this
| |
| − | 'communist conspiracy', accepting as genuine the most
| |
| − | obvious forgeries. See for example pp. 224-6 of Jack
| |
| − | and Bessie Braddock's memoir The Braddocks,
| |
| − | (Macdonald, London, 1963) for a particularly choice
| |
| − | example, passed to them by J. Bernard Hutton, who
| |
| − | fronted several such forgeries. Who produced the
| |
| − | forgeries? We do not know, but my guess would be IRD.
| |
| − | 27. This was funded by the CIA, though Foley has
| |
| − | denied knowing this. See Bloch and Fitzgerald p. 106
| |
| − | 28. On Ariel see ibid pp. 151-2 and Kisch pp. 67-8.
| |
| − | 29. Haseler, Gaitskellites p. 211
| |
| − | 30. David Marquand, IHR CDS Witness Statement, 1990,
| |
| − | p. 6. At the same seminar Bill Jones noted 'the
| |
| − | importance of Philip Williams...Philip had a fantastic
| |
| − | network of MPs'. IHR CDS Witness Statement, p. 13
| |
| − | 31. Hirsch and Fletcher p. 62. See Forte p. 81 where
| |
| − | Gaitskell writes, 'things have gone remarkably well
| |
| − | inside the Party. And for this a very large amount of
| |
| − | credit must go to our friends in the Campaign for
| |
| − | Democratic Socialism, which you have helped so
| |
| − | generously.' (emphasis added.)
| |
| − | 32. Hirsch and Fletcher p. 62
| |
| − | 33. Windlesham p. 107
| |
| − | 34. Haseler p. 217
| |
| − | 35. Ibid p. 219
| |
| − | 36. Driver p. 97 citing Political Quarterly.
| |
| − | 37. There are odd traces of such groupings elsewhere:
| |
| − | In Labour's Northern Voice in May 1969 Chris Norwood
| |
| − | MP reported on the the 'Progressive Labour Group' in
| |
| − | the shop-workers' union, USDAW, originally formed to
| |
| − | fight communists but still operating and producing
| |
| − | lists of approved candidates, the core activity of
| |
| − | such a caucus.
| |
| − | 38. Windlesham fn 3 p. 82
| |
| − | 39. Hallett was on the Common Cause council in the
| |
| − | fifties.
| |
| − | 40. Richter pp. 144 and 5
| |
| − | 41. IHR CDS Witness Statement p. 14
| |
| − | 42. Windlesham p. 109
| |
| − | 43. Shaw Discipline p. 114
| |
| − | 44. IHR CDS Witness Statement p. 24
| |
| − | 45. Shaw fn 150, p. 331
| |
| − | 46. Rodgers, IHR, CDS Witness Statement p. 25
| |
| − | 47. Richter p. 151. George Brown, according to Tom
| |
| − | Bower's recent biography of Sir Dick White, was a 'CIA
| |
| − | source'. See p. 356
| |
| − | 48. Bernard Donoughue, IHR CDS pp. 23/24
| |
| − | 49. Jenkins pp. 49-51. I asked Jenkins about this in
| |
| − | 1995 but he was unable to remember further details.
| |
| − | 50. Letter to author, 25 May 1990.
| |
| − | 51. See Agee, CIA Diary p. 618
| |
| − | 52. Newell was introduced to Beirne at the UPW
| |
| − | conference at Blackpool. Newell wrote of this episode
| |
| − | in his life in
| |
| − | Freedom, September 25 1976, and more recently in
| |
| − | Perspectives number 9, 1995. On the late Joseph Beirne
| |
| − | and CIA see Counterspy, February 1974 pp. 42 and 43
| |
| − | and May 1979 p.13, and Agee CIA Dairy, p. 603.
| |
| − | 53. On AIFLD see Fred Hirsch 'The Labour Movement:
| |
| − | Penetration Point for U.S. Intelligence and
| |
| − | Transnationals' in Hirsch and Fletcher, and 'The
| |
| − | AFL-CIA' by former US Air Force Intelligence officer
| |
| − | Winslow Peck in Frazier (ed.).
| |
| − | 54. In 1968 he became a director of IRIS.
| |
| − | 55. It also possible, of course, that they declined
| |
| − | because they had no such information, either because
| |
| − | none existed, or because they were too incompetent to
| |
| − | collect it.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ----------------------------------------------------------------
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The subversion hunters and the social democrats in the
| |
| − | 1970s
| |
| − | The arrival of Harold Wilson as leader of the Labour
| |
| − | Party must have been a serious shock to the
| |
| − | Anglo-American intelligence services. One minute the
| |
| − | party was in the complete control of a faction which
| |
| − | they had been promoting - 'running' would be too
| |
| − | strong - since about 1950, and the next the party, and
| |
| − | the second most important part of the NATO alliance,
| |
| − | is in the hands of someone who has spent the post-war
| |
| − | years going to and from Moscow as an East-West trader!
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The rise of the left in the Labour Party and trade
| |
| − | union movement, symbolised by the ascent of Wilson,
| |
| − | was being monitored by IRD and its satellites, the
| |
| − | Economic League, IRIS, Common Cause - and by Brian
| |
| − | Crozier, who raised the alarm in the 1970 collection
| |
| − | he edited, We Will Bury You..(73) Working the same
| |
| − | seam - presumably for different sponsors - was former
| |
| − | Army officer and Conservative MP, Geoffrey
| |
| − | Stewart-Smith. In Stewart-Smith's journal, East-West
| |
| − | Digest, in 1972, for example, we find the names who
| |
| − | appeared in Crozier's 1970 anthology: Harry Welton of
| |
| − | the Economic League, who had been in the anti-left
| |
| − | business for 'fifty fighting years', to cite the title
| |
| − | of the League's in-house history, and David Williams,
| |
| − | the main writer for the Common Cause Bulletin.(74)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The abolition of the proscription list
| |
| − | Anxiety among the subversive-watchers heightened
| |
| − | throughout the Heath years as the insurrection in
| |
| − | Northern Ireland continued and conflict with the
| |
| − | labour movement on the mainland UK increased, and
| |
| − | leapt enormously with the abolition of the
| |
| − | Proscription List of the Labour Party in 1973. Most of
| |
| − | the Parliamentary Labour Party at the time seems to
| |
| − | have barely noticed its abolition, so insignificant
| |
| − | did the event seem. Of the various members of the
| |
| − | Wilson governments who have published memoirs or
| |
| − | dairies covering this period, only Tony Benn thought
| |
| − | it an event worth recording.(75) But to the
| |
| − | subversion-watchers it showed the extent of the CPGB's
| |
| − | influence in the Labour Party. Chapman Pincher at the
| |
| − | Daily Express, for example, one of the outlets for the
| |
| − | anti-subversion lobby, wrote nearly twenty years later
| |
| − | that 'the left-wing extremists who had infiltrated the
| |
| − | National Executive of the Labour Party induced the
| |
| − | 1973 Party conference to abolish the Proscribed list.'
| |
| − | (emphases added)(76) But to what end? Pincher tells us
| |
| − | it 'meant that even MPs could join the World Peace
| |
| − | Council, the British-Soviet Friendship Society and
| |
| − | other outfits run essentially for the benefit of
| |
| − | Moscow.'(77) But these never amounted to much in the
| |
| − | 1950s, and meant less than nothing in 1973. It was
| |
| − | precisely because those groups meant so little that
| |
| − | the list was abolished as an anachronism.(78)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | For the subversion hunters the Proscription List
| |
| − | disappearing was one more event in a bad year, for
| |
| − | 1973 also saw the first assault on IRD by the rest of
| |
| − | the more detente-minded Foreign Office.(79) The next
| |
| − | year saw the Heath government's defeat at the hands of
| |
| − | the National Union of Mineworkers, in some part due to
| |
| − | a CPGB sympathiser named Arthur Scargill. By mid 1974
| |
| − | the anti-subversive chorus were all singing from the
| |
| − | same page and the theory of Soviet control through the
| |
| − | CPGB, through the trade unions, through the Labour
| |
| − | Party, was being broadcast by everything from the Tory
| |
| − | press to the activists with connections in the
| |
| − | intelligence services and the military.(80) This is
| |
| − | the background to the cries and alarums of 1974/5, the
| |
| − | talk of military coups and the formation of
| |
| − | semi-clandestine 'action groups' and militias by,
| |
| − | inter alia, former Deputy Chief of SIS, the late
| |
| − | George Kennedy Young, and the late David Stirling. The
| |
| − | trade unions were at the heart of the
| |
| − | subversive-hunters' theory, with the AEU the most
| |
| − | important of them. When David Stirling's grandiose
| |
| − | Better Britain-GB75 plans were 'blown' prematurely in
| |
| − | 1974, he abandoned them and joined forces with
| |
| − | TRUEMID, another group of anti-socialist former AEU
| |
| − | officials. (TRUEMID is discussed below.)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The Social Democratic Alliance (SDA)
| |
| − | Within the Labour Party itself there was activity to
| |
| − | combat the rise of the left. On the party political
| |
| − | axis two latterday Gaitskellites, Stephen Haseler and
| |
| − | Douglas Eden, in 1975 formed the Social Democratic
| |
| − | Alliance (SDA) and began the struggle with the left in
| |
| − | local London politics. (81) Over the next three years
| |
| − | the SDA, and Haseler in particular, received much
| |
| − | favourable newspaper coverage for their accounts of
| |
| − | the subversives' takeover of the Labour Party and
| |
| − | trade unions, much of it fanciful in the extreme.(82)
| |
| − | For example on the publication of his book, The Death
| |
| − | of British Democracy, Haseler wrote in The Times (29
| |
| − | April 1976) that 'we may now be on the verge of an
| |
| − | economy which will remove itself from the Western
| |
| − | trading system by import controls, strict control of
| |
| − | capital movements and eventually non-convertability of
| |
| − | the currency. At home this will involve rationing, the
| |
| − | direction of capital and labour and the final end of
| |
| − | the free trade union movement'; and in 1980, among the
| |
| − | Labour MPs Haseler and the SDA proposed to put up
| |
| − | candidates against, were those well-known
| |
| − | revolutionaries Stan Orme, Clive Soley, Neil Kincock
| |
| − | and Geoff Rooker! (83) Among the SDA's early
| |
| − | supporters was Peter Stephenson, then the editor of
| |
| − | Socialist Commentary.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | And the AEU
| |
| − | July 1974 saw the formation, with Common Cause
| |
| − | funding, of the Trade Union Education Centre for
| |
| − | Democratic Socialism (TUECDS), which described itself
| |
| − | as 'an independent trade union education body run by
| |
| − | politically-moderate trade unionists for
| |
| − | politically-moderate trade unionists'.(84) TUECDS was
| |
| − | launched in November 1974 with a lecture by the SDA's
| |
| − | Dr Stephen Haseler. The personnel involved in the
| |
| − | early stages of TUECDS's life were members of the AEU,
| |
| − | notably John Weakley, and the building workers' union
| |
| − | UCATT. Among those who had been attending the first
| |
| − | year's meetings were UCATT officials, AEU officials,
| |
| − | David Moller, a journalist from the Readers' Digest,
| |
| − | then still one of the most important psy-war outlets
| |
| − | for the CIA, the widow of Leslie Cannon, Lord Patrick
| |
| − | Gordon-Walker and Kate Losinska, then recently elected
| |
| − | president of the civil service union, the CPSA.(85)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | More former AEU officials, Ron Nodes, Sid Davies and
| |
| − | Ron McLaughlin, were involved in the formation of
| |
| − | TRUEMID, (the Movement for True Industrial Democracy
| |
| − | or the True Movement for Industrial Democracy, it's
| |
| − | been called both), launched in 1975 with finance from
| |
| − | a variety of industrial and City enterprises.(86)
| |
| − | TRUEMID did was IRIS had done: it tried to influence
| |
| − | the election of union officials by putting out
| |
| − | information about the supposed left in the union.
