Blacklist - MI5 at the BBC - The Christmas Tree Files

[TonyGosling]

MI5 and the Christmas Tree files - secret political vetting at the BBC
'The Christmas Tree' is also a reference, funnily enough, to the tune of 'The Red Flag'.
http://www.bilderberg.org/mi5bbc.htm

Extract from:
Blacklist
The Inside Story of Political Vetting
by Mark Hollingsworth and Richard Norton-Taylor
The Hogarth Press
LONDON
Published 1988
ISBN 0 7012 0811 2

See also: 02Jul06 - Telegraph - Revealed: how the BBC used MI5 to vet thousands of staff
Chapter 5
MI5 and the BBC: Stamping the ‘Christmas Tree’ Files
‘One thing I can state quite categorically is that there has never been any victimisation of anyone for their political views at the BBC.'
Sir Hugh Greene, Director-General of the BBC 1960-69, reported in the Sunday Times, 20 February 1977.
‘On employment, our policy is to appoint the best people we can.’
Sir Ian Trethowan, Director-General of the BBC 1977 – 82, in a letter to Lord Avebury, 13 November 1980.

If ever there was an example of ‘security' factors being used as a pretext for political vetting, it is at the BBC. When their security procedures were revealed in 1985, the corporation said that vetting was restricted to a relatively small number of people who had access to ‘sensitive information’. But in reality a large number of BBC employees – ranging from Graduate Trainees and journalists to arts producers and drama directors – were vetted by MI5 via the Personnel Department.

Perhaps the most graphic illustration of this was the attempt to blacklist Roland Joffe, probably Britain’s most distinguished film and television director. His track record includes The Killing Fields, for which Joffe received an Academy Award nomination, and The Mission which won the top prize at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival.

In the spring of 1977 he was commissioned by the BBC to direct The Spongers, a new play about the failures of the welfare state and the desperate struggle of one woman caught in the poverty trap. The play’s author was Jim Allen and its producer was Tony Garnett. Garnett informed the BBC’s Drama Department that he wanted to hire Joffe as the director. But there was an unusually long delay in confirming his appointment. Eventually Garnett was summoned by Shaun Sutton, Head of Drama, to his fifth-floor office at the Television Centre, Wood Lane. Garnett had always had a frosty relationship with the corporation’s top executives. He had deliberately chosen an office on top of the East Tower – 'to be as far away from management as possible.’ But as he walked into Sutton’s office that afternoon he was little prepared for what his Head of Drama was about to tell him.

Sutton looked distinctly uncomfortable. ‘There is a problem with Joffe’s contract,’ he said. 'He hasn’t got BH (Broadcasting House) clearance.' Astonished, Garnett asked why. Sutton refused to give a reason except to mutter: 'It was the man in the mac in Broadcasting House.'

Garnett stormed out and went straight to see Alasdair Milne, then Managing Director of BBC TV. Milne confirmed there was a problem and tried to placate Garnett by offering him a glass of whisky. But Garnett was seething, and said he would 'go public’ if the veto on Joffe's appointment was not withdrawn: ‘If you want all this business to come out then it’s in your hands. If you don’t hire Joffe then I'm off as well and imagine what it would look like if I walked out in the middle of my contract.’ Milne said nothing, so Garnett continued, ‘If this continues to happen then I won’t be able to hire the people I want, which is my job as a producer.’ Milne didn't argue. He picked up the phone and rang Sutton. 'Hire Joffe,' he snapped. Joffe’s contract was confirmed and The Spongers became a big success, winning that year's prestigious Prix Italia award.

The ‘problem' with Joffe's appointment was that the BBC’s Personnel Department had, according to Garnett and the then Head of Plays, James Cellan-Jones, branded the director a 'security risk’ because of his political views. This accusation was based on the fact that Joffe had attended Workers’ Revolutionary Party (WRP) meetings in the early 1970s. Like many dramatists at the time he was briefly interested in the WRP, but he was never a party member, and by 1977 he had long severed his association with it. Joffe describes himself as a left winger, and says, ‘I was very interested in politics at that time. But I was interested in what all the political parties were doing, not just the WRP, and I was never actively involved.'

Film producer and SDP supporter David Puttnam says of Joffe's politics: 'Roland would have nothing to do with the ideologies of the hard left. He detests that kind of imposition on the human spirit. He’s a member of the Labour Party, and a socialist in the humanist sense. His heart is in sync with his mind.'

The attempt to blacklist Joffe had nothing to do with the BBC’s Drama Department. The recommendation had come from the Personnel Office at Broadcasting House on the advice of MI5. It was part of the highly secretive political vetting which the BBC had been practising since 1937, a situation only reformed in 1986, after considerable public and trade union pressure.

The system meant that all news and current affairs journalists, film editors, directors and producers in every department were vetted by the Security Services. Vetting was run from Room 105, a secluded office on the first floor of Broadcasting House – a part of the same network of corridors on which George Orwell modelled his Ministry of Truth in 1984. There the BBC employed a Security Liaison Officer who received the names of all successful job applicants from the chairmen of interviewing boards. Then the vetting, which in BBC-speak became known as 'colleging' or ‘the formalities’, took place.

All BBC employees had a personnel file which included their basic personal details and work record. But there was also a second file. This included ‘security information' collected by Special Branch and MI5, who have always kept political surveillance on ‘subversives in the media’. If a staff member was shortlisted for a job this second file was handed to the department head, who had to sign for it. The file was a buff folder with a round red sticker, stamped with the legend SECRET and a symbol which looked like a Christmas tree. On the basis of information in this file, the Personnel Office recommended whether the person in question should be given the job or not. A former senior BBC executive recalls seeing one journalist’s security file, stamped with a Christmas tree symbol: 'For about twelve years it had recorded notes such as "has subscription to Daily Worker” or “our friends say he associates with communists and CND activists." It is fair to say that there were contemporary memos from personnel officials adding they thought this was ridiculous. But it was still on file.‘

The names of outside job applicants were submitted directly to C Branch of M5. They were then passed on to the F Branch ‘domestic subversion', whose F7 section looks at political ‘extremists', MP’s, lawyers, teachers and journalists. After consulting the registry of files, the names were fed into MI5’s computer, which contains the identities of about a million ‘subversives'.

Once MI5 had vetted an applicant their decision was given in writing to the BBC’s Personnel Office. MI5 never gave reasons for their recommendations. But, quite often, if they said a person was a ‘security risk', that was enough to blacklist him or her permanently. Members of board interviews were advised not to ask questions. And it was only when an executive or editor put pressure on the Personnel Department that MI5's decision was overruled.

For many years a BBC staff member was used as the Security Liaison Officer. But in 1982 Brigadier Ronald L. Stonham, a retired army officer, moved into Room 105 as ‘Special Assistant' to the Director of Personnel, Christopher Martin, himself a former Royal Marine. Stonham began his working life in the Post Office Engineering Department during the Second World War. In 1948 he was commissioned into the Royal Signals Regiment, and by 1963 he had worked his way through the ranks to Major. He also had a spell in the intelligence section of the Chief of General Staff in 1971. Six years later he was promoted to Brigadier of the Signals Regiment.

Stonham saw security vetting as part of his responsibility to co-ordinate BBC’s contingency plans for a wartime and emergency broadcasting service. This was the official line taken after the Observer revealed the corporation’s blacklisting policies in 1985. The BBC stated: ‘Only relatively few members of staff go through this [vetting] procedure. They are necessarily involved in sensitive areas or require access to classified information.'

This was untrue. The evidence shows that vetting was used in a much wider context – and for political, not security, reasons.
Vetting-a Reithian Legacy

Security vetting was set up in 1937, at a time when the BBC was almost taken over by the government as a State propaganda outlet. The corporation was under constant political pressure, particularly from the Foreign Office. But Sir John Reith, the BBC's founder and first Director-General, was also keen on including vetting as part of his vision of a wartime BBC. In 1935 Reith was a member of a sub-committee of the Government Committee of Imperial Defence which included military personnel. The sub-committee decided that ‘in time of war or when the threat of an emergency was imminent the government should assume effective control over broadcasting and the BBC'. Two years later, in 1937, the Ullswater Committee on the future of broadcasting recommended that 'in serious or national emergencies ... full government control over the BBC would be necessary.'

Reith wanted to be actively involved in the government's defence preparations in case of war. On 5 March 1937 he went to the Home Office to see Sir John Simon, the Home Secretary, and Geoffrey Lloyd, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, and a contract was negotiated between the BBC and the government 'in case of war’. It seems highly likely that the implementation of security vetting was part of this agreement.

By 1937 the security services were certainly geared up for vetting BBC staff. In 1935 the Secret Service budget – including both MI5 and MI6 was increased by secret vote from £180,000 to £350,000. By 1939 it was £500,000. But early BBC liaison with MI5 was often sluggish and inefficient, as the then Director-General, Frederick Ogilvie, a former Tory MP, revealed in a note written in late 1939. Among the problems he was encountering was ‘the failure of MI5 to okay our artists at reasonable speed.' Sir Hugh Greene, later to be Director-General himself, was one of the first to encounter ‘security clearance’ when he joined the BBC as head of their German Service: ‘I was vetted in 1940. MI5 thought I was a communist, but it turned out to be a mistake.' The following year the actor Michael Redgrave encountered more serious problems when he signed the 'People’s Convention’. This was a socialist manifesto which called for ‘a people’s war’ and ‘a people’s peace’. It was not long before Redgrave was summoned to Broadcasting House. On 25 February 1941 he was met by a Mr Streeton and another BBC official. They told him that the ‘People’s Convention’ was 'not in the national interest’ and asked him where he stood regarding it. Redgrave replied that since it was not an illegal or seditious document he supported it and it was not for. the BBC to censure him. The official thanked him for making his position clear and told him he would no longer be allowed to broadcast for the BBC. Three weeks later, after angry protests from MP's and fellow actors, the ban was lifted.'

During the Cold War of the late 1940s and early 1950s, MI5 vetting of BBC staff was expanded, and the secrecy of the operation frequently laid it open to abuse. Sir Hugh Greene recalled one victim in the External Services while he was Controller of Broadcasting in the German Zone: ‘He wasn’t a security risk at all. It turned out he had worked for MI6, the rival secret service, and there had been an internal quarrel.'

Other blacklists were also being compiled by the BBC hierarchy. This was confirmed by General Sir Ian Jacob, former Military Assistant to the War Cabinet, who was appointed Director-General of the BBC by Winston Churchill in 1952 after being Director of the Overseas Services. He recalled: ‘I was shown lists of communists in the BBC. It was handled by the Controller of Administration. A relative of mine was actually on the list because he had a communist wife.’

That relative was his second cousin Alaric Jacob, who had joined the BBC Monitoring Service at Caversham in August 1948. In February 1951 he was suddenly refused establishment rights, which meant he would receive no pension. He went to see his relative Sir Ian Jacob at Broadcasting House to complain.
'Are you in the Communist Party?' the Director of Overseas Services asked.

‘No,’ replied Alaric Jacob.

'What about your wife?’

‘You have no business to put that question. The BBC knows perfectly well that I hope to become a Labour MP. I am not prepared to discuss Iris's politics with any BBC official. They have nothing whatever to do with my professional ability which no one at the BBC has ever questioned.‘

The 'communist wife’ was Iris Morley, the novelist and Marxist historian. She had been the Moscow Correspondent of the Observer during the Second World War, and Alaric Jacob did the same job for the Daily Express. The discrimination against Jacob was only resolved in 1953 when his wife died from cancer. Just after her obituary appeared in The Times he was told by a BBC administrator that he could now receive full establishment and pension rights.

By the 1950s and early 1960s political vetting was so well entrenched that BBC interviews were resembling Civil Service selection boards. At one time, according to former senior BBC executive Stuart Hood, a Civil Service commissioner even attended the interviews. Hood recalls the selection boards using Whitehall euphemisms for vetting during their post-interview discussions. 'Does he play with a straight bat?' or 'Does he have snow on the right foot?' were typical BBC expressions for political suitability.

