Clockwork Orange 2
<p>Wilson, MI5 and the Rise of Thatcher
Covert Operations in British Politics 1974-1978
Psy ops in Northern Ireland
The campaign to discredit the Labour Party throughout 1974-76 extended across the
Irish Sea to Northern Ireland. It began almost immediately after the election of
February, the Ulster Workers' Council general strike of May providing the major
opportunity. Called to bring down the power-sharing executive, the alliance of middleof-
the-road Protestants and Social Democratic and Labour party members created by
the Heath government, the strike was used by MI5 and the Army as part of the
destabilisation campaign.
The Ulster Workers' Council strike was an acute embarrassment to the British Army.
As 'Andrew Sefton', the pseudonymous Army officer pointed out (135) the one thing
the Army didn't want was to end up fighting a war on two fronts, and had thus formed
an alliance with the Protestant community. (Which was, in the beginning, at any rate,
'loyal'.) When the Army met the Ulster Workers' Council and its paramilitary allies on
the streets and at the barricades, they were meeting people who were both political
and, as Fred Holroyd has shown, military allies. Army co-operation with Protestant
paramilitaries ran from blind eye turning to outright military cooperation. (136)
The Army and the Protestant community also shared a distrust of the Labour Party: the
Army because it suspected it of being comm-symp; the Protestants because such
support as the Catholic community had received before 1969 from the mainland
political parties had come mainly from the Labour Party. (137)
As the Ulster Workers' Council (and its paramilitary 'enforcers') brought the province
to a standstill the Army's advice to Merlyn Rees the Secretary of State was that "any
attempt to use the Army to run the essential services under the conditions then
prevailing would almost certainly make the situation worse." (138)
In fact, as it is now quite widely recognised, the Army essentially refused to be used
against the strike, even though they could have broken it in the first couple of days
before the paramilitaries had 'persuaded' people to obey the strike call. (139)
Assisted by the intelligence services, the Army:
• misinformed Harold Wilson and Merlyn Rees about what was happening in the
early days of the strike; (140)
• fed criticism of Rees to the press; (141)
• dragged its feet sending in reinforcements; (142)
• tacitly co-operated with the strike. (143)
In the background, MI5, which had been working against the Protestant political
alliance opposed to the power-sharing executive, changed its policy. 'John Shaw', the
work-name of one of the MI5 officers with whom Colin Wallace was working in the
black propaganda operation, Information Policy, told Wallace that "London had had a
change of mind and now wanted the strike to succeed." This is explained by an
unnamed intelligence officer quoted by Bloch and Fitzgerald:
"Some of us also hoped that the strike would make progress and Wilson
would be defeated. We thought that if the Protestants won, Wilson would
be discredited. And we hoped that if power-sharing failed then the UK
population would say Ulster had had its chance politically and would
advocate an all-out effort for a military victory." (144)
From the end of the UWC strike onwards the Wilson/Rees team in Northern Ireland
was subjected to a sustained campaign of leaks and smears from the military/
intelligence sources in the province. In one of his documents Colin Wallace listed
some of these leaks. As we did above, Wallace's claim is presented first, such
supporting material as we have found underneath it. (How many of these ops were
Wallace's own work we don't know yet. Some of them certainly were.)
a. The release of internees by Merlyn Rees had led to the death of several
members of the armed forces
Liz Curtis: "In July '74 reporters were given a briefing at Lisburn at which the
Army blamed a recent upsurge of violence directly on the release of 64
internees ... Army intelligence had falsified figures in an attempt to change
Rees' policy of phasing out internment." (145) Joe Haines, Wilson's press
secretary, said of this incident: "We felt that elements in the Army were
working against us". (146)
b. Reports of Wilson's planned peace talks with the Provisional IRA in
December/January 1975 were leaked to the Northern Ireland Office to
create a rift between Rees (who did not know about them) and Wilson.