| |
| − | TRUEMID's activities were chiefly focused on the AEU,
| |
| − | the civil service union the CPSA and the electricians
| |
| − | union, the EETPU. David Stirling, after the collapse
| |
| − | of his GB 75 and Better Britain plans, was recruited
| |
| − | onto the TRUEMID council.(87)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Also reappearing in this period was the some time US
| |
| − | Labour Attache to Britain, Joseph Godson who, though
| |
| − | formally retired, had returned to the UK in 1971 and
| |
| − | continued with his labour attache work - pushing out
| |
| − | US views and interests among the British trade union
| |
| − | movement, and selecting trade unionists for freebies
| |
| − | to the US. Godson was a founder member of the Labour
| |
| − | Committee for TransAtlantic Understanding (LCTU), the
| |
| − | labour section of the British Atlantic Committee, a
| |
| − | NATO support group.(88) In May 1976 LCTU began the
| |
| − | Labour and Trade Union Press Service (LTUPS). On the
| |
| − | LTUPS editorial committee was the ubiquitous Peter
| |
| − | Stephenson, editor of the Gaitskellite Socialist
| |
| − | Commentary, and one of the early members of the Social
| |
| − | Democratic Alliance. Treasurer of the LTUPS was
| |
| − | General Secretary of the EEPTU, Frank Chapple, and its
| |
| − | chair was Bill Jordan of the AEU.(89)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Europe
| |
| − | The social democratic wing of the Labour Party had two
| |
| − | key positions: British membership of NATO and
| |
| − | retention of British nuclear weapons, and membership
| |
| − | of the EEC. After the defeat of CND at the Labour
| |
| − | conference of 1961 it was European Economic Community
| |
| − | (EEC) membership which became their great cause. With
| |
| − | this achieved with the EEC referendum vote 'yes' in
| |
| − | 1975, when it came to the ideological struggles within
| |
| − | the Labour Party in the mid and late 1970s, in David
| |
| − | Marquand's words, 'they lost the battle of ideas with
| |
| − | the Left by default ....they really didn't fight the
| |
| − | battle of ideas.'
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Support for EEC membership within the Labour Party had
| |
| − | been formally organised first in 1959 by the Labour
| |
| − | Common Market Committee (founders Roy Jenkins, Jack
| |
| − | Diamond and Norman Hart), which became the Labour
| |
| − | Committee for Europe in the mid 1960s. European unity
| |
| − | had been one of the projects favoured by the USA,
| |
| − | looking for good anti-Soviet alliances in the early
| |
| − | post-war era, and the European Movement had been
| |
| − | funded by the Agency.(90) As well as receiving the
| |
| − | support of the US, in the 1960s Gaitskellites Roy
| |
| − | Jenkins, Shirley Williams and William Rodgers were
| |
| − | among the regular attenders of the annual Anglo-German
| |
| − | Konigswinter conferences.(91) This time the social
| |
| − | democrats were being supported by the British Foreign
| |
| − | Office, which had decided by then that their future
| |
| − | lay in the Common Market.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The CDS, the Gaitskellites, never accepted Wilson as
| |
| − | the legitimate leader of the Labour Party and plotted
| |
| − | constantly against him. The personnel of the
| |
| − | Gaitskellites, the Labour Committee on Europe and the
| |
| − | CDS were virtually identical.(92) In the 1960s it was
| |
| − | the CDS that Harold Wilson identified as the group
| |
| − | working against him.(93) When the group formally broke
| |
| − | up it continued as a dining club, the 1963 Club. In
| |
| − | the early 1970s Tony Benn identified them as 'the old
| |
| − | Campaign for Democratic Socialism-Europe group'.(94)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | In 1970 the election of the Heath government meant
| |
| − | that another serious effort to get Britain in the EEC
| |
| − | would be made and the issue would divide the Labour
| |
| − | Party then in opposition. In early 1971 Tony Benn's
| |
| − | diary records him talking - with Roy Jenkins - of the
| |
| − | Common Market issue splitting the Labour Party.(95)
| |
| − | Ten months later, on October 19, after a pro- and
| |
| − | anti- clash in the Shadow Cabinet, Benn commented on
| |
| − | the emergence of 'a European Social Democrat wing in
| |
| − | the Parliamentary Party led by Bill Rodgers.'(96) This
| |
| − | group formally announced itself on 28 October 1971
| |
| − | when 69 pro-Market Labour MPs voted with the
| |
| − | Conservative government in favour of entry into the
| |
| − | EEC in principle. From then on the group operated as a
| |
| − | party within a party, with William Rodgers acting as
| |
| − | an unofficial whip.(97)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | A new social democratic party?
| |
| − | The leadership of the Parliamentary Gaitskellite
| |
| − | faction had fallen to Roy Jenkins, and as early as
| |
| − | 1970 some of that group has begun trying to get him to
| |
| − | lead the formation of a new party.(98) After the
| |
| − | Europe vote in 1971 Dick Taverne and Bill Rodgers went
| |
| − | to Jenkins and told him they should resign and form a
| |
| − | new party.(99) Jenkins declined. Taverne's selection
| |
| − | for the Lincoln seat had been organised by the
| |
| − | pro-CDS, pro-Europe, Labour Party regional organiser
| |
| − | for the area, Jim Cattermole.(100) In December 1972 MP
| |
| − | Taverne, at odds with his constituency party, and
| |
| − | about to be deselected, decided to fight them and
| |
| − | suggested again that Jenkins leave and form a new
| |
| − | party. Jenkins declined.(101) In 1973, after winning
| |
| − | the Lincoln by-election as a Democratic Labour
| |
| − | candidate, against the official Labour Party
| |
| − | candidate, Taverne formed the Campaign for Social
| |
| − | Democracy and sought Jenkins' support. Jenkins
| |
| − | declined.(102) That year, however, helped by Sir Fred
| |
| − | Hayday, former chair of the TUC, and Alf Allen, future
| |
| − | chair of the TUC, Jenkins did 'set up an institutional
| |
| − | framework' with moderate trade union leaders - a
| |
| − | regular dining group in the Charing Cross Hotel.(103)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | In December 1974 the Manifesto Group was formed within
| |
| − | the PLP. Described by Barbara Castle as 'a group of
| |
| − | middle-of-the-road and right-wing Labour MPs [which]
| |
| − | had been meeting to discuss how to counter the growing
| |
| − | influence of the left-wing Tribune group of MPs',(104)
| |
| − | its chair was Dr Dickson Mabon, its Secretary was John
| |
| − | Horam, now (1995) a Tory Minister, and two of its most
| |
| − | active members were CDS enthusiasts David Marquand and
| |
| − | Brian Walden.(105)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | In the third Wilson government, formed in 1974, the
| |
| − | Jenkins group in cabinet was down to 'a beleaguered
| |
| − | minority of four', to use Jenkins' words, Jenkins,
| |
| − | Harold Lever, Shirley Williams and the late Reg
| |
| − | Prentice.(106) In his memoir Jenkins describes
| |
| − | Prentice as 'a man of flat-footed courage who had
| |
| − | emerged in the previous two years [i.e. 1973 and 74]
| |
| − | out of the rather stolid centre of the Labour Party
| |
| − | into....my most unhesitating ally in the
| |
| − | Cabinet.'(107) Throughout 1974-5 Prentice was moving
| |
| − | right very quickly and his speeches began to reflect
| |
| − | this. In 1975 Prime Minister Wilson took exception to
| |
| − | one of them, and 'More out of enlightened
| |
| − | self-interest than generosity', as he put it, Jenkins
| |
| − | told Wilson that if Prentice was sacked from the
| |
| − | cabinet he would also go.(108) Shortly afterwards
| |
| − | Wilson called Jenkins' bluff and shifted Prentice to a
| |
| − | junior ministry post outside the Cabinet proper.
| |
| − | Jenkins resolved to resign, tried to take Shirley
| |
| − | Williams and Harold Lever with him in resignation -
| |
| − | only to find that while he was ready now, Harold Lever
| |
| − | was not.(109)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | In Jenkins' memoir there are some wistful remarks on
| |
| − | '1975 as a great missed opportunity for Heath and
| |
| − | Whitelaw and a whole regiment of discarded
| |
| − | Conservative "wets" as much for Shirley Williams and
| |
| − | Steel and me.'(110) Jenkins was looking back on the
| |
| − | 1975 Common Market referendum campaign during which he
| |
| − | found it more congenial working with pro-EEC Tories
| |
| − | and Liberals than he did with the left-wing of his own
| |
| − | party. It would not be hard to imagine that left-wing
| |
| − | Tories like Heath and Whitelaw found Jenkins more
| |
| − | congenial than some of the right-wing yahoos then
| |
| − | gathering on the Tory Party's fringe;(111)and there is
| |
| − | a large hint in Mrs Thatcher's second volume of
| |
| − | memoirs, that some kind of realignment was attempted
| |
| − | on the back of the referendum.(112)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | In December 1976 Prentice was discussing how to bring
| |
| − | down the Callaghan government with, inter alia, Tory
| |
| − | MPs Julian Amery and Maurice Macmillan, and
| |
| − | Gaitskellite Labour MP's Walden and the late John
| |
| − | McIntosh.(113) Haseler, whose information on this
| |
| − | comes from Prentice's diaries, tells us that, 'For
| |
| − | some years past the arguments for a realignment had
| |
| − | been taken seriously by a section of the Conservative
| |
| − | Party who had been close to Macmillan.'(114) Prentice
| |
| − | may have thought he was discussing bringing down the
| |
| − | government with Parliamentary colleagues, but in this
| |
| − | context they had other, more interesting, connections.