Hood was a key witness of vetting during this period. He had joined the BBC in 1946 and was head of the World Service throughout the 1950s. He became Controller of Programmes in 1961 before leaving in 1964. He recalls attending BBC Board of Management meetings: 'During those meetings senior administrative officials used to approach me, show me these slips of paper and say, "I think you should know this," and then show me an article in Peace News.’ Hood also saw the security files: 'The investigative reports produced on staff and performers by the security services are testimony to the amount of petty espionage and surveillance to which citizens of our society are subjected.'

Although Sir Hugh Greene's Director-Generalship of the 1960s led to a liberalisation of the rather stuffy BBC, vetting continued. A notable subject was the distinguished documentary director Stephen Peet. In 1965 he was appointed to a senior position in the BBC's Documentary and Features Department after several years of successful freelance work. According to Hallam Tennyson, a BBC Careers Officer, and Stuart Hood, the offer was suddenly withdrawn because of an adverse security report.

MI5 had told the BBC that Peet could not be allowed on the staff because he continued to contact and meet his communist brother John, who lived and worked in East Germany. In 1950, fifteen years before Stephen Peet’s job application, his brother had left his post as Reuters’ West Berlin Correspondent and defected to East Germany, where he still lives. Stephen Peet was not and never has been a communist or politically active in any way. Yet he was consistently rejected for full-time BBC jobs. Eventually, when some BBC executives told him informally about the blacklisting, he appealed to his MP, Kenneth Robinson, then Minister for Health in Harold Wilson’s Labour government. Robinson lobbied the Home Office: ‘I went to see a Minister and I made representations on Peet‘s behalf.' About four months later Peet received a letter from Robinson, which told him he could now join the BBC staff: 'There is now no barrier.' Sure enough., Peet was soon recruited, and he went on to make the highly praised series Yesterday’s Witness, winner of' a Royal Television Society special award.

By the early 1970s many BBC executives were taking the view that the secret vetting procedures had little to do with security'. Politics were much more relevant. John Laird, a former External Services producer who worked in the Appointments Department, was one such executive. He was also chairman of many interview boards. He points to one conversation he had with Sir Ian Trethowan, then Managing Director of BBC Radio and later Director-General, as indicative of the situation. Trethowan, a Conservative and a close friend of the then Prime Minister Edward Heath, asked Laird why he had appointed so many ‘reds' and ‘commies' as general trainees.
'They’re not communists,’ replied Laird. 'They’re independent socialists and dissidents. Besides, all the bright young people are left wing these days.'

‘Oh, they’re all the same to me,' said Trethowan. ‘They’re all commies. I can’t believe that there weren’t some bright right wing people.'

One of the bright young people Laird appointed as a Graduate Trainee at the time was Michael Rosen. He had been a student activist and well-known actor and dramatist at Oxford University in the late 1960s. During his interviews with the BBC Rosen made no secret of his Marxist views. And during his training he was equally uncompromising, making a radio documentary about the French Marxist Regis Debray.

In 1972 Rosen was sacked and told that no department would offer him a job. He was offered a £330 ex-gratia payment by Owen Reed, head of Staff Training, and told. "We think it would be better if you went freelance.’ In fact, at least two departments, Arts Features and Further Education, wanted to employ him but were prevented from doing so because there was a ‘security problem'. According to John Laird, who was in charge of Graduate Trainees, ‘I was called by the chairman of one board who said: "You’ll be glad to know we’ve appointed Rosen." Then he called again, embarrassed, and said it had been “blocked".' Fortunately for Rosen he was sufficiently talented to overcome being blacklisted. He has since become a successful writer of plays and children's poetry books, and frequently appears on television.
Targetting Journalists

In 1975 a special desk was set up within MI5 to look at 'subversives in the media’. Based in F Branch, one of the desk’s first tasks was to compile a report on 'bias in the media’. This was inspired by the notion that Trotskyists had infiltrated the press and broadcasting, The strategy was to recruit journalists as agents for MI5 and to persuade them to spy on their left-wing colleagues. MI5 officers were told to list possible recruits in the monthly ‘Resources Index' and pass the names on to FX Division.

One reporter who was approached was Tim Jones, a labour correspondent on The Times. In 1975 he was taken out to lunch at Simpsons in the Strand by an MI5 officer and told that the security services were worried about ‘Soviet penetration of the industrial correspondents group’. Jones was asked to provide ‘intelligence’ about certain journalists, but he refused."

MI5 tried harder the following year with Jon Snow, a senior ITN correspondent. He was approached as a possible agent because his background as the son of the Bishop of Whitby was thought promising. At first he was asked to give information about the Communist Party. But he was then asked to spy on certain 'left-wing people’ working in television. In return MI5 would make secret monthly tax-free payments into his bank account. Snow rejected the approach.'

It was clear that this intelligence-gathering operation was for blacklisting purposes. Evidence for this was revealed by MI5’s attempts to block the career of Anna Ford, the former ITN news reader and darling of the popular press. In 1974 she had joined Granada Television and became a journalist for their daily news programme Granada Reports. There she met fellow-journalist Trevor Hyett, and they soon began living together. It was then that the Security Services began their operation against her. Although she had been an outspoken student politician at Manchester University in the late 1960s, Ford was not politically active. Yet she was logged in intelligence records as ‘an associate of a subversive'. For Trevor Hyett was a former member of the Communist Party. He had joined the Young Communist League in 1962, and three years later was appointed Editor of the YCL newspaper Challenge. Under Hyett’s editorship it was the first Western communist publication to criticise the Soviet Union over its treatment of artists and writers. And in 1968 Hyett led a YCL delegation to Moscow to protest at the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was becoming increasingly disillusioned by the British Communist Party’s refusal to change its internal structure and its unwillingness to criticise Soviet policy. In 1972 Hyett resigned and returned his party card.

Despite his resignation, Special Branch officers in Manchester kept a file on Hyett, details of which were relayed to MI5 in London. The file showed that he was living with Anna Ford. In 1975, in an attempt to discover more information about the couple, particularly Hyett, Special Branch tried to recruit Granada journalists as office spies. One such reporter was Geoffrey Seed, who was then working with Ford and Hyett on Granada Reports. He was approached by a Special Branch officer, Constable Kevin Moore.

‘I had met Moore two or three times,’ Seed recalls. 'To me he was just another contact, a police contact. Then one evening, when I was having a drink with him, he started saying that he could help me with information if I would help him. He said he was interested in some people who worked for Granada – "lefties and communists”. And he specifically mentioned Trevor Hyett, who was sharing a house with Anna. He wanted me to give him information. I had a feeling of revulsion. It had nothing to do with national security. This was pure Eastern Europe. I simply refused and finished my drink.’

The following year, in September 1976, Anna Ford was offered a job on Man Alive, the BBC2 documentary programme. But soon after putting forward her contract for approval, Michael Latham, Man Alive’s editor, received a phone call from the BBC Personnel Secretariat. ‘We don’t think you should give this woman a contract,' said the caller. He refused to give a reason. Latham then approached his superior, Desmond Wilcox, then Head of Features, who took up the matter. ‘When I approached the Personnel Department,’ said Wilcox, ‘they told me their opposition was because she had been living with a former communist. I was outraged.’ Wilcox then protested to his boss, Aubrey Singer, Controller of BBC2, who told him: 'Don’t worry. Take no notice of them.' But Wilcox was indignant: 'At that time I, and 99 per cent of the BBC staff, had no idea that MI5 vetting was taking place. Anna Ford was an excellent journalist and presenter whom we wanted to take on. I could not care less who she used to live with and I could not understand why any opposition had been raised against her.'"

Eventually MI5’s objections were overruled and Ford was able to join Man Alive in January 1977. By that time she and Hyett had separated. In 1978 she became ITN’s first female news-caster. Hyett went on to become a successful freelance TV producer. He reflects ruefully on the criteria MI5 used for trying to wreck Ford's career – that she had once had a boyfriend who used to be in the Communist Party. ‘Along with Sir Alfred Sherman, Lord Chapple and Denis Healy, I belong to the biggest party in the world – the ex-communists,' said Hyett. ‘Taxpayers didn’t get much for their money from this surveillance and activity.'

Another young journalist, who applied for a BBC job in the same month as Anna Ford, was not so lucky. In September 1976 Isabel Hilton was interviewed for a reporter’s job on BBC Scotland’s current affairs programme Current Account. The board agreed unanimously that she was the best candidate and appointed her. The decision was then relayed to the London Personnel Office.

About a week later Alastair Hetherington, then Controller of BBC Scotland, received a phone call from the BBC’s Security Liaison Officer in London. Hilton could not be appointed, he said. When asked why, the official replied ‘procedures’. Hetherington couldn’t believe it. ‘I knew she couldn’t have been a security risk,’ he recalls. He told the Security Officer that he was not prepared to accept the blacklisting of Hilton without reasons. The Security Officer said this was unprecedented. But Hetherington insisted. So the Security Officer visited Hetherington at his BBC Scotland office in Glasgow. The cautious BBC mandarin said ‘it was not done’ for Personnel to give reasons why an individual had failed ‘procedures’. Hetherington replied that he had been dealing with security people for over twenty years, as a defence correspondent from 1953 to 1956 and later as editor of the Guardian. He said he was not satisfied and wanted to know the reasons for their decision. The Security Officer said he was shocked by his attitude. It was the first time a BBC executive had challenged a security assessment, he added. Nothing was resolved by the meeting. But about two weeks later the Security Officer rang Hetherington and agreed to give the reason. He said Hilton had been rejected because she had been Secretary of the Scottish-China Association. ‘It is regarded as suspect and so she cannot be appointed,’ he added. ‘There is a risk of subversive influences in the organisation.’ According to government sources, MI5 had advised the BBC that while Hilton remained Secretary of that Association she should not be appointed – unless the BBC had very good reasons otherwise.

Hetherington was not happy with these reasons. He telephoned Kay Carmichael, a fellow member of the Broadcasting Council for Scotland who was then an advisor to 10 Downing Street on social policy. She was also a member of the Scottish-China Association. He told her what had happened and asked her whether the Association was a subversive organisation. Carmichael couldn’t believe it. She told Hetherington that the idea of the Scottish-China Association being subversive was so ludicrous that MI5 must have mixed it up with another organisation... the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding, perhaps.

In fact, MI5 had got the 'right' organisation. But in no way was it subversive. The Scottish-China Association was a small cultural group based at Edinburgh University. Its main activity was being addressed by eminent Chinese scholars, and Hilton spent most of her time organising conferences on issues like population control. The Association never took any political position on events in China. Nor did it discuss politics.

Hetherington continued to protest. But it was not until January 1977 that he was finally told by the BBC Security Liaison Officer that Hilton could now be employed. Meanwhile, Hilton had been waiting in Edinburgh for four months and had not even received a rejection letter from the BBC, so she accepted a job as a feature writer on the Daily Express in London.

Before leaving Scotland Hilton threw a farewell party and rang Hetherington, a personal friend, to invite him. Hetherington was puzzled as to why she was leaving. ‘Why didn’t you accept the BBC job?’ he asked. 'I haven’t been offered it,’ she replied. Hetherington was upset: 'I’ll make some enquiries.' Ten minutes later Hilton was telephoned by a BBC Personnel Officer who offered her the job and apologised for the delay. But it was too late. She was already committed to the Daily Express job.

Hilton was unable to pursue her chosen career as a television journalist, and she had not wanted to leave Edinburgh, particularly as her future husband Neal Ascherson was then working there for the Scotsman. She is now Latin America Editor of the Independent, but she remains resentful about her experience: ‘I was extremely distressed to discover that a citizen can be maligned and damaged by the security services without his or her knowledge and without any means of redress. It is a squalid system and greatly to the discredit of the BBC that they should have been party to it.'

Another young journalist to be targeted was given a three-month contract as a Researcher for Nationwide, the now defunct daily magazine programme, in February 1982. One of the incidents he reported concerned a rape by a Saudi Arabian army officer being concealed by Manchester police because of diplomatic pressure.

A few days after the item was broadcast he received a memo from his editor congratulating him on ‘an excellent story' and a fine start to his career at the BBC. But a week before his contract expired, he received a letter from the Personnel Department informing him that it would not be renewed. His editor, who had planned to retain him, protested to Personnel, who eventually conceded there were ‘security reasons’. The journalist had been a student activist at Manchester University, and then, briefly, a member of the small Maoist group, Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist).

