Behind the Wallace revelations
Clearing the decks for a change of government?
The media and the parliamentary parties are belatedly paying attention to former army (disinformation officer Colin Wallace's accounts of dirty tricks and defamation in Ireland and
Britain in the 1970s.
But (with the exception of
Ken
Foot and
Paul
Livingstone)this scandal hasn't surfaced due to the investiga tive zeal of either MPs or the press. Information, awaiting exposure, has been available for years; not just Colin Wallace's accounts, but also those of exintelligence officer Fred Hol royd, Kenneth Lindsay's book
*The British Secret Services in
Action' published in 1981 and two decades of allegations by and the civil libertarians
Republican Movement.
This material has included evidence of security force colloyalist laboration with paramilitaries in the Miami
Showband Massacre; the involvement of Captain Robert Nairac and other SAS officers in shoot-to-kill operations in Ireland from at least
1974 onwards; bank robberies by the Littlejohn brothers under Ml6 tutelage; and bombings and kidnappings South of the border by British-controlled agents. Similarly senior
Labour politicians have for long been alleging destabilisation and smear campaigns against the Wilson govemment.
Far from being a relentless assault from outsiders on Britain's Irish Watergate, the new interest stems from crisis and division within the system. Coming so soon after the Stalker affair, the Guildford revelations and the wrangles over Gibraltar, what has caused this and why now?
Thatcher has continued and escalated the drive towards centralisation and secrecy that has been a feature of the British state since at least the First World War. Some of the more public manifestations of this have been linked to the goverment's Irish policy - the dismantling of democratic rights and institutions, establishing greater political control of the media, and the development of armed and political policing-
One consequence has been that far more
FEATURES
Livingstone has long sought to bring this matter out in the open loyalty and discipline has been required from the military, civil service and intelligence officials - but in a context of declining social and political consensus. Thus, in particular, the 1989 Official Secrets Act has forced the pace on whistleblowing by threatening an imminent and absolute clampdown on the disclosure even of illegal' activities.
At the same time there has been a certain amount of disarray within the agencies that act as core guardians of the state's interests. There has been MIS/Ml6 rivalry since the 1970s. And there have been a string of public scandals and exposures around Cathy Massiter, Clive Ponting, Spycatcher and Colin Wallace.
Underlying all this, these agencies have been undergoing an "identity" crisis, reflecting a broader debate in ruling class circles about changes in Britain's role in the world, its relations with its allies (particularly the US and Europe) and the nature of the British state. The "Irish question" is a recurrent feature in each aspect of this debate.
New factors exacerbating this disarray have emerged in the last year or so. Firstly developments in Eastem Europe have accelerated this identity crisis by depriving the state of a mythology that justified the existence of these agencies and this process towards centralisation. The ransacking of Stasi and Securitate HOs must have led at least a few British spooks to put stronger locks on their filing cabinets.
Secondly, Thatcher's popularity has dramatically declined, suggesting a new era may be underfoot possibly leading to a Labour government. Some officials may be anticipating a clean sweep as a result. As Livingstone points out, Thatcher is the chief beneficiary of the "treason" Wallace has exposed. there may therefore be reason to fear the consequences of a changing of the guard.
But such revolutions are unusual in British politics. More significantly Thatcherism effectively cemented over these long-term cracks and divisions by providing a degree of authority and continuity. With the ruling class rethinking which kind of govemment it really needs, this is bound to shake up some of the weaker props on which the secret state rests.
The key turning-point was the Euro-elections last summer - coincidentally around the same time as it is now claimed the documents exposing both the Guildford and Wallace affairs were first "discovered".
Piers Mostyn