| |
| − | Amery was a former SIS officer and a friend of the
| |
| − | former Deputy Chief of SIS, the late George Kennedy
| |
| − | Young, who was then machinating against the Labour
| |
| − | government with his Unison Committee for Action.(115)
| |
| − | Maurice Macmillan had been a director of one of the
| |
| − | IRD front companies and had also been involved in the
| |
| − | attempt in the mid 1974 to launch a government of
| |
| − | national unity to prevent the reelection of Harold
| |
| − | Wilson. Prentice proposed that Jenkins form a
| |
| − | coalition with Margaret Thatcher as leader but, on
| |
| − | Prentice's account, haunted by memories of 1931 and
| |
| − | the fate of Ramsay MacDonald, not surprisingly, once
| |
| − | again Jenkins declined.(116)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | When Harold Wilson resigned in 1976, Jenkins stood for
| |
| − | leader of the Labour Party, lost, and went off to
| |
| − | Brussels as President of the EEC. Jenkins bailed out
| |
| − | at a good time, for the pro-Common Market wing of the
| |
| − | Labour Party was losing the fight against the left in
| |
| − | the Parliamentary Labour Party - while constantly
| |
| − | talking about quitting and forming a new party. In
| |
| − | 1977 the Campaign for a Labour Victory, 'in many ways
| |
| − | a resurrection of the of the Campaign for Democratic
| |
| − | Socialism', was launched.(117) William Rodgers' PA was
| |
| − | one of the chief organisers and it set up its office
| |
| − | in the HQ of the EETPU.(118) Its full-time organiser
| |
| − | was Alec McGivan who became the first full-time worker
| |
| − | for the SDP, four years later.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Around Jenkins in exile gathered some of the
| |
| − | Gaitskellites. Mike Thomas, a Labour and then SDP MP:
| |
| − | 'there in fact were a group of people working with Roy
| |
| − | Jenkins outside parliament, most of whom were known to
| |
| − | many of us, friends of ours, some who were less well
| |
| − | known, in the SDA or elsewhere'.(119) In November
| |
| − | 1979, after Jenkins' had been given the Dimbleby
| |
| − | Lecture on BBC TV in which to more or less announce
| |
| − | his intention of forming a social democratic party,
| |
| − | businessman Clive Lindley and London Labour Councillor
| |
| − | Jim Daley, both of whom had been active in the
| |
| − | Campaign for Labour Victory,(120) set up the Radical
| |
| − | Centre for Democratic Studies, 'a press cutting and
| |
| − | information service on the political scene in Britain'
| |
| − | - and a support group for Jenkins.(121)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Finally a group met to discuss forming the new party.
| |
| − | From the SDA there was Stephen Haseler; from Roy
| |
| − | Jenkins' UK support group, Clive Lindley and Jim Daly;
| |
| − | David Marquand, Jenkins' his PA in Brussels, and Lord
| |
| − | Harris, who had been Jenkins' PR man in the
| |
| − | 1960s.(122) The last stop on their way out of the
| |
| − | Labour Party for these social democrats was the
| |
| − | formation of the Council for Social Democracy in 1981.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Soon after the Social Democratic Party launch, issue
| |
| − | 52 of the now defunct radical magazine The Leveller
| |
| − | had as its cover story: 'Exposed:the CIA and the
| |
| − | Social Democrats'. The author was Phil Kelly, one of
| |
| − | the journalists who had exposed Brian Crozier's
| |
| − | Forum/CIA links, who had been the recipient of the
| |
| − | leaked documents from inside the Institute for the
| |
| − | Study of Conflict, and had led the campaign to prevent
| |
| − | the Labour government expelling former CIA officer,
| |
| − | Philip Agee. For his temerity Kelly had been labelled
| |
| − | a 'KGB man' in briefings given by MI5, one of which
| |
| − | was foolishly committed to paper by Searchlight editor
| |
| − | Gerry Gable.(123) Kelly's article went over some of
| |
| − | the ground covered in this essay, but though the CIA
| |
| − | was visible in the connection to the Congress for
| |
| − | Cultural Freedom and Forum World Features, the piece
| |
| − | otherwise failed to justify its billing.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Notes
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 73. The charge that these groups were IRD 'satellites'
| |
| − | is difficult to substantiate. None of their personnel
| |
| − | has, to my knowledge, every admitted it. However, all
| |
| − | these groups have published material which, in my
| |
| − | view, could only have come from the state - and I
| |
| − | presume that IRD was the proximate conduit. Take, for
| |
| − | example, the Economic League's 'Notes and Comments'
| |
| − | series. In No. 895, 'The New Face of Communism', there
| |
| − | is material quoted from Yugoslav radio and TV and
| |
| − | Radio Moscow. The Economic League, presumably, did not
| |
| − | have its own monitoring service.
| |
| − | 74. East-West Digest mostly consisted of large chunks
| |
| − | of blind (authorless), extremely detailed, apparently
| |
| − | pretty accurate material on the British Left: reports
| |
| − | on meetings and conferences; documents and journals
| |
| − | analysed.
| |
| − | 75. Benn entry for 11 June 1973.
| |
| − | 76. Pincher 1991 p. 113.
| |
| − | 77. Ibid.
| |
| − | 78. The important group on that list was the then
| |
| − | minute Revolutionary Socialist League which was to
| |
| − | spend the next decade penetrating the Labour Party as
| |
| − | the Militant Tendency.
| |
| − | 79. Crozier calls this 'the IRD massacre', but points
| |
| − | out that IRD had grown to become the largest single
| |
| − | Foreign Office department. See Crozier pp. 104-8.
| |
| − | 80. From the likes of KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky we
| |
| − | have learned that the KGB were unaware that they were
| |
| − | apparently on the verge of controlling the Labour
| |
| − | Party through the trade unions.
| |
| − | 81. Patrick Wintour in the New Statesman, 25 July
| |
| − | 1980: 'three of [Frank] Chapple's closest union
| |
| − | colleagues, including his research assistant, have
| |
| − | been active in the Social Democratic Alliance'.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Crozier notes in his memoir that he first met the
| |
| − | SDA's Douglas Eden at one of the early sessions of the
| |
| − | National Association for Freedom. 'The NAF was
| |
| − | supposed to be strictly non-party, and the presence of
| |
| − | a long-time Labour man, as Eden was, emphasised this
| |
| − | aspect of its work.' p. 147
| |
| − | 82. See, for example, Daily Telegraph, 7 July 1977,
| |
| − | The Times, 29 April 1976, and Daily Mail, 9 August
| |
| − | 1979.
| |
| − | 83. See 'Moderates drive to challenge 11 Labour MPs',
| |
| − | Daily Telegraph,1 February 1980.
| |
| − | 84. This is from the only TUECDS document I have seen,
| |
| − | a progress report dated May 12, 1975.
| |
| − | 85. TUECDS is discussed by Paul Foot in Socialist
| |
| − | Worker, 1 November 1975.
| |
| − | 86. Michael Ivens of Aims of Industry claims the
| |
| − | credit for introducing Stirling to Ron Nodes. See his
| |
| − | obituary notice on Stirling in the Independent, 17
| |
| − | November 1990. Some of the TRUEMID funding is given in
| |
| − | 'The bosses' union' in Leveller 17, 1978, and the most
| |
| − | detailed account of the organisation is in Hoe ch. 24.
| |
| − | 87. See 'The Company They Keep', Monica Brimacombe, in
| |
| − | the New Statesman, 9 May 1986. Paul Foot in the piece
| |
| − | cited in note 12 states that TRUEMID had six permanent
| |
| − | full-time staff and three temporary full-time staff.
| |
| − | 88. see also State Research no. 16, pp. 68-74 and no.
| |
| − | 17 pp. 95 and 96, and Sunday Times, 17 February 1980.
| |
| − | It was later funded by the US government's National
| |
| − | Endowment for Democracy.
| |
| − | 89. Jordan was later to be among the founders of
| |
| − | another 'moderate' caucus in the trade unions in the
| |
| − | 1980s, Mainstream.
| |
| − | 90. The Movement's youth wing, the European Youth
| |
| − | Movement, had as its secretary Maurice Foley, one of
| |
| − | the Gaitskellites. See 'The CIA backs the Common
| |
| − | Market' by Weissman, Kelly and Hosenball in Agee ed.
| |
| − | Dirty Work.
| |
| − | pp. 201-3.
| |
| − | 91. Bradley p. 52
| |
| − | 92. With a number of important qualifications. Hugh
| |
| − | Gaitskell, for example, was not pro EEC membership.
| |
| − | 93. Dorril and Ramsay p. 188
| |
| − | 94. Ibid.
| |
| − | 95. Entry for 13 January 1971, pp. 324-5 of Office
| |
| − | Without Power
| |
| − | 96. Benn ibid. p. 381. Benn also added in that
| |
| − | paragraph: 'When I heard Charlie Pannell say that for
| |
| − | him Europe was an article of faith, he put it above
| |
| − | the Labour Party and above the Labour Movement, I was
| |
| − | finally convinced that this was a deep split.'.
| |
| − | Pannell was AEU, Common Cause, Catholic.
| |
| − | 97. Bradley p. 53
| |
| − | 98. 'Dick Taverne recalls a meeting of pro-Marketeers
| |
| − | in his flat to discuss tactics as early as June 1970.'
| |
| − | Ibid.
| |
| − | 99. Ibid. pp. 53/4
| |
| − | 100. Shaw, Discipline, p. 108. In the 'witness
| |
| − | seminar' on the CDS, p. 24, David Marquand referred to
| |
| − | 'the great barony of Jim Cattermole'.
| |
| − | 101. Ibid. p. 55
| |
| − | 102. Jenkins in his memoir on 1973: 'Excluding the
| |
| − | possibility of forming an independent party, which at
| |
| − | that stage neither I nor my supporters were remotely
| |
| − | prepared for...' p. 360 (emphasis added).
| |
| − | 103. Jenkins p. 354. In the CDS 'witness seminar", p.
| |
| − | 27, William Rodgers stated that CDS had a 'very close
| |
| − | working relationship with Fred Hayday of the General
| |
| − | and Municipal Workers'.
| |
| − | 104. Castle Diaries p.156
| |
| − | 105. Bradley p. 60. With the exception of Giles Radice
| |
| − | and George Robertson, both GMWU/GMB-sponsored, the
| |
| − | whole of the active leadership of the Manifesto Group
| |
| − | subsequently defected to the SDP.
| |
| − | 106. Jenkins p. 427
| |
| − | 107. Ibid. p. 419
| |
| − | 108. Jenkins tells us that he sent this message
| |
| − | through the Prime Minister's Principal Private
| |
| − | Secretary, Robert Armstrong, thus - deliberately or
| |
| − | not - informing the Whitehall establishment. Ibid. p.
| |
| − | 420
| |
| − | 109. Ibid. p. 422
| |
| − | 110. Ibid. pp. 425-6
| |
| − | 111. On 14 October 1975 Tony Benn records in his
| |
| − | diary: 'Robert Kilroy-Silk, Labour MP for Ormskirk,
| |
| − |
| |
| − | pro-Market lobby and it was a fund of which the
| |
| − | trustees were Heath, Thorpe and Jenkins....the rumour
| |
| − | was that if Wilson moved too far to the Left they
| |
| − | would use the money to set up a new party.'
| |
| − | 112. See The Path to Power, p. 331.