Eventually the Personnel Department agreed to compromise. He could work at the BBC – but not on politically sensitive current affairs programmes. He was then offered an eight-month contract on the consumer series That’s Life. He refused. Fortunately, his editor felt so aggrieved about his treatment that he continued to employ him privately for four months, but he then had to leave the BBC.

Perhaps the most bizarre case of journalist blacklisting was that of Richard Gott, who had applied to be Editor of the Listener, the BBC’s weekly magazine. According to Sir Hugh Greene, Director-General from 1960 to 1969, MI5 vetting of this position was introduced in the mid-1970s.

In 1981 Gott was interviewed by a BBC Board and was chosen for the post. But MI5 vetoed the appointment. According to a senior executive who was on the Board, 'His file went off for “colleging” and it was blocked. They said he was an ultra-leftist and that "he digs with the wrong foot".’ This was confirmed by Alasdair Milne, then Deputy Director-General and Managing Director of BBC TV, who also sat on the Board. ‘That was a classic case,’ he said. ‘I don't feel very happy.'

After a ten-day delay during which Gott was vetted, Russell Twisk was appointed Editor. MI5's specific objection to Gott was his support for revolutionary movements in Latin America and South-East Asia. In 1966 he had resigned from the Labour Party to stand as an independent candidate in the Hull by-election in protest at the British government's support for American involvement in Vietnam. He had also openly supported Che Guevara and his guerrillas in Bolivia, which resulted in his imprisonment by the Bolivian government for ‘communist’ activities. In addition, he had caused ripples among .the establishment while broadcasting on the Foreign Office-funded BBC World Service for supporting trade unionists in the then British colony of Aden. Gott is now Features Editor of the Guardian.
Open Space – Closed Door

The BBC has always been proud of its Community Programmes Unit. Based in Hammersmith Grove, west London, some distance from the main Television Centre, the unit has always seen itself as having considerable autonomy within the vast BBC corporate structure. But even this independence did not exempt it from the B B C s vetting procedures.

Paul Turner is one person who found his way blocked to the BBC's 'access' programmes department. He had joined BBC Wales in 1971, as an assistant film editor, while an active member of the Young Liberals. Soon afterwards he joined the Communist Party, and it was then that his troubles began. He began applying for jobs elsewhere in the BBC but was consistently rejected.

One of his applications in 1975 was as a film editor on a six-month attachment to the Community Programmes Unit. Again he was unsuccessful. A senior executive, who sat on one of his interview boards, explained why: ‘He was interviewed, but as soon as he left the room, the Appointments Officer said there had been a mistake. His file had a Christmas tree (i.e. a security file was held) and he should not have even been allowed an interview. He was a "security risk" because of something to do with Welsh nationalism.’

His Communist Party membership was also a problem; although Turner had left the party in 1973 because of its apologetic attitude towards the Soviet Union, he remained blacklisted. This became obvious when he was asked by a BBC Wales executive at one board in 1980: ‘Do you feel being in the Communist Party would interfere with your work?' Turner told him he had stopped being a communist in 1973 – seven years earlier. He didn't get the job.

His Welsh nationalist activities amounted to learning the Welsh language because he was working on programmes of Welsh interest. He does now vote Plaid Cymru, but this hardly qualifies him as a ‘security risk’. '

Turner, who now runs a successful independent production company, was actually relieved when he was told of the blacklisting: 'For years I had worried my career at the B B C never blossomed because I was somehow second rate, applying for those jobs and not getting them.’"

The door to BBC's ‘access’ programmes was similarly closed to Yvette Vanson. In 1979 she applied for a job at the Community Programmes Unit and was offered the position of Production Assistant on Open Space. She was delighted as she had only just left college. But five days before she was due to start an executive was told by a Personnel Officer: 'We can’t give her a contract. She was an active member of the WRP (Workers’Revolutionary Party) and so we cannot employ her.’ The executive then rang Vanson: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say. The Personnel Department have said I can’t employ you.'

Vanson was distraught, as she had just turned down other job offers and places at the University of Kent and the Central London Polytechnic. She appealed against the decision, and went to see Christopher Storey, a Personnel Officer at Television Centre. Storey told her there had been a ‘misunderstanding’. He agreed that she had been offered a job, but added that the editor ‘was not aware that there was a suitably qualified person already on the staff who was available to do the work. I am very sorry that that meant we were not in a position to offer you a formal contract.'

This official line was nonsense, according to the executive concerned. He was told he couldn't hire her because she had been a 'WRP organiser'. Although she had been active in the WRP in the early 1970s while working as an actress, Vanson had left the party in 1975 – four years before applying for the BBC job.

Eventually the BBC agreed to give her £500 as an ex-gratia payment. Vanson accepted the money, as by then she was penniless. But the blacklisting had a severe impact on her life: she was unemployed for the next five months, despite applying for nearly 200 jobs, and was forced to return to college. ‘It was a very traumatic experience for me,’ she recalls. 'I was on the crest of a wave about getting a job at the BBC so soon after leaving college ... The WRP is not an illegal or proscribed organisation. It’s ridiculous that just because you're politically active you are victimised in this way.'

Five years later, in‘July 1984, Vanson again approached the BBC and was again interviewed for Open Space, this time as an Assistant Producer. Once again she was appointed, and once again Personnel objected because of her past political affiliations. ‘Wasn’t she in the WRP?’ an executive was asked. But this time the executive angrily stood his ground and she was able to join Open Space. Vanson has since become a successful freelance director.
Moves Against the Arts and Drama

When the B B C acknowledged the existence of MI5 vetting, after its public disclosure in 1985, much was made of the claim that it was restricted to a relatively small number of staff. Alasdair Milne, then Director-General, said: 'It may sometimes look foolish, but it is another source of information when you are trying to work out whether people are up to certain jobs; Clearly we are involved, a number of us, in very sensitive areas of material and the process of establishing that people can handle that sort of material is important, even in a democratic society.'“

But many of the victims of the BBC blacklist were working in areas which had nothing remotely to do with 'handling sensitive material’, for instance the Arts and Drama Departments.

One arts programme affected was Omnibus, whose editor from 1975 to 1982 was Barrie Gavin. In February 1976, he received a detailed and well-presented proposal for a document-ary from the young director Jeff Perks. Gavin, who remembered his work as a graduate director at the British Film Institute, found Perks’s proposal – about the poster maker Ken Sprague – interesting and exciting. He agreed to make the programme, and a three-month contract was passed to the Personnel Office for approval.

A week later, in his office at Kensington House, Gavin received a telephone call from Christopher Storey, Senior Personnel Officer for BBC TV, who was based at Threshold House, Shepherds Bush Green.
‘There may be a problem about employing Jeff Perks,' said Storey.

'Why?’ asked Gavin.

‘He may not be acceptable.’

'What do you mean by not acceptable?’

'Not acceptable.'

Gavin then asked for a reason. But Storey refused to give him one. 'I presume Leslie Page [Head of Personnel] will tell me why,' said Gavin impatiently.

'Not necessarily,’ replied Storey.

'Well, if you don’t tell me, I'm going to do two things. One,

I’m going straight to the head of my department and two, I’m going public and will make sure that every newspaper and television station knows about this.'

‘I would strongly advise you not to do that.’

As editor of a major programme with a large budget, Gavin resented being prevented from choosing his own staff. As soon as he put the phone down, he went to see Humphrey Burton, head of the Arts Department. At first Burton’s attitude was flippant: 'Perhaps it's because he’s a communist or maybe he has a foreign background or name.’ Gavin told Burton he wanted to take the matter further. Two weeks later he saw Sir Ian Trethowan, then Managing Director of BBC TV. It was a strange conversation – rather like two civil servants discussing a sensitive issue, but without specifically referring to the heart of the matter. Trethowan wrung his hands and was clearly uncomfortable. ‘Yes, well, these kind of cases are very difficult,’ he said.

‘I don't see what's so difficult about this,’ replied Gavin. 'I am asking him [Perks] to make a film about a poster maker in the middle of Exmoor. I’m not sending him out on a Poseidon nuclear submarine.’

Trethowan agreed to look into the matter. Three weeks later Perks was given a contract, and his film went on to secure the highest ratings of any Omnibus programme that year. Humphrey Burton also liked it. 'That was a very good film,' he remarked to Gavin. ‘I think you should pursue this combination further.' So, in December 1976, Gavin asked Perks and Sprague to make a series of pilot programmes for Omnibus.

But once again MI5 objected. A Personnel Officer told Gavin it was not possible to use him. Now he was outraged. Not only was this unjust, it was also unnecessary and a complete waste of time. Angry memos flew between departments. The matter was referred to Alasdair Milne, then Director of Programmes, who supported the ban. So Burton went higher – to Sir Ian Trethowan. Eventually, three days before Christmas, Gavin got a call at home from Burton, who told him: ‘It’s OK now, you can use Jeff Perks.'

MI5 objected to Perks for a simple reason. He had been a member of the Communist Party since 1971. But to Gavin this did not make him a legitimate target: ‘The Communist Party is not a proscribed or illegal organisation. And anyway, the notion that the modern Communist Party is revolutionary is laughable.' Perks would also have been put on MI5’s files in 1973 after making a film with Michael Rosen at the National Film School about the ‘Shrewsbury Three’, three building workers who had been jailed for picketing offences during a strike. Part of the film was shown on Thames Television’s This Week, and caused a storm of protest from Tory MP's in the Commons.

It was lucky for Perks that he had an editor of such integrity as Gavin. If he had been turned down by the BBC, it would have been hard for him to find work because at the time the independent sector was very limited for young film makers. Perks left the Communist Party in 1977. Since then he has had no employment problems in the BBC.

As well as vetting directors on BBC arts programmes, MI5 were also keeping a close eye on the corporation’s Drama Department. Actors, actresses, producers and directors were all vetted. According to Stuart Hood: ‘Actors and performers were blacklisted. I went to one meeting in the early 1960s where slips of paper were being handed out about an actress. They said: “Not to be used on sensitive programmes." I knew the woman. She was not political, but her husband was a pre-war left-wing Austrian refugee. I strongly protested at the time.'

But MI5 reserved their strongest objections to BBC drama producers in the early and mid-1970s. It was a period of great political turmoil and activity. And television drama reflected the new radical mood with plays like Cathy Come Home, Leeds United, Law and Order and others. These were hard-hitting, naturalistic dramas which portrayed working-class people in a sympathetic light. They also sparked off political controversy. As Kenith Trodd recalled: 'There was a general view at the time that drama has a powerful hold on people’s hearts and minds and that it was a source of political influence.’

Many of the producers, writers and directors of these plays were also politically active. They included Ken Loach, Roy Battersby, Trevor Griffiths, Kenith Trodd, Roland Joffe and Tony Garnett. As well as being active in their trades unions,'they held regular Friday night meetings – either at Tony Garnett’s flat in Notting Hill Gate or Roy Battersby's house in Maida Vale. In the early 1970s they also attended meetings of the Socialist Labour League (later the WRP), although only a few actually became members.

The head of BBC Drama during this crucial period – 1969-81 – was Shaun Sutton, a former theatre and television director who had been at the BBC since 1952. He believed that good television drama should be controversial, and was a strong backer of his producers and directors.

On MI5 vetting of his staff he said: ‘I suppose it happened because the BBC had the system and we had to apply to it.’ But, to his credit, Sutton did stand up to the Personnel Department. ‘One needs to be quietly firm with these people,' he remarked to James Cellan-Jones, his Head of Plays, during the attempts to blacklist Roland Joffe.

One of Sutton’s first battles occurred in 1970, when he tried to employ Tony Garnett, producer of Cathy Come Home. A Personnel Officer objected, ‘Isn’t he a bit of a left winger?’ Sutton then talked to Garnett, and decided that his professional ability was more important than his political views. A more significant episode occurred the following year. In 1971 John Goldschmidt was commissioned to direct a Play for Today about school leavers. He was much relieved, as two years previously his contract as a director on Omnibus had been abruptly terminated without explanation. He was soon installed in an office in the BBC Drama Department, and began work on the play. But once again he was blacklisted. An embarrassed executive came into his office and told him: ‘You're not supposed to be allowed to work here.’ A Personnel Officer had said he could not be employed. A major row erupted in the Drama Department and an angry deputation went to see Huw Weldon, then Managing Director of BBC TV. Weldon took the matter up, and Goldschmidt was reinstated.' His 'offence’ was that he had taken part in an exchange of students between his art college in Hornsey, north London, and a Czech film school, spending a few weeks in Czechoslovakia. He was not, and never had been, a communist.

