New Statesman 1986
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The MI5 affair: can the spooks be trusted?Would a Kinnock government 5 December, 1986 |
At the Odeon and Metro: Central American censorshipDuncan Campbell reports on how a Jackson Browne concert and 'Nicaragua Must Survive' meeting brought the issue of censorship to London. 10 October, 1986 |
UK's listening link with ApartheidCompelling evidence of a 'disgraceful' new intelligence link between Britain and the South African government has just been published in the United States. 1 August, 1986 |
Spy trial by televisionThree months ago, Channel 4 claimed to have found an undetected 'Czech agent'. Special Branch say they found 'insufficient evidence to support any action'. 25 July, 1986 |
Bugs in the basementNext Tuesday, the Queen will ceremonially open the £50m Queen Elizabeth International Conference Centre (ICC) in Broad Sanctuary, Westminster. But you won't be hearing that deep below the new centre is a secret government communications and surveillance network. 20 June, 1986 |
Americans plan escape from British 'front line'British residents who live next door to US bases are expected to sit tight while their neighbours may be assisted to flee to 'survival areas.' 30 May, 1986 |
Nuclear convoy: no secret chargesThe New Statesman and the writers of this column are not to be prosecuted for publishing details of RAF 'Special Road Convoys' based on secret instructions issued to Avon and Somerset Constabulary. 30 May, 1986 |
Data dodgersAs few as one in 10 of those supposed to register their use of computerised personal databanks may have actually done so before the 11 May deadline, suspects the Data Protection Registry. 30 May, 1986 |
Records protected - people exposedThe Data Protection Act provides no challenge to the threat to privacy. In delaying and diverting privacy legislation, the authoritarian argument is that there is little to worry about, scant evidence of abuse and no tide of public concern. 16 May, 1986 |
The battle against privacyIn September 1987, Britons will get a new right to inspect the contents of many files held about them. That right has taken 20 years to establish, in the face of the determined resistance of successive governments and their officials. 9 May, 1986 |
File 'disappears'The disappearance of confidential papers dealing with unauthorised British Army and secret service activities from the House of Commons office of a Conservative MP is to be investigated by the police. 11 April, 1986 |
Car park for Britain's bombAlbemarle Barracks, which houses Britain's most costly, highest security car park, will be an overnight stopping ground for RAF 'special weapons' convoys, which carry nuclear weapons around the country. 11 April, 1986 |
Chemical weapons plan pushed aheadWithin the next six weeks, Mrs Thatcher and members of a secret committee will meet to consider British support for controversial US plans for a new NATO 'chemical deterrent'. Approval for the American plans is now being quietly pushed through NATO. 11 April, 1986 |
Spy shuffleChanges at the top of British intelligence have led to the appointment of a career MI6 official as Cabinet Office Intelligence Coordinator for the first time. Four of Britain's five top spy jobs have now changed hands in less than a year. 4 April, 1986 |
Ring around the basesNew by-laws to hinder peace camps and protestors at controversial nuclear bases round Britain are being created by the Ministry of Defence. The Ministry has just admitted that 19 CND or peace camp sites are already or will soon be subject to special new military laws. 4 April, 1986 |
Conscripts for American forces plan admittedGovernment ministers last week acknowledged that a secret 'US-UK lines of Communication Arrangement' does exist - and provides for food, fuel, hospitals, transport and the services of British workers to be provided to the Americans in a crisis. 28 March, 1986 |
Where to next?A by-product of abolition is the turning of hundreds of (mainly Labour) politicians onto the streets. It's all right for the like of Ken Livingstone, MP-to-be in Brent East, but what about the others? 21 March, 1986 |
New computer for MI5?Secrecy still shrouds a new intelligence computer which Defence Minister Norman Lamont admitted this week was installed 'in central London' two years ago. The computer adds to an increasingly integrated - and threatening central government network. 7 March, 1986 |
1985: a bumper bunker yearUnderground bunkers and 'hardened' war facilities have become one of the major industrial growth areas of the 1980s. The bunker boom is the result of expanded plans for 'home defence' introduced by Mrs Thatcher in 1979. 7 March, 1986 |
Government must answer Kincora questionThe real 'scandal' of Kincora is not the homosexual abuse of children in care. It is the unresolved question of whether British intelligence organisations in Northern Ireland knew of and condoned the abuses - and exploited them 28 February, 1986 |
What's the royal navy doing in the Pacific?THE largest Royal Navy force to go on exercise with the Americans in the Pacific Ocean for 10years will pass through the Panama canal early in May. British government support for US military has now taken priority over NATO. 21 February, 1986 |
Gags on for local authoritiesIf the1986 Local Government Bill is not successfully amended by the House of Lords, it will soon be illegal for local authorities to announce the time of day. 21 February, 1986 |
Global spy network exposedA new book by American and Australian intelligence specialists reveals and documents the extensive links between the intelligence agencies of the English-speaking powers and highlights the dangers of these links to civil liberties and political accountability 14 February, 1986 |
New D notice gagA new extension to official censorship has been agreed by 10 editors and four Permanent Secretaries. The government's D Notice Committee has agreed to ask other journalists to curb their reporting of intelligence, nuclear weapons, civil defence plans. 14 February, 1986 |
Greeham spies: more blusterJanes' Defence Weekly, the magazine which two weeks ago published a lurid account of alleged infiltration of the Greenham Common women's peace camp by specially trained Soviet Spetsnaz special forces, is now struggling to maintain its credibility. 7 February, 1986 |
Agreements reveal terms for US basesClassified agreements between Britain and the US, now published, show that Winston Churchill misled the House of Commons about the real costs of bringing the Americans to Britain. 7 February, 1986 |
The chilling effectParanoia is a potent political force. When it is a fear of government surveillance it can paralyse democracy. That fear may focus on the wrong objects but, argues Duncan Campbell, it is not without reason. 24 January, 1986 |
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