| |
| − | 113. Haseler, Battle for Britain, pp. 59 and 60
| |
| − | 114. Ibid.
| |
| − | 115. The best account of Unison is in Dorril and
| |
| − | Ramsay.
| |
| − | 116. Prentice thus managed to misunderstand - and
| |
| − | insult - both Jenkins and Mrs Thatcher.
| |
| − | 117. Bradley p. 59
| |
| − | 118. 'How Frank Chapple says on top', New Statesman,
| |
| − | 25 July 1980
| |
| − | 119. CDS Seminar p. 50
| |
| − | 120. Owen p. 457
| |
| − | 121. Bradley p. 73
| |
| − | 122. Ibid. David Marquand on Haseler; 'Haseler's
| |
| − | invective is all working class... He's invented a
| |
| − | history of a sort of populist radicalism, Norman
| |
| − | Tebbitry in a way, ....I remember being involved in a
| |
| − | television thing in the early 1970s on Europe where he
| |
| − | opposed it on a sort of proletarian, solidarity,
| |
| − | populist-nationalist ground.' Desai pp. 10-11 fn. 11
| |
| − | 123. This is the so-called Gable memo, first revealed
| |
| − | in the New Statesman, 15 February 1980 and reprinted
| |
| − | in full, for the first time, in Lobster 24.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ----------------------------------------------------------------
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The Crozier operations
| |
| − | Running through much of this activity in the 1970s was
| |
| − | Brian Crozier who had been warning about the rise of
| |
| − | the British Left since the late 1960s. Crozier takes
| |
| − | us back to the CIA operation the Congress for Cultural
| |
| − | Freedom (CCF) discussed in chapter five. The CIA
| |
| − | control of the CCF and the magazine Encounter began to
| |
| − | be threatened with exposure in 1963 when, reviewing an
| |
| − | anthology from the magazine, Conor Cruise O'Brien
| |
| − | wrote that 'Encounter's first loyalty is to America';
| |
| − | and an editorial in the Sunday Telegraph referred to a
| |
| − | secret and regular subvention to Encounter from 'the
| |
| − | Foreign Office'.(124) The next year, after a US
| |
| − | congressional inquiry into private foundations found
| |
| − | that some had received donations from the CIA, the New
| |
| − | York Times set journalists to work on the story. From
| |
| − | that point on exposure of the CIA fronts, which were
| |
| − | funded by some of these private foundations, was
| |
| − | inevitable.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Forum World Features
| |
| − | Faced with this impending exposure, the CCF/CIA began
| |
| − | to take action. The Congress's press agency was
| |
| − | detached, reorganised and renamed Forum World
| |
| − | Features, and Crozier was appointed its director in
| |
| − | 1965.(125) Crozier claims that 'In 1968 the KGB made a
| |
| − | first attempt to wreck Forum';(126) and perhaps in
| |
| − | anticipation of the day when Forum was 'blown', with
| |
| − | other personnel from the IRD network Crozier set up
| |
| − | the Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC) between
| |
| − | 1968 and 1970.(127)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ISC
| |
| − | The first funding came from Shell and BP but then, as
| |
| − | Crozier puts it, 'the Agency [CIA] now came up with
| |
| − | something bigger', and put him in contact with the
| |
| − | American multi-millionaire, anti-communist Richard
| |
| − | Mellon Scaife, who duly came up $100,000 p.a. for
| |
| − | ISC.(128)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ISC commissioned and published reports and began
| |
| − | briefing the UK military and police establishments on
| |
| − | the Crozier view of the Soviet threat to Britain.(129)
| |
| − | Crozier became a founder member of the National
| |
| − | Association for Freedom (NAFF), whose launch was timed
| |
| − | to coincide with publication of the dystopian
| |
| − | disinformation in The Collapse of Democracy by his
| |
| − | ally and colleague at ISC, Robert Moss. The
| |
| − | unfortunately acronymed NAFF was a gathering of the
| |
| − | anti-subversive and pro-capital propaganda groups such
| |
| − | as Aims of Industry, and, almost immediately became
| |
| − | the major focus of the British Right. It absorbed the
| |
| − | remnants of the 1974/5 civilian militias, and began
| |
| − | series of psy-war projects against the left and the
| |
| − | unions which prefigured much of what was to come in
| |
| − | the Thatcher government.(130)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Shield and the Pinay Circle
| |
| − | At the same, Crozier's voice was being heard in
| |
| − | Shield, a committee of former intelligence officers
| |
| − | and bankers, who, in the absence of IRD, prepared
| |
| − | briefings on the alleged communist threat for the then
| |
| − | leader of the Tory Party, Mrs Thatcher.(131)Crozier
| |
| − | was also a member of the transnational psy-war outfit,
| |
| − | the Pinay Circle, working alongside senior
| |
| − | intelligence, military and political figures from the
| |
| − | NATO countries,(132) was working with US Senate
| |
| − | Subcommittee on International Terrorism,(133) and
| |
| − | launched the apparently still-born US Institute for
| |
| − | the Study of Conflict.(134)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The Wilson plots
| |
| − | Because hard information on the covert operations of
| |
| − | this period came first from Colin Wallace, a member of
| |
| − | the British Army's psychological warfare unit in
| |
| − | Northern Ireland, in whose narrative the 'bad guys'
| |
| − | were MI5, and from Peter Wright, who had been an MI5
| |
| − | officer, those of us who began researching this period
| |
| − | in 1986 and after began by looking for MI5
| |
| − | operations.(135) In fact three British intelligence
| |
| − | agencies had an iron in the fire of the mid 1970s
| |
| − | crisis. There was a group of MI5 officers, led by
| |
| − | Peter Wright, who were plotting against the Wilson
| |
| − | government and, for example, trying to use the
| |
| − | Information Policy Unit in Northern Ireland to spread
| |
| − | disinformation about Wilson and other British
| |
| − | politicians whom MI5 regarded as 'unsound';(136) there
| |
| − | was also a group of ex SIS and former military
| |
| − | officers, led by former SIS number two, the late
| |
| − | George Kennedy Young, operating as the Unison
| |
| − | Committee for Action;(137) and there was the
| |
| − | Crozier-IRD subversion-watcher network.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The detente with the Soviet Union was the background.
| |
| − | In the UK it provided the context for IRD to be
| |
| − | reigned back. In the US, in the wake of Watergate and
| |
| − | the subsequent revelations of CIA activities in the US
| |
| − | and abroad, and the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976,
| |
| − | there was a purge in the CIA. To Crozier and others of
| |
| − | his ilk detente was a farce - a Soviet deception
| |
| − | operation - and these intelligence cuts a catastrophe.
| |
| − | (In their worst imaginings they were the result of
| |
| − | Soviet operations.)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Private sector intelligence agencies?
| |
| − | Into the breach stepped Crozier and a group which
| |
| − | included ex SIS officer Nicholas Elliot and US General
| |
| − | Vernon Walters. They created 'a Private Sector
| |
| − | Operational Intelligence agency' and named it 6I - the
| |
| − | Sixth International(138) - and found funding in the US
| |
| − | Heritage Foundation. Crozier began publishing
| |
| − | newsletters, Transnational Security, and British
| |
| − | Briefing, his own version of the IRD briefings on
| |
| − | British subversion which had been curtailed in 1974
| |
| − | upon the election of the Labour government. British
| |
| − | Briefing was financed by the Industrial Trust, edited
| |
| − | by Charles Elwell, 'soon after retiring from MI5', and
| |
| − | published by IRIS.(139)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | What had begun a quarter of a century before as an
| |
| − | anti-communist caucus among the AUEW's senior
| |
| − | officers, had ended up fronting for Britain's leading
| |
| − | anti-socialist psychological warfare expert. I do not
| |
| − | know when British Briefing was first published, but
| |
| − | the issue which began to circulate on the left in the
| |
| − | early 1990s, number 12, was published in 1989, at
| |
| − | which time IRIS's directors included Sir John Boyd
| |
| − | CBE, General Secretary of the AEU 1975-82, Lord
| |
| − | (Harold) Collinson CBE, General Secretary of the
| |
| − | National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers from
| |
| − | 1953-69, and W. (Bill) Sirs, General Secretary of the
| |
| − | Iron and Steel Trades Confederation from 1975-85.(140)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The union leaders and the spooks
| |
| − | The IRIS-Crozier-British Briefing set-up sums up much
| |
| − | of what I have been trying to tease out. Three
| |
| − | anti-socialist, senior trade union leaders fronted the
| |
| − | clandestine production of an anti-socialist bulletin,
| |
| − | written and edited by former intelligence officers,
| |
| − | financed by British capital.(141) This anti-socialist
| |
| − | mechanism also involved the connivance of the Charity
| |
| − | Commission which allowed the Industrial Trust to
| |
| − | operate in a breach of the charity laws,(142) another,
| |
| − | non-charitable trust, the Kennington Industrial
| |
| − | Company, and personnel from large numbers of British
| |
| − | companies which funded it. (The money went to the
| |
| − | Industrial Trust which passed it on to Kennington,
| |
| − | which passed it on to IRIS; thus enabling the
| |
| − | Industrial Trust to cling on to its charitable - and
| |
| − | tax deductible - status.)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | If this was still being funded in 1989, after 15 years
| |
| − | of Thatcherism and the fall of the Soviet Empire, how
| |
| − | big was this anti-socialist structure in, say, 1975?
| |
| − | Or 1965? Our knowledge of the whole operation while
| |
| − | greater now than ever, is still pretty limited,
| |
| − | despite the revelations about the Economic League in
| |
| − | the past ten years. For example, Aims of Industry is
| |
| − | thought of as simply a propaganda organisation. But it
| |
| − | is not so; at least it was not always so. In 1990 the
| |
| − | Aims Director, Michael Ivens, wrote:
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Once, when Aims of Industry was rather more flexible
| |
| − | than it is now, we put a member of our staff into a
| |
| − | factory, at the request of the management, to prevent
| |
| − | a far-left take over.' (143)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Another part of this anti-socialist network is British
| |
| − | United Industrialists (BUI), one of the funnels
| |
| − | through which British companies pour money into the
| |
| − | Conservative Party and other groups on the right. In
| |
| − | 1985 BUI's then director, Captain Briggs, told a
| |
| − | researcher I know who wishes to remain anonymous, who
| |
| − | was posing as a right-winger, that BUI were then
| |
| − | funding the Solidarity group of Labour MPs, the Union
| |
| − | of Democratic Mineworkers and the right-wing faction
| |
| − | in the Civil and Public Servants Association
| |
| − | (CPSA).(144)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The Labour Left has never really grasped just how
| |
| − | central, how commonplace a function of British
| |
| − | capitalism it has been to fund its opponents. This
| |
| − | knowledge has remained largely confined to Labour
| |
| − | Research and pockets within individual unions. (It is
| |
| − | hardly surprising that the Labour Party has never
| |
| − | shown much interest in this as it would have
| |
| − | embarrassed some of its biggest supporters in the
| |
| − | trade unions.)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | By 1980 Crozier seems to have gone some way towards
| |
| − | replacing IRD's anti-subversive role by his own
| |
| − | efforts; and, with the election of Mrs Thatcher, he
| |
| − | and Robert Moss abandoned the National Association for
| |
| − | Freedom (by then renamed the Freedom Association) and
| |
| − | concentrated on the USA and the wider Soviet 'threat'.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | It is impossible to evaluate the significance of
| |
| − | psychological warfare projects. Was the barrage of
| |
| − | anti-union propaganda put out by the
| |
| − | subversion-watchers in the period 1972-79 as
| |
| − | significant as the so-called Winter of Discontent in
| |
| − | its effect on public opinion in Britain? How effective
| |
| − | Crozier was, I don't know. He seems to think he had
| |
| − | quite a hand in the election of Mrs Thatcher in 1979.