By the mid-1970s MI5 and the Personnel Department were clearly out to purge the BBC's radical dramatists. Christopher Morahan, a distinguished director who was Head of Plays from 1972 to 1976, said: ‘There was an opinion expressed at that particular time by Personnel that a number of people should not be used. But I have to say that I won in every argument I was involved in.'

Apart from Roland Joffe, one of the most notable people the Personnel Department objected to was Kenith Trodd, probably the BBC's most respected and successful drama producer. His credits included Colin Welland’s Leeds United, Days of Hope (about the General Strike) and Coming Out. He also produced much of Dennis Potter’s work, notably Pennies from Heaven and Brimstone and Treacle (banned by the BBC for eleven years). Shaun Sutton said of him: ‘He is absolutely first class. He has done some damn good work.’

Yet, in September 1976, Trodd’s freelance contract as producer on Play for Today was terminated, despite having been renewed annually for the previous four years. There was an immediate storm of protest from Trodd's colleagues, who suspected that this act was politically motivated. Director Bryan Gibson drafted a letter with the actor Simon Gray registering 'surprise and dismay that his [Trodd's] contract is not being renewed.' It was signed by Dennis Potter, Colin Welland and Michael Lindsay-Hogg, among others, and dispatched to Alasdair Milne. Milne and Sir Ian Trethowan both strongly denied that there was a plot against Trodd. They claimed that the system of freelance contracts was being reorganised in order to phase out one-year renewable deals. Trodd’s contract was simply being renegotiated and he would eventually be invited back as a ‘guest producer’.

In fact the Personnel Office and MI5 had branded Trodd a ‘security risk’ since the early 1970s, when he had attended WRP meetings (although he was never a party member).

In 1976 the management made their move. The key executive involved was James Cellan-Jones, a talented director who had become Head of Plays that autumn. One of his first tasks was to deal with Trodd’s contract. Cellan-Jones didn’t always agree with Trodd, but he had no intention of sacking him. But one day Trethowan came into his office. Cellan-Jones recalls: ‘Ian Trethowan said he wanted to remove Trodd and I was not to renew him because there were “security problems"...He said Trodd was a troublemaker and suspected by the security people.'

Cellan-Jones didn’t like it. He thought about it for a few days and then went to see Trethowan. He argued against sacking Trodd, and Trethowan backed down. But it was a few weeks before Trodd's contract was renewed. He then went on to make Pennies from Heaven, winner of the 1979 British Academy award for most original programme.

' Trodd survived one blacklisting attempt, but director Roy Battersby was a marked man for thirteen years. In 1972 he had been invited by Christopher Morahan, head of plays, to direct The Operation, a satire about a property speculator. MI5 objected: he was an active member of the WRP. 'Yes, there was an objection to him,' recalls Morahan. ‘It was indicated to me that they [the Personnel Department] would be happier if he was not engaged. I said he was the best director for the job and I wasn’t prepared to accept it.’

Battersby went on to direct Leeds United, a controversial play about a clothing strike in Leeds. He then left television to work full-time for the WRP. It wasn’t until the spring of 1985 that he next came up against the BBC blacklist. He had been asked by Kenith Trodd to direct a play based on Stuart Hood's book Pebbles From My Skull, an account of Italian resistance fighters during the Second World War. Battersby was invited to Bologna to start work on the project, but before he could leave, Trodd spoke to Peter Goodchild, Head of Plays, and told him he wanted to employ Battersby. ‘Come on, Ken,’ sighed Goodchild, 'you know there are always some people we can’t employ on sensitive subjects.’ Battersby was refused a contract.

Within six weeks MI5 again targetted Battersby. In June 1985 he was asked to direct four episodes of the BBC2 series King of the Ghetto. He accepted the offer and went to see the producer, Stephen Gilbert, at his office in Union House, Shepherds Bush Green, to discuss the project. Just as he was about to tell Gilbert to expect problems about his contract because of his political activities, the phone rang, and Gilbert was summoned upstairs to see Ken Riddington, acting Head of Drama while Jonathan Powell was on holiday in Italy. 'There is a problem,' an embarrassed Riddington told him. ‘You can't offer him [Battersby] the job.' Gilbert was amazed, and returned to his office to break the news to Battersby: ‘They’re not prepared to accept you.’

The blacklisting of the director meant that the production, already well behind schedule, was suspended for four days. Eventually the matter was dealt with by Graeme Macdonald, Controller of BBC2, who overruled the Personnel Department and insisted that Battersby be employed.

For much of the time drama and arts producers and directors like Battersby were able to survive MI5's attempts to blacklist them. This had little to do with the security services’ or Personnel Office’s magnanimity or flexibility. It was for two reasons. Firstly, some of the victims were sufficiently talented to overcome the blacklist. Secondly, the individualistic, even iconoclastic nature of many arts and drama executives meant that they often refused to accept the recommendations from Room 105 of Broadcasting House.

Not everyone trying to get jobs in the B B C s Arts and Drama Departments was so lucky. They were the victims of a much wider move against radical drama in the mid-1970s
The Denials

For nearly fifty years the BBC denied that security vetting was taking place. While broadcasting unions constantly raised the issue, particularly at National Joint Council negotiations, senior officials like Michael Bett, Personnel Director from 1977 to 1981 and now a senior British Telecom executive, denied it formally and informally. As recently as February 1985 Alasdair Milne, then Director-General, said, ‘I cannot believe this is true.‘ Seven months later Milne was forced to concede: 'It is one of those things one knew about, felt a bit grubby about – I think most of us did – but didn’t tackle as radically as we should have done.'"

After public disclosure by the Observer in August 1985, the BBC confirmed the vetting system existed but claimed: ‘Only the BBC decides who to appoint to any post within the corporation, or whether to invoke the vetting procedure. No external agency has a right to veto the appointment or promotion of any member of staff.’

In fact, unless an executive or department head fought the decision, MI5's recommendation was final. As Alastair Hetherington said: ‘If "only" the BBC decides [on vetting], why did one of Brigadier Stonham’s predecessors tell me that it was “without precedent" that a ruling should be challenged and "impossible" to give me reasons for the decision?’
The Semi-Independence of the BBC

So why did the BBC shroud the issue of security vetting in such secrecy – even to the extent of not telling their own Chairman, Stuart Young (1983-86) until early 1985? Apart from their own embarrassment at having to admit to clandestine vetting, the answer lies in the peculiar status of the corporation and its employees.

The BBC's relationship with the State was outlined in their memorandum to the 1971 Franks Commission on the Official Secrets Act. The BBC referred to a ruling by the Treasury Solicitor in 1943 which said: ‘The official view is that the Governors of the BBC are persons holding office under His Majesty within the meaning of Section 2 of the 1911 Official Secrets Act and that the Director-General and staff are persons employed under persons who hold such offices.’ This ruling clearly bound BBC staff as being employed by ‘persons holding office under His Majesty’, and therefore legally in possession of secret information. Hence they would have special obligations to the State. It was on this pretext that security vetting was introduced and preserved with such secrecy. But the BBC's view was that this did not make them State servants: 'Their [BBC staff's] legal status would therefore seem to be neither exactly that of civil servants nor that of men and women employed by commercial organisations.’

Stuart Hood believes this interpretation was spurious. He argues that vetting was a natural consequence of the BBC's constitution: ‘If the BBC was honest about its role, it would admit that it must support the central political authority by virtue of the State licence-fee system. But the Corporation has always had this fantasy about itself as a totally independent social organisation.'

Given the corporation’s close relationship with the State, the Home Office was well aware of MI5 vetting. Giles Shaw, the Home Office Minister of State, said: ‘The government believes, as have successive governments over a long period, that it is in the national interest for the BBC to apply certain necessary security procedures.’ Tory Home Secretaries William Whitelaw (1979–83) and Leon Brittan (1983-85) both knew about it; Indeed, Whitelaw vigorously defended MI5 vetting: 'There is nothing wrong in the BBC as an employer taking proper precautions to ensure that sensitive posts or information are not open to subversion. Indeed, it would be failing in its duty to the public if it did not do so.'" The Home Office was also aware of the number of staff being vetted, and as recently as 1982 told the BBC that the figure ‘seemed rather high’.

But what the Home Office and BBC management failed to do was to address the central flaw of the vetting system: that it was used against individuals in non-sensitive jobs. The official line in 1985, according to the then Director-General Alasdair Milne, was: 'There are about eight people who are positively vetted, including me. And a number of other people, particularly in Bush House, for reasons to do with information and access to the War Book (which lays down rules for wartime broadcasting) who are vetted negatively.’ This was untrue, as actors and producers working in the Drama Department and directors on the arts programme Omnibus were hardly ‘involved in sensitive areas or require access to classified information’.
Politics Not Security

MI5 vetting of BBC staff has always had more to do with politics than security. As John le Carre, the best-selling spy novelist and former MI5 officer, commented. "I’ve always assumed that it [MI5 vetting of BBC staff] happened. I wonder what people would think if the reverse were to occur – if a known or unknown member of the Militant Tendency turned out to be shaping news in the newsroom. There has to be some method of obtaining what we hope will be an objective middle way in reporting. I don't think it's irresponsible either to require of a national broadcasting service that, at times at least, it should be ready to fall in with government policy and not alarm people.’

MI5 clearly saw the political objective as the major issue in their role. This was confirmed by the Observer’s disclosure that, as well as vetting, the security services also provided ‘background briefs' to the BBC on industrial disputes. These secret reports included the alleged involvement of subversives in trade union activity. They were delivered every three months to a small number of senior BBC executives, including the head of news and current affairs. The 'briefs’ included the activities of radical and subversive political groups and traced their involvement in strikes and campaigns. The BBC confirmed the reports' existence, but said they had stopped receiving them by 1985.

It is not known whether information from these 'background briefs' ever reached the security files of BBC staff in the Personnel Department of Broadcasting House. But perhaps it did not have to. Christopher Martin, Director of Personnel since 1981, and Brigadier Stonham, Security Liaison Officer since 1982, both had their own political criteria for vetting. According to BBC officials who used to work with both of them, they objected to people most strongly if they had a continuing commitment to the ‘extremes’ of the political spectrum. Martin and Stonham took the view that being a member of the Communist Party or CND would be less of a handicap.

Brigadier Stonham has retained his duties as the BBC's Security Officer, although public disclosure and pressure from the broadcasting unions has drastically reduced the number of jobs vetted (to about 120). In October 1985, the BBC agreed to stop all security vetting except in two areas. Firstly, members of staff involved in the planning and operation of the wartime broadcasting service, as they have access to classified information. Secondly, the External Services. According to Martin, this was due to the threat of infiltration and intimidation of staff by foreign intelligence services. Overseas broadcasters also had access to information from embassies which could be sensitive. In addition, staff would no longer be asked to sign the Official Secrets Act.

In April 1986 the BBC agreed that employees would have access to their personal files, and an independent ombudsman would be appointed to make general inspections of the vetting procedures. It was also disclosed that staff in the Personnel Department had begun to shred the security files and other papers that were kept on BBC employees. Past victims of the blacklist, like Michael Rosen and Isabel Hilton, who asked to see their files, were told they had been destroyed.

But even survivors of vetting remain bitter that information about their political views was secretly kept on file and used against them. And that this data was unchecked, inaccurate and based on second-hand sources because the person concerned was never consulted. As Paddy Leach, a broadcasting union official, commented: 'What is quite frightening is the degree of incompetence and irresponsibility of political vetting. People could have their careers blotted out on the basis of a wrong coding, or wrong initials, or because of a fortnight's membership of the Workers' Revolutionary Party ten years ago.’