Joe Haines again: "Dr. O'Connel (who had been the go-between the Provos and
the Government) then discovered that his second visit to London (by-passing
Rees at the Provos insistence) had become known to civil servants in Northern
Ireland within hours of his making it." (147)
c. IRA Doomsday plan announced by Wilson in the House was
disinformation to force him to take a tougher line with the IRA. Plan was
'found' in a house at Malone Road, Belfast.
Tony Geraghty: "The plan according to a British intelligence source was
essentially defensive but Harold Wilson ... was influenced by an MI5 analysis
of the IRA plan as an offensive one .... The seizure of the IRA 'doomsday'
document gave MI5 an ideal opportunity to discredit the hypothesis that the
terrorists were serious about a political deal. "(148)
Rees describes the document as showing "the true colours of the Provisional
IRA." (149)
d. SAS in Ulster leaked to show that Harold Wilson had lied to the House of
Commons
This story - essentially that the Labour Government was exaggerating the
numbers of SAS men they had sent to Northern Ireland - appeared in the Daily
Express, courtesy of Chapman Pincher. It was discussed in The Times which
commented that "the Opposition front bench and some Conservative backbenchers
with unusually reliable military sources nursed suspicions on Monday
that the Government had been more interested in public relations than a
tougher military response in Armagh". (150)
e. Claims that the Labour Government had forced the Security Forces to
grant the PIRA leader Seamus Twomey 'immunity from arrest'.
David Blundy: "The Army was equally unhappy about the dialogue established
by Rees between Northern Ireland officials and Provisional Sinn Fein....In
early 1975 an Army Intelligence summary appeared...indicating that Seamus
Twomey, head of the Provisional IRA, was not to be arrested if seen by the
Army. Details were leaked to the press and the Reverend Ian Paisley." (151)
At the heart of the conflict was Army-MI5 hostility to the Rees-Northern Ireland
Office-MI6 attempts to reach a political solution. The Army-MI5 believed that the
ceasefire agreed with the Provos was simply a ploy to enable them to regroup and
reorganise. (With hindsight it is clear that they were correct.) (152)
Rees' recent account of his time in Northern Ireland as Secretary of State is littered
with the leaks and misinformation fed to the media, the Protestants and the Tory
Party's right-wing against him personally and the Labour government in general. (153)
The single most striking was a speech by the General Officer in Command (GOC)
Frank King attacking the Labour Government's policies which 'accidentally' got
reported in April 1975. This caused a furore in the House of Commons. King
subsequently pretended that it had all been a mistake, that he was unaware of the
presence of reporters at the meeting. This was clearly untrue: "He knew he was being
reported because he spent some time chatting to one journalist." (154)
The one section of the military/intelligence operation of which he was nominally the
political head that Rees is able to bring himself to be overtly critical of is the Army's
Information Services - the source of most of the leaks and 'unattributable briefings'.
(155) What Rees didn't seem to know then, and may still not know (156) - there is
certainly no evidence in his book which suggests he knows - is that the Army
Information Services at Lisburn served as the 'cover' for the psy-ops activities of
Wallace and the rest of the Information Policy group. Wallace again:
"Information Policy activities were carried out at three levels of 'consciousness'. To
the press it was a liaison section that provided a link between the Operations Network
and the Press Room. At certain levels within the Security Services it was seen as a
counter-propaganda organisation dealing in 'white' information. It did however have a
third totally deniable role in which 'black' operations, popularly known as 'dirty tricks'
were used.
Basically the main tasks of the Psy Ops unit were to:
a. undertake operations which would act as a cohesive factor between the various
elements of the Security Forces and the public - both in Northern Ireland and in
the rest of the UK;
b. undertake operations to discredit the paramilitaries and their supporters;
c. undertake operations to cause dissention within the ranks of the terrorists and
their supporters and separate them from their 'grass roots';
d. undertake operations which would discredit organisations and individuals who,
by their activities, were hindering the work of the Security Forces." (In the last
category was the Labour Party.)
