The Times
Sheridan Morley
The sight of former high-ranking MI5 officers fleeing from television reporters, much after the fashion of suspect double-glazing salesmen on the run from Esther Rantzen or Roger Cook, is not an attractive one. Last night's This Week investigation (ITV) is going to need some sort of official reaction beyond that of the slammed door.
It would appear from this report that in the 1970s Harold Wilson and Merlyn Rees were victims of smear campaigns by an MI5 which considered them too soft on the IRA. Female Labour MPs such as Harriet Harman have been similarly blacklisted for their civil rights activities.
MI5 reckons such activities are subversive, and still would appear to be engaged on a campaign of black propaganda which might resurface at the next election if this week's ruling by the European Commission on Human Rights in Strasbourg does not lead by then to a drastic rethinking of agency malpractice.
To put it bluntly, MI5 does not seem much to like socialists or powerful women: a former MI5 official, Colin Wallace, now makes detailed claims about daft disinformation schemes, such as an attempt to make journalists believe the Russians were sending submarines to support the IRA, or that female bombers' knickers could be made to explode.
But aside from the infinite credibility of some journalists desperate for stories, the programme also claimed there to be a consistent drip-feeding of black propaganda which MI5 is allowed to operate in the name of national security. It is that which clearly needs to be reconsidered in the light of the new Strasbourg ruling. Unless, of course, the European Commission is also a feminist-socialist IRA conspiracy designed to destroy the fabric of our nationan idea which MI5 is doubtless hoping to plant in the minds of gullible reporters.
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