Many cases of blacklisting were due to out-of-date information. Take the case of John Dekker. He worked at the BBC from 1962 to 1984. Yet for every job he applied for within the corporation there were long delays, which caused him much distress. MI5 objected every time, particularly when he was appointed Editor of The Money Programme in 1972. The Personnel Department told Brian Wenham, then Head of Current Affairs, that Dekker should not be appointed as he was a member of the Communist Party. In fact, Dekker had resigned from the Communist Party sixteen years earlier, in 1956, in protest at the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary. That was six years before he even joined the BBC. Wenham refused to accept the decision and persuaded the BBC Chairman Lord Charles Hill to overrule it. Dekker went on to become a successful editor of the programme. Not everyone was so lucky.
There were 31 notes to this chapter almost all newspaper articles and dates - not included here - apologies for the typos [TG]

[TonyGosling]

Revealed: how the BBC used MI5 to vet thousands of staff

By Chris Hastings, Arts and Media Editor (Filed: 02/07/2006) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/07/02/nspy02 .xml

It is a tale of secret agents and surveillance that could have come straight out the BBC's classic spy drama Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

But the difference is that genuine spies were involved and they were operating behind the scenes at Broadcasting House rather than on the small screen.

Confidential papers, obtained by The Sunday Telegraph, have revealed that the BBC allowed MI5 to investigate the backgrounds and political affiliations of -thousands of its employees, including newsreaders, reporters and continuity announcers.

The files, which shed light on the BBC's hitherto secret links with the Security Service, show that at one stage it was responsible for vetting 6,300 different BBC posts - almost a third of the total workforce.

They also confirm that the corporation held a list of "subversive organisations" and that evidence of certain kinds of political activity could be a bar to appointment or promotion.

The BBC's reliance on MI5 reached a peak in the late 1970s and early 1980s at exactly the same time as millions of viewers were tuning into the fictional adventures of George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and -Smiley's People.

David Dimbleby, John Humphrys and Anna Ford all began their careers with the broadcaster when the system was still in place.

The papers show that senior BBC figures covered up these links in the face of awkward questions from trade unions and the press. The documents refer to a "defensive strategy" based on "categorical denial". One file note, dated March 1 1985, states: "Keep head down and stonewall all questions."

The BBC, however, has always refused to be drawn on the extent of its collaboration with the secret services.

It is only now, after a request by this newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act, that it has finally been willing to release details of the vetting operation.

Another internal BBC document, dated 1983, confirms: "We supply personal details to the Security Service. If there is any adverse information known, we receive this information and also, where necessary, an assessment based upon the involvement of the individual. This is presented to us as advice; line management then make the decision as to action."

The documents do not name any of the individuals subjected to vetting, but it is possible that some of the BBC's biggest names were scrutinised.

Different posts were vetted for different reasons. Senior officials, including the director-general, and their support staff were checked because they had access to confidential government information in relation to their jobs. But thousands of employees were vetted because they were involved in live broadcasts and the BBC was worried about the possibility of on-air bias or disruption.

In 1983, 5,728 BBC jobs were subjected to this second kind of scrutiny known as "counter-subversion vetting".

The vetting system, which was phased out in the late 1980s, also applied to dozens of other employees, including television producers, directors, sound engineers, secretaries and researchers.

The details of freelance television and radio staff were also routinely passed on to the security services and even the posts of editor and deputy editor of Radio 4's Woman's Hour were subject to background checks by MI5. In many cases, the spouses of applicants were also subjected to scrutiny.

The BBC tried on several occasions to be more open about the system, but was blocked by the Security Service. A memo, dated March 7 1985, states: "Secrecy of the complete vetting operation is imposed upon us by the Security Service - it is not of our making."

For their part, the security services were increasingly concerned about the number of people being referred to them by the BBC. During the first four months of 1983, they were asked to investigate 619 different individuals.

In the early 1980s, the BBC had a list of "major subversive organisations", which included the Communist Party, the Socialist Workers' Party, the Workers' Revolutionary Party, Militant Tendency, the National Front and the British National Party.

In contrast, CND, which was very popular at the time, was not regarded as a "subversive organisation". Youthful attachments to extreme causes did not necessarily mean an automatic ban on employment.

The papers show that, in 1968, Sir Hugh Greene, the BBC's then director-general, and John Arkell, the head of administration, successfully evaded questions on the issue during an interview with a journalist.

A memo from Mr Arkell, dated March 1 1968, to another senior colleague states: "You might like to get a bit of credit for the BBC next time you talk to MI5 by telling them that I stuck resolutely to the brief which you prepared for me in spite of very pointed and penetrating questions.

"I still denied that we had any vetting procedures."

The BBC declined to -comment.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/07/02/nspy02 .xml

[TonyGosling]

[TonyGosling]

eye eye
it's that far right Tory super rich cult crooked McAlpine family again

Committee grills McAlpine over blacklist shame
Tuesday 22 January 2013
by Roger Bagley in Westminster

Construction boss Cullum McAlpine wriggled and writhed today when MPs grilled him about grand-scale blacklisting.

Flanked by the Sir Robert McAlpine company's head lawyer, he repeatedly uttered the words "I don't know," "I can't say" or "I can't answer that question."

MPs on the Scottish affairs select committee became more and more frustrated as they tried to squeeze admissions out of Mr McAlpine over his company's close links with the Consulting Association (CA).

The CA was disbanded in 2009 amid a major scandal over thousands of blacklisted workers.

Mr McAlpine, a director of the construction company and former chairman of the CA, admitted that he had chaired twice-yearly meetings of the notorious organisation.

But when sceptical MPs asked for more details he replied: "I don't remember very well" and "my memory is pretty rusty."

Dundee Labour MP Jim McGovern bluntly accused Mr McAlpine of "hiding behind" recently deceased former CA blacklister Ian Kerr, "who can't answer."

Labour MP Pamela Nash challenged Mr McAlpine about his claim that the McAlpine company had never operated a blacklist.

"Are you saying that the CA list was not a blacklist?" she asked.

"I'm afraid I cannot answer that question," he retorted.

Trying another tack, Ms Nash asked: "Has your company ever asked anyone else to operate a blacklist?"

"No" came the answer.

Laughter broke out in the room as committee chairman Ian Davidson MP intervened and asked: "Can I just clarify just what you thought that the Consulting Association was doing then?"

Grudgingly, Mr McAlpine offered his view that a blacklist was a list of names which "automatically" prevented those on the list from enjoying the benefits of a club or a job.

He admitted that his construction company had used the CA "a lot" during 2008, when it was extremely busy with Olympic projects, defence ministry work and shopping centres.

The Home Office carried out vetting of everyone who worked on the Olympic site, he added.

The McAlpine company had paid legal costs incurred by Mr Kerr upon his prosecution in 2009 for administering the CA database.

When asked if he knew that the McAlpine company sent cheques for £15,000 and £8,000 to Mr Kerr's daughters to cover their father's fines and legal fees, Mr McAlpine replied: "I did not know that at the time."

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/128554




Time for blacklist justice
Tuesday 22 January 2013
by Peter Lazenby
Printable
Email

Trade unionists demanded a "Leveson-style" inquiry today into the blacklisting of thousands of construction workers.

Unite said the issue was as scandalous as the media's phone-hacking and it wants a similar response.

MPs are to debate blacklisting tomorrow.

Britain's data watchdog exposed the widespread use of secret blacklists in the building trade in 2009 when its officers raided the offices of the Consulting Association.

More than 40 of Britain's largest construction firms were shown to have used a blacklist of 3,213 workers.

Unite said: "After years of denials, firms which built the Olympic Park have finally admitted that they checked names of prospective workers with the illegal Consulting Association blacklist.

"Many of the workers still have no idea that they were included on the blacklist."

Crossrail industrial relations chief Ron Barron was sacked from the London transport project when his involvement in blacklisting was revealed.

Former Consulting Association chairman Ian Kerr admitted having discussions with Crossrail.

Crossrail union rep Frank Morris and 27 other workers employed by a subcontractor were sacked.

Mr Morris believes BAM Nuttall Ltd, Ferrovial Agroman and Kier Construction Ltd, who won £700m in Crossrail contacts, were involved.

Both BAM and Kier subscribed to the Consulting Association's blacklist.

Mr Morris believes he was blacklisted for raising health and safety concerns at the London Olympic site.

Unite believes Crossrail has failed to investigate evidence of blacklisting on the project and wants Transport for London to investigate.

Thousands were denied jobs after raising health and safety concerns or for their trade union activities.

"Many of the workers still have no idea that they were included on the blacklist which was uncovered in the raid by the Information Commissioner's Office in 2009," Unite said.

Today's Commons debate has been instigated by shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna.

He wants the Information Commissioner to inform the victims that they were blacklisted so they can seek compensation.

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said: "This is a scandal on the scale of phone hacking, except it is the lives of thousands of ordinary construction workers which have been ruined.

"There should be a full and proper inquiry. It is time for justice."

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/128557

[TonyGosling]

And ITV

Revealed: why MI5’s Spycatchers thought two ITV bosses were Communists with KGB links
Posted on December 7, 2017
https://profpurvis.com/2017/12/07/revealed-why-mi5s-spycatchers-though t-two-itv-bosses-were-communists-with-kgb-links/


Newly released Security Service files from the 1960s show that MI5 officers suspected that two senior executives in the ITV network had been secret supporters of the Communist Party with links to Soviet Intelligence. Previously secret documents now in the National Archives show their inquiries into possible Communist connections inside ITV ended with no conclusive evidence of a KGB link and the 'suicide' of one of the men.

The investigations had started in the wake of the defections to Moscow of three Cambridge graduates Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. MI5 were trying to find out if there had been an equivalent recruiting network at Oxford University in the 1930s. Bernard Floud, son of a leading civil servant Sir Francis Floud, came under suspicion partly because of his friendship with one of the Cambridge recruiters, James Klugman. ‘The case for suspecting that Floud may have worked for the Russians as a talent-spotter rest on his early association with James Klugman. It seems highly possible that what Klugman was doing at Cambridge was echoed by Floud at Oxford’. Floud and Klugman had both been at school with Donald Maclean and had travelled to China in 1938 to meet leading Communist Chou En-Lai. MI5 tracked this visit and because of Floud’s Communist activities at Oxford monitored his subsequent career in the wartime Intelligence Corps and Ministry of Information and post-war Board of Trade. In 1951 when he was an Assistant Secretary MI5 got a report that ‘he is a fanatical Communist. It must be assumed he is still a Communist partisan, the more dangerous because of his concealment’

Despite this shadow over his civil service career Floud was progressing up the ranks when suddenly in 1951 he resigned to become a farmer. In an equally sudden career shift five years later he became one of the first employees of Granada Television, which had won the ITV franchise for the North of England. Floud was put in charge of personnel and he represented Granada at network meetings becoming the chair of the Labour Relations Committee, in effect the ITV employers’ lead negotiator with the TV unions. From 1959-1964 he was also Granada’s man on the board of Independent Television News (ITN) and unusually for a director of ITN he once reported on air. In 1967 Floud happened to be in Northern Nigeria, where Granada had a stake in a TV station, when the regional Premier and his wife were shot by rebel troops.His eye-witness report is still in the ITN Archive.

MI5’s interest in Floud was rekindled when they learned that while at Oxford he ‘had been concerned in recruiting CP members of the University for long-term undercover penetration of the Civil Service. In one known case, that of Jenifer Fischer-Williams, later Hart, he nurtured the student’s development as a Communist at Oxford, advised her to join a department of the Civil Service from which information of value could be made available to the CPGB and gave her guidance on the question of concealing her Party membership’.

MI5 wanted to know what exactly Floud was doing at Granada and wrote to I.R.D. the secret anti-Communist propaganda arm of the Foreign Office which often paid professional journalists to work for them. The letter said ‘I am in need of a reliable contact in Granada Television network in London to whom I could entrust a somewhat delicate enquiry. I wonder whether by any chance you can suggest anyone suitable for this purpose’. They linked their enquiries into Floud with the name of the man at the very top of the ITV company: ‘It is worth remembering that Sidney Bernstein, the head of Granada, has an extremely interesting file which you may like to consult. It may not be fortuitous that Floud obtained a position with this firm’.