Wallace adds that "the 'covers' used in connection with I.P. were highly successful in
that almost all of the 'dirty tricks' attributed to the Psy Ops unit by the terrorists and
their supporters had nothing whatsoever to do with us. Most of the activities
uncovered were 'freelance' or 'cowboy' activities carried out by Brigades or overenthusiastic
individuals without proper clearance. This situation changed, however, in
1974, when details of our activities were leaked to the loyalist paramilitaries by certain
individuals at the Northern Ireland Office and in the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
Information Policy was largely a service mechanism, producing the material for, and
implementing the plans of, other people. (It is this unique over-view of the whole
range of operations which makes Wallace such a potentially extraordinary source.)
One of the more spectacular of these plans bears directly on our narrative.
In early 1974, the MI5 officer 'John Shaw' commissioned Wallace to undertake a
project "designed to cause dissention within the Loyalist leadership and thus avert the
strike which was being threatened as a means of bringing down the power-sharing
executive." Wallace was given (genuine) extracts from intelligence reports and was
asked to "collate and write in the Ulster idiom, two or three 'personal' accounts by nonexistent
people giving details of the homosexual activities of well-known political
figures and to link these activities to other political figures in London .... the object ...
was to put pressure on a number of key people who might play a major role in the
unrest."
Wallace began work on the project, 'Clockwork Orange 2', but after a short time 'John
Shaw' told him to stop "because London had a change of mind and now wanted the
strike to succeed. "
"After the strike succeeded and the Executive collapsed, the project was
reactivated with the aim of breaking up the power base which the
Loyalists had achieved during the strike. I was supplied with further
information which I was told to attribute to a prominent but unidentified
political personality. The tone of the new project was very different from
that of the previous one in that it was much more political in content and
involved a number of Westminster MPs ... such as William Van
Straubenze, Norman St. John Stevas and Edward Heath. Others were
from the Labour and Liberal parties and included a mention of Jeremy
Thorpe (this was long before the first allegations regarding his
relationship with Norman Scott hit the headlines, and appeared to be
based on Special Branch reports). Kincora featured quite prominently,
not because of its importance but because it provided a local story link
which could be quickly substantiated by an investigative journalist ....
Among the new information which I received was a copy of a report
which allegedly came from the RUC and which indicated that various
people closely involved with the Reverend Ian Paisley were involved in,
or aware of, the Kincora situation.
"This report listed a wide range of Loyalist politicians and other
personalities, including Sir Knox Cunningham QC MP, Mr Clifford
Smith, Mr David Brown (editor of the Rev. Ian Paisley's newspaper, the
Protestant Telegraph), Mr Thomas Passmore and the Rev. Martin Smyth,
both key figures in the Orange Order. There was also a fairly lengthy
report written by an RUC officer on allegations made by one of the
Kincora inmates. The new information included a variety of bank
statements and other documents which purported to show financial
transactions linking the Rev. Ian Paisley with property deals in the
United States and Canada. 'John Shaw' told me that the documents were
based on originals but that the figures had been 'doctored'."
At this point Wallace baulked. "It was clear that I was being asked to undertake a
'black' operation without political clearance and directed at elected members of
Parliament." Wallace's personal problems with the British state began here.
In July 1974, apparently as a result of dissatisfaction with the performance of the
Army and Northern Ireland Office's Information Services during the Ulster Workers'
Council strike, the Labour Government sent Michael Cudlipp to Northern Ireland as
Information Co-ordinator. Wallace's account of this episode is fascinating and
instructive about the internal politics of the time.
"When Mr Cudlipp's appointment was announced Intelligence Officers
considered creating false 'traces' to block his employment on the grounds
that he was a security risk. This plan failed because there was insufficient
time to mount a proper operation. After he took up his post there was a
concerted effort to try and ensure that he failed in his job. For example,
there was relentless 'leaking' of information from NIO sources to show
that he was in dispute with other senior officials. Any controversial plans
which he put forward, or was associated with, were leaked at the earliest
opportunity.