| |
| − | In one of the planning papers written by Crozier for
| |
| − | his 'transnational security organisation', he wrote:
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'Specific Aims within this framework are to affect a
| |
| − | change of government in
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | (a) the United Kingdom - accomplished......'(145)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Grandiose nonsense? Perhaps. Crozier has never been
| |
| − | taken as seriously in this country by the London
| |
| − | media-political establishment as he has has been
| |
| − | abroad, and his memoir was hammered by most of its
| |
| − | reviewers.(146) But this, for example, was the view of
| |
| − | a German intelligence officer, the source of the Der
| |
| − | Spiegel pieces, of Crozier in November 1979.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'The militant conservative London publicist, Brian
| |
| − | Crozier, Director of the famous Institute for the
| |
| − | Study of Conflict up to September 1979, has been
| |
| − | working with his diverse circle of friends in
| |
| − | international politics to build an anonymous action
| |
| − | group(147) "transnational security organisation", and
| |
| − | to widen its field of operations. Crozier has worked
| |
| − | with the CIA for years. One has to assume, therefore
| |
| − | that they are fully aware of his activities....'
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Notes
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 124. Coleman p. 186. In this context 'the Foreign
| |
| − | Office' is a euphemism for MI6.
| |
| − | 125. In his 1993 memoir Crozier acknowledges the CIA
| |
| − | connection. See pp. 63-5. But he had denied it as late
| |
| − | as 1990, in his review of Coleman's history of the
| |
| − | CCF. See 'A noble mess' in The Salisbury Review,
| |
| − | December 1990.
| |
| − | 126. Crozier p. 75
| |
| − | 127. With a Council including Max Beloff,
| |
| − | Major-General Clutterbuck, Sir Robert Thompson and
| |
| − | Hugh Seton-Watson.
| |
| − | 128. Crozier p. 90.
| |
| − | 129. See the documents leaked - or stolen - from ISC
| |
| − | published in Searchlight 18, 1976, and Crozier pp. 121
| |
| − | and 2
| |
| − | 130. Crozier acknowledged the psy-war role in his
| |
| − | memoir. See page 118.
| |
| − | 131. Shield employed as its researchers Peter Shipley,
| |
| − | who ended up in the Conservative Party Central Office
| |
| − | in time for the 1987 election, and Douglas Eden,
| |
| − | co-founder of the Social Democratic Alliance. But
| |
| − | Stephen Hastings has a slightly different version from
| |
| − | Crozier. See Hastings p. 236.
| |
| − | 132. On Pinay see David Teacher's pieces in Lobsters
| |
| − | 17 and 18. Crozier more or less gave a nod of approval
| |
| − | to these accounts by citing them, without criticism,
| |
| − | in his memoir. See note 3 facing p. 194. Among the
| |
| − | Pinay personnel were ex CIA director Colby, ex-SIS
| |
| − | officers Julian Amery and Nicholas Elliot, and Edwin
| |
| − | Feulner from the Heritage Foundation.
| |
| − | 133. Crozier pp. 123-4
| |
| − | 134. US ISC is missing from his memoirs. It was
| |
| − | formally launched in 1975, chaired by George Ball,
| |
| − | with a line-up which included Richard Pipes and Kermit
| |
| − | Roosevelt. See Document 3 in Searchlight 18.
| |
| − | 135. Hence Lobster 11, 'Wilson, MI5 and the Rise of
| |
| − | Thatcher'.
| |
| − | 136. This is discussed at length in Foot, Who Framed
| |
| − | ...
| |
| − | 137. It was Young and Unison, for example, who
| |
| − | initiated General Sir Walter Walker's Civil
| |
| − | Assistance.
| |
| − | 138. Crozier pp. 134-6. Six 'I', says Crozier, because
| |
| − | there had already been 5 'internationals'. 'The fourth
| |
| − | International was the Trotskyist one, and when it
| |
| − | split, this meant that on paper, there were five
| |
| − | Internationals.' p. 136
| |
| − | 139. On the Industrial Trust see Black Flag, 15 August
| |
| − | 1988 which reproduced the Trust's accounts for 1986/7;
| |
| − | and on the IRIS connection to British Briefing, and
| |
| − | Elwell's role, see the Observer, 16 December 1990,
| |
| − | 'Top companies funded smears through charity', and 23
| |
| − | December 1990
| |
| − | 140. Although IRIS was still publishing its little
| |
| − | newsletter, IRIS News, in 1989, compared to British
| |
| − | Briefing it was so piffling as to be little more than
| |
| − | a cover story. Collinson and Boyd are dead and Sirs
| |
| − | did not respond to my questions
| |
| − | 141. In 1986/7 twenty eight British companies gave
| |
| − | money to the Industrial Trust, including BP, Bass,
| |
| − | Unilever, ICI, Cadbury Schweppes and Grand
| |
| − | Metropolitan. Industrial Trust accounts filed with
| |
| − | Charity Commissioners were reproduced in Black Flag,
| |
| − | 15 August 1988.
| |
| − | 142. See 'Breach of charity rules justified' in the
| |
| − | Guardian,7 February 1991.
| |
| − | 143. Sunday Telegraph (Appointments) 4 February 1990
| |
| − | 144. I reported this first in footnote 93 on p. 43 of
| |
| − | Lobster 12 in 1986. I received no reaction to what I
| |
| − | thought was a rather explosive allegation. Kevin
| |
| − | McNamara MP, when I told him of this, replied that the
| |
| − | UDM hardly needed money as they had inherited the
| |
| − | considerable wealth of the old 'Spencer' union formed
| |
| − | in the 1920s.
| |
| − | 145. Originally published in Der Spiegel no 37, 1982,
| |
| − | this was translated by David Teacher and reproduced in
| |
| − | Lobster 17, p. 14.
| |
| − | 146. The best review was by Bernard Porter in
| |
| − | Intelligence and National Security, vol. 9, No. 4.
| |
| − | Most of Crozier's projects, says Porter, were
| |
| − | 'pointless.'
| |
| − | 147. 'Action group', is one of the key terms used in
| |
| − | this field. G.K. Young's Unison was the Unison
| |
| − | Committee for Action, a clear hint to the intelligence
| |
| − | insider as to its intentions.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ----------------------------------------------------------------
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Was there a 'communist threat'?
| |
| − | The term 'communist' was always flexibly applied by
| |
| − | the anti-socialist groups. The Common Cause and IRIS
| |
| − | reports, for example, went much wider to actually mean
| |
| − | the left, i.e. socialists; and sometimes simply anyone
| |
| − | who opposed those in positions of power.(148)
| |
| − | Nonetheless in a thesis about the political uses of
| |
| − | anti-communism we have to consider whether there was
| |
| − | anything to the 'communist threat', or if it was
| |
| − | simply a red herring dragged across the trail of
| |
| − | British politics.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | On the British Left the question which heads this
| |
| − | chapter would provoke laughter, derision or anger from
| |
| − | many. For some, since 1956 the CPGB has been a
| |
| − | declining, bureaucratic relic, hardly a 'threat' to
| |
| − | anybody.(149) For others merely asking the question
| |
| − | gives credibility to disinformation from the right.
| |
| − | But the fact remains that significant sections of the
| |
| − | British Right, in the propaganda organisations of
| |
| − | capital, the state and the Conservative Party,
| |
| − | believed that the CPGB was part of a global
| |
| − | conspiracy, directed and financed by Moscow, which was
| |
| − | working in the union movement and wider society to
| |
| − | undermine capitalist democracy in Britain. And it is
| |
| − | no longer self-evident that this was complete
| |
| − | nonsense.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Orders from Moscow?
| |
| − | We now know that the CPGB actually was being directed,
| |
| − | to some extent, from Moscow after the war. Bob Darke
| |
| − | was a member of the Party's National Industrial Policy
| |
| − | Committee from the end of the war until 1951, when he
| |
| − | left the Party. He described that committee as 'a
| |
| − | Cominform puppet', receiving instructions, via
| |
| − | visiting French communists, from the Cominform.(150)
| |
| − | In the year Darke quit the Party, 1951, the CPGB
| |
| − | published a landmark policy statement, 'The British
| |
| − | Road to Socialism'. This announced a major shift in
| |
| − | policy in which the British CPGB ceased to base itself
| |
| − | on the Soviet model and would henceforth pursue a
| |
| − | peculiarly British, 'parliamentary road to
| |
| − | socialism'.(151) But in 1991 former CPGB assistant
| |
| − | general secretary, George Matthews, admitted that much
| |
| − | - though precisely how much is still not clear to me -
| |
| − | of the programme contained in the 'British Road to
| |
| − | Socialism' had been written by the Soviet Politburo
| |
| − | and approved by Stalin himself.(152)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Moscow gold?
| |
| − | There was 'Moscow gold' - bags of used notes, as well
| |
| − | as the subsidy by virtue of the Soviet Union's bulk
| |
| − | order of copies of the Daily Worker/Morning Star. The
| |
| − | 'Moscow gold' claim was regarded as absurd, a state
| |
| − | smear, by most on the British Left, not least by CPGB
| |
| − | members, subjected to endless fund-raising appeals and
| |
| − | newspaper selling, and CPGB employees surviving on the
| |
| − | terrible wages the Party paid its staff.(153) But now
| |
| − | we know that the Soviet Union began sending money to
| |
| − | the British Party after the Hungarian revolt was put
| |
| − | down - apparently to compensate the British Party for
| |
| − | the loss of its membership (and hence membership fees)
| |
| − | incurred by the Party's refusal to condemn the Soviet
| |
| − | invasion. Senior CPGB person, Reuben Falber, would
| |
| − | meet the man from the Soviet Embassy and take delivery
| |
| − | of the bags of used notes. These would be stored in
| |
| − | the loft of Falber's house and then laundered through
| |
| − | the Party's accounts as 'anonymous donations' and the
| |
| − | like. It was as amateurish as that.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The Moscow money seems to have been used chiefly to
| |
| − | fund the Party's full-time staff. In the 1960s,
| |
| − | despite constantly falling membership, the party
| |
| − | employed a lot of people, 70 according to one source,
| |
| − | including the industrial network,(154) what 1980s CPGB
| |
| − | member Sarah Benton described as 'until the late
| |
| − | 1970s, the privileged section of the party'. (The
| |
| − | Moscow subsidy ended in 1979.)(155)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Secret Party members?