In a later file MI5 officers put on record that Bernstein ‘has been considered, by reason of his great wealth and influential positions’, a potential source of support for the Communist powers, both financially and in the sphere of propaganda’. While conceding that they had no hard proof Bernstein had ever been a formal party member they recorded that ‘two independent sources who are believed to be reliable reported-in 1936 and again in 1955 – that he was a secret member of the Party’. Bernstein was, they noted, a friend of Ivor Montagu, a film-maker and Communist activist and a referee for Cedric Belfrage, who would later be revealed as an important Soviet agent.

Bernard Floud’s career had taken a further twist when this civil servant turned farmer turned TV executive started a fourth career and it was one which he developed simultaneously with his TV work. In 1964, at his third attempt he was elected as a Labour MP, representing Acton in London. Two years later MI5 noted ‘It may be postulated that as a member of parliament, although as yet only a backbencher, Floud has potential as an agent of influence. His value to the Russians as an executive of Granada Television and a director of Independent Television News is more immediately apparent. Proof or disproof of these suspicions is yet wanting’. MI5 officers, prominent among them Peter Wright who wrote in ‘Spycatcher’ about the Floud case, set about finding out more. Floud told them he ‘got into television through an introduction from an MP who was a friend of Sidney Bernstein. And he had been there ever since.’

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The search for evidence against him became particularly relevant when it became known that the Prime Minister Harold Wilson was considering promoting Floud to Ministerial rank. With the agreement of the Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, Floud was interviewed by MI5 on five occasions between August 1966 and March 1967. In the MI5 files the notes by Peter Wright and his team on the Floud interrogation make fascinating reading. There are accounts of how Floud ‘prevaricated’, was ‘less than candid’ admitting ‘conspiratorial Communist activity’ but denying any knowledge of Russian Intelligence connections.
After the final interrogation in March 1967 Wright wrote; ‘At the end I could only conclude that Floud has been less than frank with me, since under pressure he has shifted his ground on many issues’. The typed document ends ‘I felt that I had been dealing with a dedicated Communist’. Wright seems to have had second thoughts about that line because he crossed out the words ‘a dedicated’ and in his own handwriting changed it to ‘dealing with someone who was using the techniques of a Communist’.
Another entry in the file says ‘we have not so far been able to break this case by interview, partly because we have had to handle Floud with care as an MP’. MI5 never did ‘break the case’ but by the end of it Floud was a broken man. He had a long-term depressive illness and his wife, to whom he had been devoted, had died during the interrogation process. Wilson never did make him a minister, he went back to work at the Commons and at Granada but told colleagues he was ‘unable to go on’. He committed suicide in his home in October 1967 by a combination of alcohol, barbiturates and coal gas.
In the official history of MI5, Professor Christopher Andrew concluded that ‘There was – and is – no evidence that he had any Communist contacts after 1952. His pre-war contacts with Soviet intelligence are also unlikely to have been of great significance’. As for Sidney Bernstein MI5 concluded ‘there is no firm evidence to show where Bernstein’s political loyalties now lie’ and he was never questioned or challenged by MI5 during his illustrious career in television.

(The story of Bernstein’s later encounters with the UK’s TV regulators is told in ‘When Reporters Cross the Line’,written with Jeff Hulbert)

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

The vetting files: How the BBC kept out ‘subversives’
21 April 2018
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-43754737

Broadcasting House in 1959
Image caption Broadcasting House in 1959
For decades the BBC denied that job applicants were subject to political vetting by MI5. But in fact vetting began in the early days of the BBC and continued until the 1990s. Paul Reynolds, the first journalist to see all the BBC's vetting files, tells the story of the long relationship between the corporation and the Security Service.

"Policy: keep head down and stonewall all questions." So wrote a senior BBC official in early 1985, not long before the Observer exposed so many details of the work done in Room 105 Broadcasting House that there was no point continuing to hide it.

By that stage, a policy of flatly denying the existence of political vetting - not just stonewalling, but if necessary lying - had been in place for five decades.

As early as 1933 a BBC executive, Col Alan Dawnay, had begun holding meetings to exchange information with the head of MI5, Sir Vernon Kell, at Dawnay's flat in Eaton Terrace, Chelsea. It was an era of political radicalism and both sides deemed the BBC in need of "assistance in regard to communist activities".

Col Alan Dawnay (right) in Cairo in 1918 with T E Lawrence (left) and David George Hogarth
Image caption Col Alan Dawnay (right) in Cairo in 1918 with T E Lawrence (left) and the archaeologist David George Hogarth
These informal arrangements became formal two years later, with an agreement between the two organisations that all new staff should be vetted except "personnel such as charwomen". The fear was that "evilly disposed" engineers might sabotage the network at a critical time, or that conspirators might discredit the BBC so that "the way could be made clear for a left-wing government".

And so routine vetting began. From the start, the BBC undertook not to reveal the role of the Security Service (MI5), or the fact of vetting itself. On one level this made sense, bearing in mind that the very existence of the Secret Service remained a secret until the 1989 Security Service Act.

Over the years, some BBC executives worried about the "deceptive" statements they had to make - even to an inquisitive MP on one occasion. But when MI5 suggested scaling back the number of jobs subject to vetting, the BBC argued against such a move. Though there were some opponents of vetting within the corporation, they had little influence until the Cold War began to thaw in the 1980s.

Vetting file
Image caption "Formalities" was the code word for the vetting system
This is how the system worked.

Vetting was brought into play once a candidate and one or two alternatives labelled "also suitable" had been selected for a job. The alternatives served a useful purpose. If the first choice was barred by vetting, the appointments board moved easily on to the second. The candidates were told only that "formalities" would be carried out before an appointment was made. This sounded harmless enough; it would allow time to follow up references, perhaps. Candidates did not know that "formalities" meant vetting - and was, in fact, the code word for the whole system.

A memo from 1984 gives a run-down of organisations on the banned list. On the left, there were the Communist Party of Great Britain, the Socialist Workers Party, the Workers Revolutionary Party and the Militant Tendency. By this stage there were also concerns about movements on the right - the National Front and the British National Party.

A banned applicant did not need to be a member of these organisations - association was enough.

BBC Announcers Room in 1938
Image caption BBC Announcers Room in 1938
If MI5 found something against a candidate, it made one of three "assessments" in a kind of league table:

Category "A" stated: "The Security Service advises that the candidate should not be employed in a post offering direct opportunity to influence broadcast material for a subversive purpose."
Category "B" was less restrictive. The Security Service "advised" against employment "unless it is decided that other considerations are overriding".
Category "C" stated that the information against a candidate should not "necessarily debar" them but the BBC "may prefer to make other arrangements" if the post offered "exceptional opportunity" for subversive activity.
The BBC procedure was in principle never to employ someone in Category "A", though a few did get through the net. This contradicted its public position that the BBC controlled all appointments. In theory it did. In practice it gave that choice to MI5 in Category "A" cases.

If staff came under suspicion only after they had been employed by the BBC or applied for transfer to a job that needed vetting, an image resembling a Christmas tree was drawn on their personal file.

The Christmas Tree
Image caption The "Christmas Tree" also resembles an upward-facing arrow
This "tree" was an important part of the process. The BBC maintained a "Staff Transfer List" which named staff who needed to be checked if they were to be promoted. A tree added to the file alerted the administration that this was a security case. Also written on to their file was a so-called "Standing Reminder". This stated: "Not to be promoted or transferred (or placed on continuous contract) without reference to [Director of Personnel]."

So keen was the BBC to maintain secrecy that it secretly removed the Standing Reminder from someone's file if they went to an Industrial Tribunal, which had the power to call for personal files. It was also agreed to (misleadingly) explain away a stamp on a file saying "Normal Appointments Formalities Completed" by pretending that it referred to "routine procedures, Next of Kin, Pension etc".

The Christmas tree was eventually dropped in 1984 because it was said to attract too much attention. It attracted a great deal of attention when the Observer described it in 1985. The day after publication, someone hung some Christmas decorations on the door handle of Room 105 in Broadcasting House, from where the system was run.

presentational grey line
An interview given in 1968 by BBC director general Sir Hugh Greene shows the BBC's policy of denial and obfuscation in action.

To a reporter from The Sunday Times in February Greene blithely and misleadingly declared: "We have a staff of 23,000 and in that community we have people of all descriptions, including what you call pansies" - the word had apparently been used by the reporter - "and also communists. But that's none of my business. We don't conduct an inquisition on people who join the BBC."

Hugh Greene in 1968
Image caption Hugh Greene in 1968
It was true that neither the BBC nor MI5 used homosexuality as a reason to block someone, but stopping the employment of communists was very much part of Greene's business and, if not the BBC itself, then the Security Service did conduct inquisitions.

The files reveal that BBC tactics for handling this interview had been drawn up by MI5 itself - known delicately as the "College" in BBC memos. In advance of the interview, and in a rare departure from prevailing policy, a BBC official had suggested to "College" that "the need for vetting no longer existed, in peacetime". The BBC indicated that it was willing to admit publicly that staff involved in plans for broadcasting in time of war - called "emergency defence work" - and any aliens employed were checked. However, a BBC memo records: "College do not favour reference to vetting in any way whatever."

To underline the point, an MI5 official telephoned to say that "no direct admission of vetting should be made". If pressed, the BBC could admit that "something of this sort" was carried out "in relation to War Planning purposes" and "where aliens were concerned".

Nevertheless, the Security Service "would prefer that as little reference should be made to this subject as possible".

The satirical show That Was The Week That Was helped cement Hugh Greene's reputation as a liberaliser
Image caption The satirical show That Was The Week That Was helped cement Hugh Greene's reputation as a liberaliser
MI5 suggested that questions could be diverted from Greene to someone on the "personnel side of things". And "perhaps stress could be laid on a stiff recruitment procedure and the fact that references are taken up very thoroughly". This last phrase was taken up by the BBC very thoroughly itself, and it appears in many of the BBC responses over the following years. Cleverly ambiguous, it implies that the references taken up were those given by an applicant. In reality, the references were supplied by the Security Service.

Greene followed the MI5 line. He told the Sunday Times that he would not answer any questions about vetting but would leave that to a senior subordinate. The paper seems to have gone along with this. There is no questioning of Greene on this matter in the published interview in the Sunday Times.

However, Greene's nominated spokesman, the director of administration, John Arkell, did not quite follow the script with which he had been provided. At first he repeated the denial: "We don't ask about religion or politics." However he then wobbled. "If someone is a communist it's of no relevance, unless, of course, he is working in a particularly sensitive area." The Sunday Times reporter then asked Arkell whether he had confidence in British security vetting and Arkell wobbled again: "In this imperfect world perhaps sometimes someone suffers," he replied, and the implication was clear, though the paper did not pursue the point.

John Arkell on a visit to BBC Wales in 1970
Image caption John Arkell on a visit to BBC Wales in 1970
Arkell then hurriedly repeated the standard denial: "I must point out that security vetting isn't a prerequisite for getting a job at the BBC."

In fact for about 6,000 BBC jobs at the time, it was. Arkell's comments led to some raised eyebrows. One BBC official accused him of making "an open avowal" of vetting. However, Arkell himself was pleased with his performance and encouraged a BBC colleague to use it "to get a bit of credit for the BBC with MI5".

When this resulted in a letter from the Security Service congratulating Arkell for "standing up so creditably to the questioning" the critical BBC official fell into line, commenting merely that Arkell's denial had to be maintained "unvarnished, unglossed and unexpanded".

Greene's refusal to answer questions was no surprise to insiders. Although he had been a liberalising influence in the BBC since becoming director general in 1960, he was firmly in favour of vetting. Not long after taking over, he had led a BBC delegation in talks with the Home Office, which was asking why so many BBC applicants had to be vetted. MI5 was worried that it was open to being sued by individuals, since its directive required it to concentrate only on "countering threats of subversion and sabotage". It wanted to vet only the applicants for a limited number of jobs.

Image caption Arkell suggests that the BBC can get credit from MI5 for his performance under "penetrating" questioning from the Sunday Times
But Greene resisted any change. The BBC actually argued for more vetting, to prevent infiltration by "subversives", but felt that it could publicly admit to checking some key staff. MI5 wanted to lessen the burden placed on it by vetting - but insisted on almost total secrecy.