"At this time there was also considerable jealousy between the Army and
the other government press agencies because the Army had an almost
total monopoly over the supply of information to the press. Mr Cudlipp
thought that the NIO should be the source of all authoritative statements
regarding security - this was also a reaction to Mr Harold Wilson's belief
that the Army and RUC had let him down in the propaganda war during
the Loyalist strike. Quite clearly the Intelligence Services and the Army
wanted to continue running their own press services but they also realised
that they needed some form of political 'umbrella' for their psychological
operations.
"Army HQ convinced Mr Cudlipp that he should get the Northern Ireland
Secretary, Mr Rees, to issue an Information Policy Directive under his
signature; this could also be used at any future date to claim a political
'approval' for any 'black' activity that went wrong. Of course what the
Secretary of State thought he was approving/implementing by the
Directive and what the Army and Intelligence services were planning
were two different things. "
Information Policy was disbanded in 1976 (we think) after a series of complicated
manoeuvres by MI5 which was trying to take over the entire Northern Ireland
intelligence operation. This internecine struggle, about which we know relatively little,
was extremely nasty. People got killed - 10 Army informants in a week after leaks
from inside MI5. (157)
Captain Fred Holroyd and Colin Wallace, who refused to accept the new regime,
caught it in the neck: Holroyd via an Army psychiatric ward into unemployment;
Wallace, after an Army enquiry, eventually wrongly convicted of manslaughter,
becoming the victim of a psyops campaign directed against himself. (158)
*
135.Monday World, Summer 1974
136.See Fred Holroyd in Lobster 10.
137.One of the groups 'unacceptable' to MI5 was the Campaign for Ulster
Democracy (CDU). Several of those on the psy-ops targets list supplied by
Colin Wallace in our appendices, were members of the CDU.
138.Rees (1985) p80
139.See remarks by Andy Tyrie acknowledging this in Whitehead (1985) pp l71-4
140.Nossiter (1978) p141; Rees (ibid) p78; Fisk(1975) pp 105-7
141.Fisk (ibid) p87
142.Fisk (ibid) p88
143.Fisk (ibid) p 240 and Bew and Patterson (1985) p 67
144.Bloch and Fitzgerald (1983) p 226
145.Curtis (1984) p 241 Also Sunday Times 13 March 1977
146.Haines in Sunday Times ibid
147.Haines (1977) p 137/8
148.Geraghty (1980) ppl95/6
149.Rees (1985) p62
150.Times 14 January 1976
151.Sunday Times 13 March 1977
152.This was just a part of a struggle between MI5 and MI6. See appendices re
'MI5-MI6 wars'. This is an area we haven't attempted to cover adequately.
153.See Rees (1985):
a. p57 "No sooner...than it was leaked from Army headquarters"
136.p81 "..to find that my trip had already been announced on BBC news".
137.p84 "talk about rows with the Army came from Lisburn".
138.pp122/3 "low-level Army statement to the press from Lisburn".
139.pp234/5 "back to leaks".
140.p302 "more unattributable briefings".
141.p306 "revelations in The Times".
154.Sunday Times 20 April 1975
155.Rees (ibid) pp46/7, 51, 90
156.On the basis of two short notes from him, we can say that Mr Rees would
reject all of our thesis, including the idea that MI5 were working against the
Labour Party at this time.
157.Holroyd in Lobster 10; Geraghty (1980) p193
158.See Wallace appendix. Recent versions of Army misinformation on Wallace
in Hammil (1985) and Pincher (1978) p197
Hammil (p173): "Information Policy ... main tasks would be to issue facts on
government policy and describe what the Army was trying to achieve.'What we
ended up with' said a senior officer some time later 'was a press officer who
dabbled in things he should not have. He..was pursuing a sort of disinformation
policy all of his own without checking with anyone.' "
This line, the 'maverick, freelancer' line is also in Rees' book.
Wilson, MI5 and the Rise of Thatcher
Covert Operations in British Politics 1974-1978</p>