| |
| − | There were also secret Party members, though how many
| |
| − | there were and what they did is unclear. The existence
| |
| − | of 'secret members', a staple on the right since the
| |
| − | war, appeared most strikingly in Spycatcher in which
| |
| − | Peter Wright recounts how MI5 had found the CPGB
| |
| − | membership files stashed in a rich member's flat and
| |
| − | photographed the whole lot - 55,000 files - in one
| |
| − | weekend, 'with a Polaroid camera'.(156) Wright claimed
| |
| − | that these files also 'contained the files of covert
| |
| − | members of the CPGB..... people who had gone
| |
| − | underground largely as a result of the new vetting
| |
| − | procedures brought in by the Attlee Government'.(157)
| |
| − | Wright's claims were denied by George Matthews, who
| |
| − | had been editor of the Daily Worker and assistant
| |
| − | general secretary of the Party.(158) However Bob Darke
| |
| − | described members, who for 'Personal Security', were
| |
| − | allowed not to reveal themselves as members when the
| |
| − | Party decreed that all members should 'come out' as
| |
| − | CPGB members in the other organisations to which they
| |
| − | belonged.(159) It may be that Wright simply remembered
| |
| − | it wrongly: it was not members who went underground
| |
| − | but who stayed underground. Further, Francis Beckett
| |
| − | reveals (though without a source) the existence of a
| |
| − | hitherto secret section of the Party, the Commercial
| |
| − | Branch, consisting of 'rich members, often Jews...
| |
| − | secret members... important industrialists' (emphasis
| |
| − | added), set up by Reuben Falber in the 1930s, which
| |
| − | apparently survived into the mid 1950s.(160) It
| |
| − | appears that it was partly the loss of the income from
| |
| − | this group after the revelations of anti-semitism in
| |
| − | the Soviet Union and the invasion of Hungary which
| |
| − | forced the Party to go to Moscow for money.(161)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | But some money and instructions from Moscow, though a
| |
| − | striking confirmation in part of the right's theories,
| |
| − | do not in themselves tell us anything about the
| |
| − | influence of the CPGB.(162) (Conspiracies may be small
| |
| − | and ineffectual but nonetheless conspiracies.) And
| |
| − | measuring the influence of an activity with
| |
| − | clandestine aspects, which both the Party and its
| |
| − | opponents have had good reasons to exaggerate, will be
| |
| − | very imprecise at best.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Initially, post-war, the major focus of the state's
| |
| − | anti-communists seems to have been on the Soviet front
| |
| − | groups - the friendship societies etc. Eric Shaw
| |
| − | mentions that in 1953 the Labour Party's Proscription
| |
| − | List suddenly expanded with information about these
| |
| − | groups assumed to come from 'the Foreign Office [i.e.
| |
| − | IRD] and Special Branch' run through the International
| |
| − | Department of the Party.(163) This focus on the CPGB
| |
| − | front groups seems to be attributable to two things.
| |
| − | If Bower's recent biography of MI5 head Dick White is
| |
| − | accurate, one is the inadequacies of MI5 in the
| |
| − | post-war years.(164) The second is the the locus of
| |
| − | IRD within the Foreign Office network, where, engaged
| |
| − | in a propaganda struggle with the Soviet bloc
| |
| − | overseas, it was thus more interested in pro-Soviet
| |
| − | groups than in activities on the shop-floor.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The network of pro-Soviet groups is still the focus of
| |
| − | the big IRIS pamphlet in 1957, The Communist Solar
| |
| − | System; but the 1956 pamphlet by Woodrow Wyatt MP, The
| |
| − | Peril in Our Midst was subtitled 'the Communist threat
| |
| − | to Britain's trade unions', and since then it has been
| |
| − | the Party's industrial wing which has received almost
| |
| − | all of the attention - and about which there has been
| |
| − | quite wide agreement, across a broadish political
| |
| − | spectrum.(165) Wyatt in 1956 claimed that the CPGB
| |
| − | controlled the ETU and the Fire Brigades Union, nearly
| |
| − | had control of the AEU and had considerable influence
| |
| − | in the NUM. In 1962 the Radcliffe Committee, set up by
| |
| − | the Macmillan government in the wake of the Vassell
| |
| − | spy case, reported on the apparently extensive Party
| |
| − | control of the civil service unions; and that year the
| |
| − | Conservative MP Aidan Crawley claimed that the CPGB
| |
| − | was strongest in the NUM, building workers and the
| |
| − | AEU, and claimed they were making inroads into the
| |
| − | clerical unions, citing sections of the woodworkers',
| |
| − | the plumbers' and the painters' unions as being under
| |
| − | CP control.(166) Less ideologically interested,the
| |
| − | historian Keith Middlemas saw 'substantial CP
| |
| − | influence in the ETU, Foundry Workers, AEU and the
| |
| − | NUM, especially in Fife and South Wales';(167)and in
| |
| − | his recent history of the Party Francis Beckett
| |
| − | claimed that 'the Party practically had full control
| |
| − | of the Fire Brigades Union, the Amalgamated
| |
| − | Engineering Union, the Foundry Workers and the
| |
| − | Electrical Trades Union'.(168) Though not in
| |
| − | themselves proof of anything - proof would entail much
| |
| − | more detailed analysis of the various unions than I am
| |
| − | capable of - the lists are strikingly consistent over
| |
| − | the period from 1956 to 1994.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The struggle for the AEU
| |
| − | One of the recurring themes in the literature, from
| |
| − | the 1950s onwards, is the centrality of the struggle
| |
| − | in the AEU. IRIS was formed by AEU members and was
| |
| − | most active in that union (discussed above). This
| |
| − | concern quickens in the late 1960s and early 1970s as
| |
| − | the left, focused round the publications Voice of the
| |
| − | Unions and Engineering Voice, began to make
| |
| − | progress.(169) It is found, for example, in Brian
| |
| − | Crozier's 1970 anthology We Will Bury You, and in the
| |
| − | 1972 IRIS pamphlet In Perspective: Concerning the role
| |
| − | of the Communist Party and its Effectiveness. In David
| |
| − | Stirling's GB75 documents, leaked and printed in Peace
| |
| − | News in August 1974, Stirling's opening paragraph,
| |
| − | 'The Objective Summarised', is about the lack of a
| |
| − | contingency plan to 'weather the crucial first 3 or 4
| |
| − | days of a General Strike or one involving the
| |
| − | Amalgamated Engineering Union and the Electrical
| |
| − | Trades Union.'(170) Shortly after the leak, i.e. late
| |
| − | August 1974, Stirling met Ron McClaughlin and Frank
| |
| − | Nodes, both former AEU officials, who were forming
| |
| − | TRUEMID, the Movement for True Industrial Democracy. A
| |
| − | decade later the AEU was at the centre of former SIS
| |
| − | no. 2, G. K. Young's Subversion and the British
| |
| − | Riposte.(171)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | While CPGB influence in the British unions - and thus
| |
| − | in the Labour Party - was a constant refrain on the
| |
| − | right, before the hysteria of 1974/5 there were only
| |
| − | two occasions in the post-war period when the CPGB was
| |
| − | even semi-seriously alleged to be posing a threat to
| |
| − | the whole economy. The first was the 1948 dock strike.
| |
| − | Charges of communist control were made at the time,
| |
| − | and by senior members of the Labour Government,(172)
| |
| − | but I have seen no evidence to support this claim and,
| |
| − | in its absence, think we can reasonably attribute the
| |
| − | claims to cynical manipulation of the 'red card'
| |
| − | during a period of intense domestic difficulty for the
| |
| − | Attlee government.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'Cynical manipulation of the red card' has often been
| |
| − | the description of the second occasion, during the
| |
| − | 1966 seamen's strike, when Harold Wilson made his
| |
| − | notorious comments in the House of Commons about the
| |
| − | role of the CPGB in the strike, and actually named
| |
| − | CPGB members said to be active in it. This incident
| |
| − | deserves examination.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The 1966 seamen's strike
| |
| − | There are two issues here, only one of which, whether
| |
| − | Wilson should have said what he did, usually gets
| |
| − | discussed. Most people, including most of his
| |
| − | colleagues at the time, think it was a tactical
| |
| − | mistake, at best. Peter Shore told Tony Benn that he
| |
| − | thought Wilson's remarks were 'completely bonkers';
| |
| − | and Benn noted in his diary, 'I think I share this
| |
| − | view'.(173) The Labour Left were appalled by Wilson's
| |
| − | behaviour; some by his use of what they perceived as
| |
| − | the 'red card', and others by his use of clandestine
| |
| − | sources of information from MI5 and Special Branch.
| |
| − | For some, this was when they first perceived the
| |
| − | shifty, careerist Wilson, prepared to even play the
| |
| − | anti-communist card, to break the seamen's strike.
| |
| − | This view is powerfully expressed by Paul Foot in his
| |
| − | 1967 essay 'The Seamen's Struggle'.(174)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | In his essay Foot says that the 'basic charge' in
| |
| − | Wilson's second statement to the Commons was 'that
| |
| − | certain members of the Communist Party had been
| |
| − | engaging in a desperate battle to extend the seamen's
| |
| − | strike against the will of the NUS members.'(175) In
| |
| − | fact what Wilson said was much more complicated - and
| |
| − | more reasonable - than this suggests.(176) He began by
| |
| − | describing the CP's 'efficient and disciplined
| |
| − | industrial apparatus', and continued that 'for some
| |
| − | years now the Communist Party has had as one of its
| |
| − | objectives the building up of a position of strength
| |
| − | not only in the Seamen's Union, but in other unions
| |
| − | concerned with docks and transport. It engages in this
| |
| − | struggle for power in the Seamen's Union because it
| |
| − | recognises..... that democracy is shallow-rooted in
| |
| − | the union, not only that grievances and exploitation
| |
| − | have festered for many years.' He called it a
| |
| − | 'take-over bid'.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Wilson said the objectives of the CPGB in the strike
| |
| − | were: 'First, to influence the day-to-day policy of
| |
| − | the executive council; secondly, to extend the area of
| |
| − | stoppage' [this is the bit emphasised by Foot] and
| |
| − | thirdly, 'to use the strike not only to improve the
| |
| − | conditions of the seamen - in which I believe them to
| |
| − | be genuine - but also to secure what is at present the
| |
| − | main political and industrial objective of the
| |
| − | Communist Party - the destruction of the government's
| |
| − | prices and incomes policy.' Wilson went on to say that
| |
| − | he knew that the NUS executive committee was dominated
| |
| − | by Joe Kenny and Jim Slater and that, while he knew
| |
| − | neither of them were communists, he knew of their
| |
| − | meetings with CPGB members in the union and the CPGB's
| |
| − | industrial organiser, Bert Ramelson.(177)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | But smashing Wilson's pay policy was the aim of the
| |
| − | CPGB - and just about everybody else on the British
| |
| − | Left and in some of the trade unions. The rest of what
| |
| − | he said amounts to little more than an account of the
| |
| − | routine activities of all left groups in the labour
| |
| − | movement. They try to expand their positions and
| |
| − | influence inside every forum. This is what they do. If
| |
| − | Bert Ramelson et al were not trying to do these
| |
| − | things, CPGB members would be entitled to ask for
| |
| − | their subscriptions back. This is what they were
| |
| − | employed to do. The young Tony Benn also thought
| |
| − | Wilson's statement less than overwhelming. On June 28,
| |
| − | after Wilson' s listing of the CPGB members allegedly
| |
| − | involved in the strike, Benn wrote in his diary that
| |
| − | while the speech made him 'sick' and reminded him of
| |
| − | 'McCarthyism', he added: 'In a sense Harold said
| |
| − | nothing that was new, since every trade union leader
| |
| − | knew it.'