It took some time for the argument to be resolved. The Security Service managed to square its activities with its directive and the BBC removed 528 staff from the vetting system. Among these were 81 staff in the Make-up and Wardrobe Department, 20 in the Gramophone Department and 21 in the Library. Sixteen staff in Religious Broadcasting were also excluded, though the BBC could still request vetting for any individual there.

Thus were such staff no longer regarded as dangers to the state.

Banned applicants did not know why they had been turned down, though they might have guessed.

One notorious case involved the journalist and broadcaster, Isabel Hilton (who later received an OBE for her reporting). She was refused a job in BBC Scotland in 1976 because, she believes, she was guilty by association with a member of the Communist Party at Edinburgh University - a fellow member of the university's China-Scotland organisation.

Image caption Isabel Hilton
After unprecedented protests from the BBC executive who wanted to employ her, Alastair Hetherington, she was eventually offered the job. But it was too late, she had gone elsewhere. She was later told apologetically by Michael Hodder, the last BBC official who acted as liaison with the Security Service, that it had all been a "mistake", but the episode still angers her.

"I still feel indignant. It's the lack of accountability that bothers me and the fact that nobody in the BBC ever apologised, explained - or made any public statement in my defence or to acknowledge their error," she says.

"They went into an institutional defensive huddle without regard for what their actions might have done to me, my reputation, my career etc - nobody in the BBC took responsibility or seemed to feel that they should make any move to repair any damage. I felt it was a squalid way to behave and I still do.

"More seriously, beyond the particulars of my own case, I felt that the BBC had betrayed public trust by promoting a system in the UK by which the secret police were licensing and blacklisting journalists. Whenever I hear the BBC boasting about its fine traditions of journalism, I feel a minor stab of outrage."

Hilton did eventually work for the BBC, presenting the World Tonight on Radio 4 in the 1990s, and later the Radio 3 arts programme, Night Waves.

Another candidate who was rejected on MI5's advice was Tom Archer, who worked as a BBC freelancer in Bristol in the 1970s, but was turned down when he applied for staff jobs from 1979 onwards. Archer says he had been "an active socialist at university", but this was something the BBC usually ignored as youthful enthusiasm. There had to be another reason, and an editor in Bristol who wanted to employ him, Robin Hicks, discovered it: Archer was being blocked because a close relative had allegedly joined the Socialist Workers Party. Hicks protested but to no avail.

Image caption Tom Archer in 1983, when he was still able to get work at the BBC as a freelancer
Archer's career flourished outside the BBC, however - at Channel 4 and Granada - and he eventually worked his way back. In 2008, he became controller of BBC factual programmes - based in Bristol.

"I was angry and even frightened at the time," he says, casting his mind back to 1979.

"I feared that everything would be blocked off for me. We were a young married couple. I sent back the video recorder and sold the car. They did it in a secret cack-handed way.

"It was of course a complete triumph when I went back."

At the same time Tom Archer's job applications were being rebuffed, a senior BBC appointments official was arguing that it was time for vetting to end. In December 1979, Hugh Pierce pointed out that over a recent two-year period only 22 people had been excluded out of thousands vetted. He said, therefore, that "the process of vetting could be reduced". He doubted if the 22 could have done much damage, as "any personal bias... could have been spotted and checked." He recommended continued vetting for those with access to official secrets and in the BBC World Service, where many foreign staff were employed. Beyond that, he said, "We should abandon forthwith the current requirement to vet wholesale categories of applicants. We should replace a rather crushing machinery by a more flexible service."

The last line of his 10-page report was prophetic. He warned that if the scale of vetting became publicly known, it "would be grounds for ridicule and vilification". His recommendation was not followed and his prophecy came to pass when the Observer story was published in August 1985.

Image caption The BBC files on vetting have themselves been vetted to remove the names of MI5 staff
Despite the rejection of Pierce's proposal to reduce vetting significantly, steps were taken before long to further cut the number of staff subject to it. Since the start of the policy, journalists had always been included in the system, but a review in 1983 resulted in about 2,000 posts being removed from the list - including some junior editorial jobs - bringing the total number down to 3,705.

The man who conducted this review, the BBC official in charge of liaison with MI5, was Brig Ronnie Stonham, a former Royal Signals officer, who also produced an updated "defensive brief". The first line of this was the usual blanket denial: "It can be stated categorically that BBC staff are not subject to a security clearance as a prerequisite for employment." It is hard to reconcile this with reality, as Stonham himself says in his report that in 1982 1,287 names were sent to MI5 for "counter-subversion" clearance.

At the top of the BBC support for vetting was clearly waning, however. The vice-chairman of the Board of Governors, Sir William Rees-Mogg, had already questioned it before the Observer broke the story that broke the system.

"It operates, unknown to almost all BBC staff, from Room 105 in an out-of-the way corridor on the first floor of Broadcasting House - a part of that labyrinth on which George Orwell modelled his Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four," wrote reporters David Leigh and Paul Lashmar.

"The legend on the door - 'Special Duties-Management' - gives little away," the story went on. "Behind that door sits Brigadier Ronnie Stonham."

The headline - Revealed: How the BBC vets its staff.

Image caption The vetting files at the BBC's Written Archives in Caversham
This time, there were facts and case histories which made the standard denials useless.

Stonham's boss, director of personnel Christopher Martin, had initially tried the standard denial routine with Leigh and Lashmar, but then got the Home Office to agree a new line - a public acknowledgment that vetting had taken place, but was now being reduced.

There were some who marvelled that the BBC had managed to keep the secret for so long - it is evident from the anxiety expressed in the files that the corporation would have been hard pressed to hold its line if it had been pushed really hard by the press. "This story is 50 years old and it has taken the press that long to find it," said the BBC director general at the time, Alasdair Milne.

The Observer's revelations brought about a major change.

Almost immediately, Ronnie Stonham recommended confining counter-subversion vetting to senior editorial staff but BBC management went further. In October 1985 the BBC announced publicly that vetting would in future be applied only to a few operational people at the very top, to those who would run emergency broadcasting (which meant the then secret wartime broadcasting system in the event of nuclear war) and to those staff in the BBC World Service who were thought to be vulnerable to hostile infiltration. All vetting of staff not in those categories would cease.

Image caption BBC correspondents, such as Paul Reynolds, remained subject to vetting even after 1985
But behind the scenes there was still resistance from some quarters. A rearguard action was fought to keep specialist domestic and foreign correspondents on the vetting list, on the grounds that "the BBC's credibility depended on their integrity". A dodge had to be devised, and so correspondents were quickly reassigned to a list of those who had access to restricted government information - an access they in fact did not have.

The upshot was that vetted staff were reduced to 1,400 in the domestic services and 793 in the World Service. The system was further refined in 1990, following the Security Service Act, under which all vetting in the BBC stopped except for those who would be involved in wartime broadcasting and those with access to secret government information.

Then, two years later, the wartime broadcasting system was stood down, so vetting was further cut back. The BBC will not say whether any staff are vetted these days. "We do not comment on security issues," a spokesperson said. But any residual vetting, of people needing access to classified information for emergency planning for example, would be open and known to the person. There is no more secrecy as once there was.

By the time the wartime broadcasting system was wound up, Stonham had retired, and his role as MI5 liaison had been taken by a personnel officer from the news division, Michael Hodder, a former Royal Marine. Hodder oversaw the residual vetting and dealt with a few cases informally in the World Service.

There was an employee in the Burmese Section who was giving the names of dissidents to the Burmese Embassy in London. Another was the case of a Saudi employee who turned out to be on the payroll of both the BBC and the Saudi embassy. A third involved an applicant for a job in the Arabic Service, who was related to a notorious terrorist.

It was Hodder who saved the files for history.

He ignored an instruction to destroy them and crated them up in a safe for delivery to the BBC Written Archives Centre. He did shred all Security Service material on staff that the BBC held. However, he ensured that one personal file was kept - that of Guy Burgess, who worked for the BBC during the war.

The BBC even put his file online in 2014 but of course in this case the vetting had failed - and there was nothing in the file of Guy Burgess to indicate that he was in in fact a Soviet spy.

Paul Reynolds was a BBC correspondent from 1978 to 2011.

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

The BBC worked directly with MI5 to bar left-wing journalists and prevent...
UKCONSERVATIVESLABOURMAINSTREAM MEDIA BIAS
The BBC worked directly with MI5 to bar left-wing journalists and prevent a left-wing British government
By Tom D. Rogers - 22nd April 2018
https://evolvepolitics.com/the-bbc-worked-directly-with-mi5-to-bar-lef t-wing-journalists-and-prevent-a-left-wing-british-government/

The BBC worked directly with the British Security Service MI5 to politically vet job candidates to ensure those with left-wing views did not get offered jobs within the Corporation – a practice that the BBC and MI5 introduced to directly prevent a left-wing British government, a startling new report has revealed.

The staggering new information also reveals that the BBC’s policy of barring left-wing journalists continued into the 1990s, and that the Corporation’s Chiefs intentionally lied about the BBC using such methods to Official Employment tribunals.

In an article published today entitled ‘The vetting files: How the BBC kept out ‘subversives’’, the BBC write that:

“For decades the BBC denied that job applicants were subject to political vetting by MI5. But in fact vetting began in the early days of the BBC and continued until the 1990s…

“As early as 1933 a BBC executive, Col Alan Dawnay, had begun holding meetings to exchange information with the head of MI5, Sir Vernon Kell, at Dawnay’s flat in Eaton Terrace, Chelsea…

“These informal arrangements became formal two years later, with an agreement between the two organisations that all new staff should be vetted except “personnel such as charwomen”. The fear was that “evilly disposed” engineers might sabotage the network at a critical time, or that conspirators might discredit the BBC so that “the way could be made clear for a left-wing government”.

And so routine vetting began. From the start, the BBC undertook not to reveal the role of the Security Service (MI5), or the fact of vetting itself. On one level this made sense, bearing in mind that the very existence of the Secret Service remained a secret until the 1989 Security Service Act.”

The stunning article then goes on to reveal how the BBC rejected any candidate found to have even tenuous links to political organisations such as the Socialist Workers Party or Militant Tendency – even clarifying that “A banned applicant did not need to be a member of these organisations – association was enough.“

After vetting applicants, the BBC and MI5 made one of three assessments of a candidate:

Category A stated that: “The Security Service advises that the candidate should not be employed in a post offering direct opportunity to influence broadcast material for a subversive purpose.“

Candidates who were placed in “Category B” were said to be “advised” against employment “unless it is decided that other considerations are overriding”.

Whilst placing a candidate in Category C meant that the information found during vetting was not worrying enough to “necessarily debar” them from becoming employed, but the BBC “may prefer to make other arrangements” if the post offered “exceptional opportunity” for subversive activity.

Furthermore, if BBC Chiefs became suspicious of the activities of any employee, or when employees applied for a promotion that required extra political vetting, they would mark their personnel file with an “image resembling a Christmas tree“.

The Christmas Tree symbol was known as a “Standing Reminder”, and ensured that such candidates were “Not to be promoted or transferred (or placed on continuous contract) without reference to [Director of Personnel].”

The BBC article goes on to admit that they also ‘secretly removed‘ the Standing Reminder from an employee’s file if they went to an Official Employment Tribunal, and that an agreement was in place to lie to any employment tribunal by pretending that the symbol was simply related to “routine procedures” such as “Next of Kin, Pension etc”.

Despite officially claiming to have since ceased such political vetting of potential employees (except for those who would be involved in wartime broadcasting and those with access to secret government information) the staggering new information shows exactly how worried BBC Chiefs were about their employees holding even mildly anti-Establishment views.

And, given the BBC’s obvious ability to maintain closely guarded secrets, it would be incredibly naive to believe that such political scrutiny was not being still given to a large proportion of high-level BBC journalists to ensure they were ‘on message’ and would not divert from the BBC’s true agenda.

After all, the BBC is, and always has been, a propaganda arm of the rich and powerful in Britain – and it would be entirely foolish to believe that anything substantive has really changed at the top of the Corporation.

