Cathy Massiter - MI5 briefing 1983 Tory election team

[TonyGosling]

MI5s Official Secrets phone tapping in the 1980s
Featuring CND and an extensive TV interview by Cathy Massiter.
http://www.viddler.com/explore/TonyGosling/videos/1/#

Google Vid have been blocking uploads the last few days

[TonyGosling]

Cathy Massiter's big TV special from about 1985. Relationship between Special Branch and MI5 elucidated here by Hugo Young. And hard evidence here of dirty tricks which were just 'conspiracy theories' before.

First time on the web I do believe.

[TonyGosling]

A bit of documentary history this. Hugo Young's '20/20 Vision' documentary film made in 1985 for Channel 4 you see here was banned at the time even though it showed that MI5 were systematically breaking their own rules and spying on CND for the Tory party. The interview caused such a storm it led to MI5 and MI6 being made legal for the first time with the passing of the Security Service Act in 1989. Hugo's show was finally broadcast in March 1985 after it was decided not to prosecute Cathy and the programme makers under the Official Secrets Act.
No doubt the dark side in MI5 saw this not as a victory for civil liberties but as a battle lost and determined to kill off any future exposee of their excesses before it hit the airwaves.
Hence the present day obsession with having spies in newsrooms and production offices and the obsession with surveillance.

see
The Massiter revelations
http://www.salaam.co.uk/themeofthemonth/january03_index.php?l=5

Security Service Act (1989)
Intelligence Services Act (1994)
Terrorism Act (2000)
http://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/Page70.html