TWO KEY people are now verification of the allegations of an MI5 conspiracy against the Wilson government. They are Margaret Thatcher and James Callaghan.
Callaghan's statement, made as minister in 1977, following an investigation into allegations against MI5, is being taken as clearing MI5 of the charges Wright has made in the book Spycatcher. But Callaghan's statement only explicitly clears MI5 of using electronic bugging devices in Number 10. Thatcher has taken cover behind Callaghan's refusal, so far, to call for an inquiry into MI5's alleged plot to destabilise a Labour government.
Objectively there is only one side which gains from this: the Security services themselves, and the British state. If the allegations are unfounded and if Callaghan knows this to be the case, then he could present his evidence and sort the matter out. The only reasonable assumption for the failure to do this, is that it cannot be done. Therefore Callagahan should call for an inquiry. thrown an elected government, or would expose The only objective explanațion for the failure to call for an inquiry by those who could get one set up is that the interests of protecting the use of the PM's office in the Westland scandal It should come as no surprise in the case of informed on the functioning of Mi5 and more generally the dirty role of the British security services in Britain, Ireland and elsewhere. He parliamentary' institutions like the IMF, the City, • NATO and the EEC. He only objects to 'extrawhen it comes from the labour movement or its The bi-partisanship of Labour's front bench when the core interests of the British establish ment are at stake has been a disgrace: Compare of the PLP leadership's attacks on policies with their almost unbelievable inability Westland affair, the Stalker affair, and Zircon to name just the most recent.
Not only have their witch hunts and right wing policies undermined support for but their spineless refusal to fight for even the modest measures of democracy in the capacity to inflict the kind of damage upon Thatcher's government which its most blatant coverThose that have fought Thatcher in parliament and supported those fighting her governyears have unfortunately been a small minority in the Campaign Group linked to the left in the labour movement. It is the left which has been the chief target of the right wing's attacks, not - unfortunately for Labour - MI5, the IME the CBI, the Tory Party and the SDP.
It did not need Wright's book to reveal that the Security Services are a law unto themselves.
democratic controls to hinder their operations.
They only exist to protect the establishment, to secure the status quo, and prevent any threats soçiety. As Wright is quoted by the Independent as saying in his book: 'As we always used to say in the office: "Politicians may come and go, Wright speaks from the inside!
UNLESS SOMETHING amazing happens in the local Socialist Action 8 May 1987