The BBC’s aim is not to report the truth – and it never will be. The sole purpose of the BBC – exactly like the Kremlin-backed Russia Today Propaganda outlet – is to report the news from a perspective that will best ensure those who currently hold the majority of wealth and power in Britain continue to hold it.

The BBC’s entire operation is based around ensuring that people who seek real progressive change – those who want to redistribute wealth and power away from the few, and into the hands of ordinary people – are systematically undermined, ridiculed and discriminated against.

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Revealed: MI5 vetted BBC staff right up to the 1990s
Nan Spowart
Journalist Guy Burgess worked at the BBC during the Second World War
http://www.thenational.scot/news/16176527.Revealed__MI5_vetted_BBC_sta ff_right_up_to_the_1990s/

THE BBC allowed MI5 to vet staff right up until the 1990s, it has been revealed. Files detailing the broadcaster’s secret links to the security services show that investigations were made into the lives and allegiances of thousands of employees, including reporters, newsreaders and continuity announcers.

“Subversive” political activity led to appointments and promotions being blocked by the corporation, which held a blacklist of organisations.

A memo from the 1980s show these included the Socialist Workers’ Party, the Communist Party, Militant Tendency and the Workers’ Revolutionary Party as well as the National Front and the British National Party.

Journalist Isabel Hilton was refused a job in 1976 with BBC Scotland because, she thinks, she knew a member of the Communist Party at Edinburgh University, a fellow member of the university’s China-Scotland organisation.

“I still feel indignant,” she said. “I felt it was a squalid way to behave and I still do.

“More seriously, beyond the particulars of my own case, I felt that the BBC had betrayed public trust by promoting a system in the UK by which the secret police were licensing and blacklisting journalists.

‘‘Whenever I hear the BBC boasting about its fine traditions of journalism, I feel a minor stab of outrage.”

MI5 evidence was particularly rife in the late 1970s and early 1980s just as millions of viewers were enjoying the fictional adventures of fictional spy George Smiley in Smiley’s People and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy.

Well-known faces such as Anna Ford, John Humphries and David Dimbleby all started their careers with the BBC when the vetting was taking place.

Ironically, however, it failed to weed out real-life spy Guy Burgess who worked for the BBC during the Second World War.

The vetting files, which have been studied by journalist Paul Reynolds, also show attempts by BBC figures to cover up its links to surveillance despite repeated questions from the press and trade unions.

One file note, dated March 1, 1985, states: “Keep head down and stonewall all questions.”

The BBC denied vetting was taking place for decades but it began as early as 1933 when both MI5 and the BBC agreed the broadcaster was in need of “assistance in regard to communist activities”.

In 1985 The Observer exposed some of the political vetting at which point it began to be wound down but even then some staff were kept on the vetting list on the pretext they had access to restricted government information.

The BBC has refused to reveal if any staff are still vetted.

“We do not comment on security issues,” said an anonymous spokesperson.

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Conspiracy of Silence: BBC Admits MI5 Vetted Staff to Weed Out 'Subversives'
EUROPE
24.04.2018
https://sputniknews.com/europe/201804241063829687-bbc-mi5-job-vetting/

For decades, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) denied its job applicants were subject to political vetting by domestic intelligence service MI5, in an effort to prevent “subversives” gaining employment with the UK state broadcaster.
Now however, the BBC has finally admitted candidates were scrutinized from its very inception until well into the 1990s at least.

Acceptable in the 30s

In 1933, BBC executive Colonel Alan Dawnay began holding private meetings with MI5 chief Sir Vernon Kell — both were concerned about "communist activities" in the UK, and wished to prevent subversive elements gaining footholds in influential British institutions. By 1935, it had been agreed MI5 would vet all new staff bar cleaners, to prevent "the way [being] made clear for a left-wing government" in the UK.

The policy was kept totally secret — and despite some BBC executives apparently angsting over the "deceptive" statements they were compelled to make to shroud its existence (even MPs and ministers were lied to on the issue), the Corporation was opposed to reducing the scale and scope of the vetting.

Information supplied by an MI5 mole in the British Communist Party via F Branch
© PHOTO : NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Information supplied by an MI5 mole in the British Communist Party via F Branch
If MI5's digging into candidate's backgrounds yielded anything of political concern, it made one of three designations; Category A applicants, whom MI5 advised "should not be employed in a post offering direct opportunity to influence broadcast material"; Category B, whom MI5 advised against employing "unless it is decided other considerations are overriding"; Category C, for whom MI5's investigation turned up potentially troubling information, which nonetheless didn't "necessarily debar" them from employment — still, the BBC should consider "other arrangements" if the post offered "exceptional opportunity" for subversion.
Applicants didn't even need to be a member of certain political groups to be precluded from employment with the BBC — tangential associations (a friend of a relative being a member, for instance) was sufficient.

Merry Christmas!

In theory, no Category A candidate should ever have been employed by the BBC, though some did permeate the ranks of the organization one way or another. In cases where employees subsequently came under suspicion of subversive inclinations or connections, a Christmas tree was drawn on their personal file.

Such employees were generally precluded from promotions and internal transfers — and if these individuals ever took their grievances about being passed over for either to an Industrial Tribunal, the insignia were removed from their files.

Thames House, the headquarters of the British Security Service (MI5) is seen in London, Britain October 22, 2015
© REUTERS / PETER NICHOLLS
Thames House, the headquarters of the British Security Service (MI5) is seen in London, Britain October 22, 2015
The BBC-MI5 operation proceeded unknown to the vast majority of BBC staff from Room 105 in Broadcasting House, the building George Orwell took inspiration from when describing the Ministry of Truth in his landmark work, 1984. In an ironic twist, the Christmas trees were dumped in that actual year, as they attracted too much attention.
An 1968 interview given by BBC director general Sir Hugh Greene to The Sunday Times demonstrates the wall of silence shielding the policy from public view. In the interview, he said the BBC employed "people of all descriptions", including communists — but who was on the payroll was "none of [his] business", and the state broadcaster didn't "conduct an inquisition on people who join[ed]."

This was an outright lie — and files reveal Greene's strategy for the dealing with the interview was in fact formulated by MI5 itself. Moreover, the BBC's press division had even suggested Greene use the interview to reveal the policy and announce its renunciation — but MI5 were steadfastly opposed to both suggestions, making clear "no direct admission of vetting should be made". If pressed, the BBC could admit "something of this sort" was carried out "in relation to War Planning purposes [and] where aliens were concerned" — although MI5 preferred that "as little reference should be made to this subject as possible".

Greene proved entirely receptive to MI5's insistence on silence — after all, he was an ardent supporter of vetting, and had resisted internal and external pressure to end or even weaken the policy.

Conspiracy Exposed

In December 1979, a BBC broadcasting administrator named Hugh Pierce wrote a 10-page report on the vetting policy. Highly critical, it suggested the BBC "abandon forthwith" the wholesale vetting of applicants, limiting it only to the most sensitive areas of the BBC at the absolute most. Moreover, he warned public exposure of the practice would result in widespread "ridicule and vilification".

MI5 files released by the National Archives in London
© PHOTO : NATIONAL ARCHIVES
MI5 files released by the National Archives in London
His recommendations and cautions both went unheeded, and by 1985, BBC guidance on how to respond to accusations of security service vetting — "keep head down and stonewall all questions" — had been unchanged for 50 years.
However, later that year, the vetting policy was exposed in the Observer newspaper. It recounted many instances of reputations and careers being derailed, if not outright destroyed, due to stringent MI5 oversight. For instance, in 1969 film director John Goldschmidt was commissioned to make a film for the BBC Omnibus series about the occupation by students of Hornsey Art College. However, during filming he discovered police had been checking the details of a car he'd hired and had also been watching his house — and without warning or explanation, the BBC canceled the film without explanation.

Two years later the BBC once again asked him to make a film, but once again when filming started he was stopped from working, an embarrassed executive telling him he "[wasn't] allowed to work here." It was subsequently revealed to him he'd blacklisted from the BBC by MI5 for taking part in an exchange of students between his art college and a Czech film school, spending a few weeks in Czechoslovakia in the process. He was not a Communist and never had been.

Another vetting victim was Isabel Hilton, refused a job by BBC Scotland in 1976 because she spoke Chinese and had crossed paths with a member of the Communist Party while at Edinburgh University at her alma mater's Scottish China Association.

However, Alastair Hetherington, a BBC executive who wanted to employ Hilton, refused to accept it, and protested to all and sundry at the BBC. It was later revealed to Hetherington MI5 had made a clerical error, mistaking the SCA for Maoist group SACU (the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding).

Following Hetherington's interventions, Hilton was offered the job, but the delay had inspired her to look for work elsewhere. Nonetheless, she did eventually work for the BBC, presenting World Tonight on Radio 4 in the 1990s, and Radio 3 arts program Night Waves. She would receive an OBE (Order of the British Empire) in 2009 for her journalism.

A general view of the BBC headquarters in London, Sunday, Nov, 11, 2012
© AP PHOTO / ALASTAIR GRANT
A general view of the BBC headquarters in London, Sunday, Nov, 11, 2012
Likewise, one of the BBC's most able graduate trainees, Michael Rosen, was blacklisted by MI5 for a number of 'offenses' — his student activism at Oxford, making a radio documentary about French Marxist Regis Debray during his BBC training, and making a film that used clips of US soldiers being tested with LSD. The US Embassy in London's Grosvenor Square complained about that project — and Rosen — to both MI5 and the BBC directly.
These transgressions caused him to be sacked in 1972, told no department was prepared to offer him work — despite many BBC divisions being extremely keen to use his talents. He went on to enjoy a successful career as a writer of plays and children's books.

Politics, Not Security

"What do the BBC and MI5 achieve from their secret blackballing? The system is clumsy, dishonest and often very unfair. Whereas government vetting of civil servants is officially acknowledged and those who fail vetting are informed of the fact, the BBC method is secret, allowing no appeal-with often damaging injustice to individuals and careers…even if the system were cleaned up and acknowledged, it would only hamper the activities of those whose radical opinions are above board. Real 'moles' — if they exist — are buried too deep to be discerned by such an inaccurate and incompetent vetting procedure," the Observer concluded.

The newspaper's detailed exposures rendered standard denials redundant, so the BBC eventually acknowledged the system existed — although Michael Hodder, then-BBC liaison with MI5, was asked to shred the files. He disobeyed, instead dispatching them to the BBC Written Archives Center, where they lay dormant until the BBC's own disclosure.

Alasdair Milne, then director general of the BBC, was forced to make an embarrassing retraction, stating the policy was "one of those things one knew about, felt a bit grubby about" — months earlier, he'd publicly stated he couldn't believe allegations of a vetting system were true. Despite this, the official BBC line was only the corporation decided who to appoint to any post, or whether to invoke the vetting procedure, and no external agency had a right to veto the appointment or promotion of any member of staff.

Such claims were totally false — MI5's recommendation were in fact final, and when Hetherington battled for Hilton's application, he was told challenging rulings was "without precedent".

The true nature of corporation and its employees was established in the BBC's memorandum to the 1971 Franks Commission on the Official Secrets Act. The BBC referred to a ruling by the Treasury Solicitor in 1943 which said: "The official view is Governors of the BBC are persons holding office under His Majesty within the meaning of Section 2 of the 1911 Official Secrets Act and the Director-General and staff are persons employed under persons who hold such offices." This ruling clearly bound BBC staff as servants of the British state, with special obligations arising therefrom.

BBC
© AFP 2018 / LEON NEAL
Propaganda for Sale: BBC and Others Guilty of Broadcasting Breaches
Former senior BBC executive Stuart Hood has suggested vetting is a natural consequence of this structure, and a clear indication of the BBC's true nature.
"If the BBC was honest about its role, it would admit it must support the central political authority by virtue of the State licence-fee system — but the Corporation has always had this fantasy about itself as a totally independent social organisation," Hood said.

Similarly, while the exposures shocked the public, John le Carre, best-selling spy novelist and former MI5 officer, was unsurprised.

"I've always assumed it [vetting] happened. I wonder what people would think if the reverse were to occur — if a member of the Militant Tendency turned out to be shaping news in the newsroom. There has to be some method of obtaining what we hope will be an objective middle way in reporting," he said.