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The seamen's strike was a great boost for the CPGB and
| |
| − | for Bert Ramelson who had only taken over as the
| |
| − | Party's chief industrial organiser from Peter Kerrigan
| |
| − | earlier that year. Under Ramelson the Party began
| |
| − | classical 'broad left' campaigns in many of the
| |
| − | unions, run by Party-controlled 'advisory committees'.
| |
| − | Willie Thompson, himself a member of the CPGB, derides
| |
| − | the idea that these committees had any power.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'The CP advisory committees...were credited by an
| |
| − | alarmist press with being an organisational framework
| |
| − | through which a tight stranglehold was maintained upon
| |
| − | the country's economic existence; a network through
| |
| − | which flowed intelligence and commands enabling the
| |
| − | Kremlin via King Street to direct its thrusts...For
| |
| − | better or worse the advisories were just that - advice
| |
| − | forums - and their coordinating function even within
| |
| − | the individual area each one covered was weak.' (p.
| |
| − | 136)
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | The evidence on this just is not clear: Beckett offers
| |
| − | a different account of these committees. However
| |
| − | Thompson more or less agrees with Beckett's claims
| |
| − | that destruction of the Wilson-Castle trade union
| |
| − | reform proposals, in the 'In Place of Strife'
| |
| − | document, was 'largely a communist triumph and Wilson
| |
| − | knew it';(178) and the latter cites the 1970 dock
| |
| − | strike, the postal strike of 1971 and the miners'
| |
| − | strikes of 1972 as disputes in which the Party played
| |
| − | a significant role.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | In the 1970s, the anti-subversion lobby, orbiting
| |
| − | around IRD, and presumably informally briefed on the
| |
| − | reality of the 'Moscow gold' by MI5, took the picture
| |
| − | of real - and arguably, increasing - CPGB influence on
| |
| − | the trade unions, and added KGB/ Soviet control.To
| |
| − | this theory the Communist Party itself contributed by
| |
| − | occasionally boasting of its influence on the Labour
| |
| − | Party;(179) with the Labour Party itself unwittingly
| |
| − | adding the final touch by abolishing in 1973 the
| |
| − | Proscription List of organisations - mostly the 1950s
| |
| − | Soviet fronts - that Labour Party members could not
| |
| − | join, thus convincing the paranoids on the right that
| |
| − | the mice were in pantry. (180) Unaware of the 'Moscow
| |
| − | gold' evidence, the left dismissed the right's Soviet
| |
| − | angle as manifestly nonsense.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | MI5's role
| |
| − | Unaware of the evidence: this is the key point. For
| |
| − | while the members of the CPGB - and the wider public -
| |
| − | knew nothing of the packets of used fivers arriving in
| |
| − | London, we know now that MI5 had been aware of the
| |
| − | Moscow gold run almost as soon as it was begun. We can
| |
| − | start with Peter Wright's memory again.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'Then there was the Falber affair. After the PARTY
| |
| − | PIECE operation, MI5 went on the hunt for CPGB files
| |
| − | which listed the secret payments made to the Party by
| |
| − | the Soviets. We suspected that perhaps they might be
| |
| − | held in the flat of Reuben Falber, who had recently
| |
| − | been made cashier of the Russian funds.'(181)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | MI5 knew about the payments, and knew Falber was in
| |
| − | charge of them.(182) All they wanted were the presumed
| |
| − | accounts, the books - the evidence. Wright tells us
| |
| − | that MI5 planned to burgle Falber's flat but their
| |
| − | first plan failed - and leaves it there! To MI5 the
| |
| − | proof of the Moscow Gold must have had something of
| |
| − | the status of the Holy Grail; and we are to believe
| |
| − | that having located it they made only one attempt to
| |
| − | get it? Wright really wants us to believe that for 20
| |
| − | years, aware that the CPGB were getting actual Soviet
| |
| − | cash money, MI5 were either unable to detect the
| |
| − | payoffs in London, or, having made one failed attempt,
| |
| − | just gave up? This is simply not credible.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | In the USA the FBI famously had so many agents inside
| |
| − | the CPUSA as to make the whole enterprise a farce; and
| |
| − | J. Edgar Hoover is quoted by a fairly senior ex FBI
| |
| − | source as having said, 'If it were not for me, there
| |
| − | would not even be a Communist Party of the United
| |
| − | States. Because I've financed the Communist Party, in
| |
| − | order to know what they are doing.'(183) As far as we
| |
| − | know, nothing quite like this happened in the UK. The
| |
| − | large transmitter found attached to the bottom of the
| |
| − | table in the CPGB's central meetings room, displayed
| |
| − | by ex CPGB Central Committee member George Mathews in
| |
| − | the Independent (25 November 1989), illustrates Peter
| |
| − | Wright's claim that 'By 1955....... the CPGB was
| |
| − | thoroughly penetrated at almost every level by
| |
| − | technical surveillance or informants'; and with the
| |
| − | spreading disillusion in the 1950s, climaxed by
| |
| − | Hungary, MI5 can have had no trouble recruiting active
| |
| − | and former party members, like the late Harry Newton,
| |
| − | to inform on the British comrades.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | I do not want to argue that MI5 were running the CPGB.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | But it did allow the CPGB to run.(184)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Had the existence of the 'Moscow gold' been revealed
| |
| − | in 1958 or 9, coming after the Soviet invasion of
| |
| − | Hungary, the CPGB would have been terminally damaged.
| |
| − | But for MI5 the 'communist threat' - and the link to
| |
| − | the Soviet Union - was simply too useful a stick with
| |
| − | which to beat the much more important wider labour
| |
| − | movement and Labour Party to be surrendered. The
| |
| − | Soviet connection with the CPGB enabled the Security
| |
| − | Service to portray both unions and the left of the
| |
| − | Labour Party, some of whom worked with the CPGB, as
| |
| − | subversives; and with a subversive minority in its
| |
| − | midst, this enabled the Labour Party as a whole to be
| |
| − | portrayed as a threat to the well-being of the
| |
| − | nation,(185) and thus a legitimate target for MI5.
| |
| − | Reviewing Willie Thompson's history of the Party,
| |
| − | social democrat John Torode (whose father had been a
| |
| − | significant pre-war member of the Party) charged that:
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 'The [CPGB's] constant encouragement of strikes in
| |
| − | support of unrealistic wage demands, the destruction
| |
| − | of Barbara Castle's union reforms and the coordinated
| |
| − | attempts to capture positions of power in order to
| |
| − | influence Labour Party policy, did much to destroy the
| |
| − | credibility of that party.'(186)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | In one sense Torode is merely saying that the CPGB
| |
| − | tried to use such influence as it had in the trade
| |
| − | unions to frustrate social democratic policies and
| |
| − | build up its own position. Is this not what Communist
| |
| − | Parties always did? But in another way Torode has
| |
| − | missed the point. For the link with the CPGB
| |
| − | discredited the Labour Party because of the CPGB's
| |
| − | perceived connection to Moscow. If Torode's charge is
| |
| − | true - and I think it is to some extent - it was only
| |
| − | possible because MI5 had concealed the Moscow
| |
| − | financial connection and preserved the CPGB as a
| |
| − | significant force on the British Left.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Since so much of the British Left came either from, or
| |
| − | in opposition to, the CPGB, it is impossible to even
| |
| − | speculate convincingly how the the British Left - or
| |
| − | British Politics - would have developed if the Moscow
| |
| − | gold had been exposed in the late fifties. But it
| |
| − | certainly is possible that the anti-union hysteria of
| |
| − | the late 1970s, leading to the catastrophe of
| |
| − | Thatcherism - and the subsequent collapse of the
| |
| − | Labour Party - could have been avoided.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Notes
| |
| − |
| |
| − | 148. In 1964, for example, Common Cause issued a
| |
| − | pamphlet naming 180 people in Britain with 'Communist
| |
| − | connections', including Bertrand Russell, Lord Boyd
| |
| − | Orr and the painter Ruskin Spear! See the Sunday
| |
| − | Times, 31 May 1964. 'Big Jim' Matthews of the GMWU was
| |
| − | one of the Common Cause directors who approved the
| |
| − | publication
| |
| − | 149. For this view see the memoir by Des Warren, The
| |
| − | Key to My Cell, New Park, London, 1982. One of the
| |
| − | so-called Shrewsbury pickets, imprisoned in 1972,
| |
| − | Warren had been a member of the CPGB, became
| |
| − | disillusioned and joined the Workers' Revolutionary
| |
| − | Party.
| |
| − | 150. Darke pp. 59 and 60
| |
| − | 151. A CPGB activist at the time, Harry McShane
| |
| − | describes in his memoir how 'overnight we all became
| |
| − | democratic and amazingly interested in Acts of
| |
| − | Parliament.....the idea was that, whereas the old
| |
| − | Industrial Department was concerned with industrial
| |
| − | action, the Labour Movement Department would influence
| |
| − | the Labour Party and the trade unions and change the
| |
| − | character of those bodies....'. McShane p. 246.
| |
| − | 152. See Guardian, September 14 1991 and the
| |
| − | discussion in Labour History Review, Vol. 57, no. 3,
| |
| − | pp. 33-5.
| |
| − | 153. My parents were both in the CPGB in the 1945-56
| |
| − | period and talked of the burden of trying to sell
| |
| − | Party literature. On the Party's low wages see, for
| |
| − | example, the letter from former Party employee Bill
| |
| − | Brooks in Guardian, 21 November 1991.
| |
| − | 154. Independent, 15 November 1991
| |
| − | 155. The people I knew of in the CPGB were, on the
| |
| − | whole, well intentioned left democrats who, almost to
| |
| − | a man and woman, became Euro-communists in the 70s and
| |
| − | 80s. The impact on the Party of the revelation of
| |
| − | Soviet funding is discussed in detail in Mosbacher.
| |
| − | 156. Think of the logistics of this: assuming only one
| |
| − | page per file, for 48 hours, using 1955 technology,
| |
| − | and without disturbing the other tenants in the block
| |
| − | of flats? It seems unlikely to me.
