70s Hysteria
<p>Clockwork Orange type gangs roaming streets
Need for Kitson tecquniques, collaboration between army and police for insurgancy etc</p>
<p>
Military manoeuvres
As the Heath government's economic policies unwound and the fears of trade unionled
'anarchy and chaos' increased, the right began looking to the armed forces to
maintain 'law and order' in the near future.
The British Army was already thinking along similar lines. With its extensive post-
WW2 experience in counter-insurgency the Army sent Frank Kitson, a bright young
officer with personal experience of British operations in Kenya and Cyprus, to Oxford
University for a year to synthesise the extant literature on counter-insurgency methods.
The result was the famous (or infamous) Low Intensity Operations.(25) Just before
Kitson departed for Oxford the Army's Land Manual had been updated and a new
section on counter-insurgency added (26); and in 1972, with the Army embroiled in a
counter-insurgency situation in Northern Ireland, Kitson was given command of the
Belfast Brigade and the chance to try out some of his theories.(27)
By 1972 politicians on the Tory right had begun to speak publicly of the need for
Army involvement in civil affairs on the UK mainland. Winston Churchill MP, a
member of the right-wing Monday Club, called for the use of troops to break the (first)
miners' strike, (28) and fellow Monday Clubber John Biggs-Davison called for "a
special anti-terrorist force and mobile squad of motorised troops to counter the forces
of red fascism." (29) In June 1972 Patrick Wall, a third Monday Club member, in a
letter to the Times, predicted that in the future, as well as its role in NATO, the Army
would have to "sustain lawful authority in the face of subversion leading to possible
guerilla warfare." (30)
The same year the right-wing Tory Bow Group wrote in a pamphlet, Peace Has Its
Price, that
"co-operation between the Ministry of Defence and the police needs to be
strengthened considerably ... to prepare contingency plans for dealing
with internal unrest in Britain ... arranging joint exercises between police
and army units." (31)
By 1973 these cries off-stage right had been taken up by the Tory Party as a whole. In
a document, In Defence of Peace, it cited Kitson amongst others, suggesting that "the
study of the techniques of terrorism must now be an integral part of every front line
soldier's training. " (32)
These glimpses of the right's politicians grappling with these newish ideas are matched
by the occasional sighting of the military doing the same thing. In October 1972 Army
Quarterly editorialised on the role of the Army re subversives: "the increasing
activities of revolutionary bodies now operating freely; their fomenting of violent
mass protest ... preventive measures..etc." (33)
In April 1973 the Royal United Services Institute staged a conference on the "Role of
the Armed Forces in peace-keeping in the '70's". Chair was Monday Clubber Biggs-
Davison and speakers included Brig. W. F. K. Thompson (ISC Council member),
Brig. Birdwell (RUSI journal editor) and Brig. Mike Calvert. (34)
To the alarm of Harold Wilson and Marcia Williams, police-military links were tried
out with the Heathrow exercises during 1974 (the first in January), all organised on
spurious 'terrorist' pretexts. (35) In April 1974 a seminar on "revolutionary warfare"
was attended by senior police personnel as well as those from the Army and the Navy.
(36)
The process of Army self-education included the employment of ISC which, in 1974,
gave lectures on 'subversion' at a number of military establishments (37); and the
employers' intelligence service, The Economic League. The League's report for 1973
noted (p8) "the greater demand for detailed knowledge about subversion received by
the League's Director of Information and Research to speak at formal and informal
meetings and courses held at Ministry of Defence establishments."(38)
*
25.Kitson (1971) See also the autobiographical Bunch of Five, Kitson (1978)
26.Discussed in State Research October/November 1978 pp20-21
27.One French commentator, Faligot (1983) claimed that all of Kitson's theories
were implemented. This is challenged in Lobster No 10.
28.Thompson (1980) p 75.
The Monday Club held a conference on 'subversion' in 1970. Speakers
included Charles Lyon, ex-FBI, Sir Robert Thompson, Ian Greig, Harold Soref
and G. K. Young (Counterspy November 1981). An interesting line-up. Lyons
was "London contact for the Maheu agency" - the Robert Maheu Agency
which worked for Howard Hughes (Hougan, 1979, p274). Soref was Vice
Chair of the Monday Club in 1974. He wrote to the Observer (24 July 1977)
attacking Harold Wilson for his attacks on MI5 and South Africa. Winter
(London 1981) portrays Soref as a witting agent of the South Africans. See pp
330-333. Soref sued Winter for this. Soref, like so many of the cast of
characters on the Tory right was in intelligence during WW2: Intelligence
Corps, 1940-46.
29.Newsline (1981) p 40
30.Labour Research December 1974
31.ibid This pamphlet illustrates nicely the intricate networking of the right-wing.
One of its authors was Julian Radcliffe who emerged later as one of the brains
behind Control Risks, whose apparent business is 'risk insurance'. Control
Risks also acquired ISC's Peter Janke and Richard Sims, and General Frank
King (see below). Acknowledged as assisting the authors were Menual (ISC
council), W.F.K. Thompson (ISC Council, and later on National Association
for Freedom Council).
32.Labour Research December 1974
33.Quoted in Agee-Hosenball (1977 p 10) Editor of Army Quarterly was Maj-
Gen. Charles Stainforth, on the board of Common Cause.
34.Newsline (1981) p 27. Calvert was a lecturer at Manchester University on
'strategic warfare' (Guardian 20 June 1974). At a later conference on a similar
theme in 1976 the speakers included the ubiquitous Chapman Pincher and
Robert Moss. (Agee-Hosenball, 1977, P11)
35.Wilson's 'alarm' in Penrose and Courtier (1978) p241
36.Bunyan (1977) p282
37.Details in Guardian 16 July 1976
38.That 1973 report was the last occasion on which the League was so explicit
about its activities.</p>