| |
| − | 157. Wright, Spycatcher p. 55
| |
| − | 158. Beckett p. 138 repeats the denials of Matthews,
| |
| − | attributing it to 'CP officials'.
| |
| − | 159. Darke p. 86. On this 'coming out' of concealed CP
| |
| − | members, see the conference report in Labour History
| |
| − | Review, vol. 57, No. 3 Winter 1992, p. 29.
| |
| − | 160. Beckett pp. 147-8
| |
| − | 161. Evidence of secret CP members also comes from
| |
| − | another Communist Party. In her 1990 autobiography the
| |
| − | Australian feminist, poet and Communist Party
| |
| − | activist, Dorothy Hughes wrote of the period just
| |
| − | after World War 2, when the ACP was under pressure
| |
| − | from the state: 'Peter Thomas, Joan's former husband,
| |
| − | writes leaders for the West Australian and is an
| |
| − | undercover member of the State Committee of the
| |
| − | Party.' (emphasis added) Dorothy Hughes, Wild Card,
| |
| − | Virago, London, p. 122.
| |
| − | 162. Other left-wing parties in Britain have received
| |
| − | foreign funding without amounting to anything. The
| |
| − | Workers' Revolutionary Party for example.
| |
| − | 163. Shaw, Discipline, p. 59
| |
| − | 164. See Bower, The Perfect English Spy, chapter 4
| |
| − | 165. The Peril In Our Midst, Phoenix House, London,
| |
| − | 1956.
| |
| − | 166. The Hidden Face of British Communism, Aidan
| |
| − | Crawley, Sunday Times, October 28 1962, reprinted as a
| |
| − | pamphlet.
| |
| − | 167. Middlemas, footnote on p. 414
| |
| − | 168. Beckett p. 109. Like the rest of Beckett's book,
| |
| − | this is unsourced but presumably the estimate is from
| |
| − | CPGB members or former members.
| |
| − | 169. See Roberts pp. 210-216. IRIS discussed 'Voice'
| |
| − | newspapers in their pamphlet The British 'Left',
| |
| − | August 1970, pp. 18 and 19. The scare quotes round
| |
| − | 'Left' are IRIS's.
| |
| − | 170. Peace News, special issue, 23 August, 1974.
| |
| − | 171. Ossian, Glasgow, no date but circa 1984.
| |
| − | 172. This is still believed on the right. See for
| |
| − | example in the obituary of the London CPGB dockers'
| |
| − | leader, Jack Dash, in the Daily Telegraph June 9,
| |
| − | 1989. The various dock strikes and the alleged
| |
| − | 'communist threat' are discussed in Jim Phillips.
| |
| − | 173. Pimlott p. 407
| |
| − | 174. In Blackburn and Cockburn (eds.). In that, and in
| |
| − | his book The Politics of Harold Wilson, Foot traces
| |
| − | the origins of the strike back to the smaller 1960
| |
| − | strike and the formation of the National Seamen's
| |
| − | Reform Movement. I discussed Foot's highly selective
| |
| − | account of the origins of the strike in Lobster 25.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Historian of the CPGB Willie Thompson writes that 'the
| |
| − | Prime Minister indicted the CP (quite inaccurately)
| |
| − | for fomenting and organising the strike....accusing
| |
| − | King Street of having organised it with the deliberate
| |
| − | purpose of inflicting damage on the national economy.'
| |
| − | (emphasis added) p. 137. Actually Wilson did not
| |
| − | accuse the CPGB of deliberately trying to damage the
| |
| − | national economy, and Thompson says nothing more about
| |
| − | the alleged CPGB influence on the strike.
| |
| − | 175. Blackburn and Cockburn (eds.) p. 175
| |
| − | 176. His statement is reproduced in his The Labour
| |
| − | Government 1964-70 Penguin 1974, pp. 308-11.
| |
| − | 177. On this the evidence is incomplete and
| |
| − | contradictory. On the one hand Dr Raymond Challinor
| |
| − | told me that he discussed this with Jim Slater just
| |
| − | before the latter's death, and Slater told him that he
| |
| − | had never met Bert Ramelson, that he had told Wilson
| |
| − | this, and that Wilson had acknowledged that he had
| |
| − | been misinformed. But in his history of the CPGB
| |
| − | Beckett tells us that Slater was part of a 'left
| |
| − | caucus.... people who had a high regard for [CPGB
| |
| − | Industrial Organiser] Ramelson'. Beckett p. 182
| |
| − | 178. Beckett p. 175, Willie Thompson pp. 138/9.
| |
| − | 179. This is attributed to Ramelson in Seamus Milne's
| |
| − | obituary of him in the Guardian, 16 April 1994.
| |
| − | 180. Blake Baker, one of the media experts on the
| |
| − | CPGB, who wrote for the Daily Telegraph for many
| |
| − | years, on p. 96 of his The Far Left wrote of the
| |
| − | subsidies from Moscow: 'No one has ever been able to
| |
| − | produce evidence, let alone prove it. ... All that
| |
| − | would be necessary is a car or a taxicab to collect a
| |
| − | suitcase full of money.' Is Baker hinting here that he
| |
| − | knew about the cash from Moscow and how it was
| |
| − | delivered?
| |
| − | 181. Spycatcher p. 175 Falber's account is in Changes,
| |
| − | 16-19 November 1991. In it he writes: First, did the
| |
| − | authorities know about it [the Moscow money]? I think
| |
| − | they did.'
| |
| − | 182. This suggests either that the CPGB had a
| |
| − | high-level MI5 mole in its ranks who has never been
| |
| − | identified, or that SIS had a hitherto unknown agent
| |
| − | inside the Soviet intelligence apparatus.
| |
| − | 183. Summers, p. 191
| |
| − | 184. Something similar happened in the United States
| |
| − | where the people who handled the secret Soviet Union
| |
| − | donations to the CPUSA, Morris and Jack Childs, were
| |
| − | actually FBI agents. Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics
| |
| − | II: Essays on Oswald, Mexico and Cuba (Green Archive
| |
| − | Publications, Skokie, Illinois, USA 1995), p. 93,
| |
| − | citing David J. Garrow's The FBI and Martin Luther
| |
| − | King (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1981).
| |
| − | 185. This was a staple of the subversive-hunters in
| |
| − | the mid 1970s. But compare and contrast Geoffrey
| |
| − | Stewart-Smith's Not To Be Trusted: Left Wing Extremism
| |
| − | in the Labour and Liberal Parties of February 1974,
| |
| − | with his 1979 Hidden Face of the Labour Party, 1979.
| |
| − | By 1979 he has added Trotskyist groups in the Labour
| |
| − | Party to the CPGB as 'the threat'.
| |
| − | 186. The Independent, 1 October 1992.
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ----------------------------------------------------------------
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Books and articles cited
| |
| − |
| |
| − | * Agee, Philip, CIA Diary: Inside the Company,
| |
| − | Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1975
| |
| − | * Agee, Philip and Wolf, Louis, Dirty Work: the CIA in
| |
| − | Western Europe, Zed Press, London, 1981
| |
| − | * Allen, V.L., The Russians Are Coming: The Politics
| |
| − | of Anti-Sovietism, Moor Press, 1987
| |
| − | * Andrew, Christopher, Secret Service, Sceptre,
| |
| − | London, 1986
| |
| − | * Atholl, Duchess of, Working Partnership, Arthur
| |
| − | Barker, London, 1958
| |
| − | * Baker, Blake, The Far Left, Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
| |
| − | London, 1981
| |
| − | * Beckett, Francis, Enemy Within: The Rise and Fall of
| |
| − | the British Communist Party, John Murray, London, 1995
| |
| − | * Benn, Tony, Against the Tide; Diaries 1973-6,
| |
| − | Hutchinson, London, 1989
| |
| − | * Benn, Tony, Office Without Power; Dairies 1968-72,
| |
| − | Arrow, London, 1988
| |
| − | * Blackburn, Robin and Cockburn, Alexander, The
| |
| − | Incompatibles: trade union militancy and the
| |
| − | consensus, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1967
| |
| − | * Blank, Stephen, Industry and Government in Britain:
| |
| − | the Federation of British Industries in Politics,
| |
| − | 1945-64, Saxon House, Farnborough (UK), 1973
| |
| − | * Bloch, Jonathan and Fitzgerald, Patrick, British
| |
| − | Intelligence and Covert Action, Junction Books,
| |
| − | London, 1983
| |
| − | * Block, Fred L., The Origins of International
| |
| − | Economic Disorder, University of California Press,
| |
| − | London, 1977
| |
| − | * Bower, Tom, The Red Web, Arum Press, London, 1989
| |
| − | * Bower, Tom, The Perfect English Spy, Heinemann,
| |
| − | London, 1995
| |
| − | * Bradley, Ian, Breaking the Mould? The Birth and
| |
| − | Prospects of the Social Democratic Party, Martin
| |
| − | Robertson, Oxford, 1981
| |
| − | * Campbell, John, Roy Jenkins: A Biography, Weidenfeld
| |
| − | and Nicolson, London, 1983
| |
| − | * Carew, Anthony, Labour under the Marshall Plan,
| |
| − | Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1987.
| |
| − | * Carruthers, Susan L., Winning Hearts and Minds:
| |
| − | British Governments, the Media and Colonial
| |
| − | Counter-Insurgency 1944-60, University of Leicester
| |
| − | Press, Leicester and New York, 1995
| |
| − | * Castle, Barbara, The Castle Diaries 1974-76, Book
| |
| − | Club Associates, London, 1980
| |
| − | * Chapple, Frank, Sparks Fly, Michael Joseph, London,
| |
| − | 1984
| |
| − | * Cockett, Richard, Twilight of Truth, Weidenfeld and
| |
| − | Nicolson, London, 1989
| |
| − | * Coleman, Peter, The Liberal Conspiracy, Collier
| |
| − | Macmillan, London, 1989
| |
| − | * Crofts, William, Coercion or Persuasion: Propaganda
| |
| − | in Britain after 1945, Routledge, London, 1989
| |
| − | * Crosland, Susan, Tony Crosland, Coronet, London,
| |
| − | 1982
| |
| − | * Crouch, Colin (ed.), State and Economy in
| |
| − | Contemporary Capitalism, Croom Helm, London, 1979
| |
| − | * Crozier, Brian, Free Agent, HarperCollins, London,
| |
| − | 1993
| |
| − | * Darke, Bob, The Communist Technique in Britain,
| |
| − | Penguin, London, 1952
| |
| − | * Davenport-Hines, R.P.T. (ed.), Speculators and
| |
| − | Patriots, Frank Cass, London, 1986
| |
| − | * Desai, Radhika, Intellectuals and Socialism: 'Social
| |
| − | Democrats' and the Labour Party, Lawrence and Wishart,
| |
| − | London, 1994
| |
| − | * Dittberner, Job L., The End of Ideology and American
| |
| − | Social Thought, UMI Press, USA, 1979
| |
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