Bike Bagsecrets

17 February 1984 70p IR £1.07 US$1.S0 By Air \ Bike bagsecrets . .. I . Duncan Campbell gives a personal account of events and police actions against him followinga bicycle accident last Thursday FEW POLICE RAIDS can have been .The second set of cont~t prints, as the He was (and probably still is) one of tbelr conducted as punctiliously and politely as Special Branch will doubtless soon discover, Press Officers. that nearly seven-hour-long trawl through my are their own copies of the first set - which Another note in the same file purportedID home in Stoke Newington, north London, they made for the ABC trial. There are a few impart secret information about a nucJelr· last Saturday. I was present throughout - other, newer prints - most bf which, such test site from an official source. It clearlJ· ill and injured, just having been released as aerial pictures of the Greenham Common attracted the Branch's attention. The letttr, from hospital. Special Branch men (and a silos, have been published' in the New was about 'Mururoa Atoll'. It is in thePI- : woman) scrupulously put every book, paper Statesman - without any official objection. cific and is used only for French nucJe. and file back in place, asked repeatedly and It was not a successful search for the tests. concernedly after my wellbeing, helped me Branch, and it was not worth the more than up and down stairs, brought glasses of ten person-days of costly police overtime THIS UNSUCCESSFUL fishing expedi-, water, and tidied away the mess occasioned pay involved: one Army Manual, one scrap tion arose from my accident, late last Thun- by their visit. of paper from my bin, two folders of photo- day night. I have amnesia, and the police With my face bleeding from a cycle acci- graphic contact prints, and parts of two have as yet given me no account of wbII dent just 36 hours before, I could reflect that folders of research notes on nuclear weapons happened. But it appears to have bca the British political police force are clearly a - with no government secrets ,or moles' caused solely by a mechanical failure onmy much pleasanter and more orderly bunch revelations within. , bike. I flew over the handlebars and WII than could be expected in South America, Each of the files' contents was duly noted knocked unconscious for more than me South Africa or places of that sort. by an exhibits officer: notes from the 'Mili- minutes. j Throughout the long afternoon it was pos- tary Balance' annual of the Institute for Stra- On the back of my bike were two bagsor . sible for long periods to forget that the tegic Studies; letters and notes from 'panniers' - one of them empty. In the I whole unforgivable event had arisen from distinguished Professors and academics at other were New Statesman files and com- : their plundering what was left at the scene of Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Lancaster, Sussex spondence, several copies of last week'sNS, a traffic accident. As the search proceeded, and Southampton Universities about the and my address book, diary, wallet aDd their own eyes and tired manner showed a British nuclear programme; notes from trousers. These were all held by the police. growing uncertainty of purpose. books; a letter from the Telford Anti- My papers, about which they have still The Special Branch team left bearing only Nuclear Group and so on. Nary a ni~le in asked me nothing, included three filesandI the most trivial 'finds'. The first was a 'res- sight - except for one CND campaigner smattering of loose papers. The files con· tricted' Army Manual on 'Personal Protec- signing him-, or herself, as 'Manfred Mole'. cerned last week's NS story on the 'Legion' tion', which has already gained a certain Exhibit RN/lO, for example, was iden- private army, next week's planned NIfJI notoriety for the section it contains instruct-. tified as a 'Sheet of white New Statesman Statesman supplement on civil liberties (!), ing squaddies in the complicated arts of paper - PRIOR thereon'. I can reveal to and my current 'projects' file. This listedmy urinating and defecating in the Arctic - in the Special Branch a time and money-saving proposed future work, and will doubtless 56 separate steps. It was described at length secret. Mr Prior is a civil servant. He does now enable the security services to coverup in the NS's Miscellany column on 6 Jan- (or did) work for the Ministry of Defence. over more than a dozen stories on whichI uary. We received no official complaint then had proposed to work during the coming that the article had contravened secrecy months. Some of the stories concerned the rules. The copy that the Special Branch Special Branch itself and those who work made off with this weekend had, in fact, just with it. The stories ranged from the use of been posted to me by the BBC's Jasper Gar- National Front members as Special Branch rote show. (Carrott's comedy-writing team agents in Manchester, to a murder Com· had been planning since October to use the mitted by an SAS officer. manual for a joke sequence in the popular Doubtless there were some interesting. off-beat show.) looking papers in the files - such as those The largest of the Branch's 'finds' was on GCHQ radio tracking techniques usedas two folders of photographic contact prints. evidence in a closed session of a recent spy 'These,' pronounced Superintendent Thom- trial. The papers were confidential. But did son (who headed the search), 'appear to be the police tell the magistrate - or even concerned with prohibited places'. They know - that I had been employed by de- were seized. The Post Office Tower in Lon- fence solicitors as an expert witness in the don, and other similar towers, are among case and had the papers in that capacity. many sites shown in the prints. The Special There were two notes, marked 'res- Branch last had these pictures in their pos- tricted', referring to civil defence planning, session during 1977 and 1978, when they which I had, quite officially, from the GLC, were actually produced in evidence as part where I am a eo-opted committee member. of an unsuccessful charge against me, during Did the police bother to tell the magistrate what became known as the ABC trial, of that? There was a long list of telephone SrD illegally 'collecting information'. The charge codes for army and government exchanges, was dropped by the prosecution; and the use suitably lengthy, incomprehensible and thus of such charges was later described by the indubitably sinister. I doubt if the police judge as 'unjustified and oppressive'. even knew what the list was; still less would DUncanCampbeU at the front door of his home in Stoke Newington, north London, during last Saturday's police raid. theyhave known that the codes can be used not to search an area seemed to suffice, from London; or even, with a bit of diffi- Whole piles of magazines were left un- culty,from Eastern Europe. touched, and many files on defence topics After getting the warrant, SB officers given only a cursory flick. went down to pull me out of St Bartholo- As the hours went by Superintendent mew'sHospital - but I had already been let Thomson rather touchingly confided to us out. After waiting until a solicitor arrived, that he and his wife were due to attend their theybegan the search - in my living room, school PT A dinner that night and it would and with meticulous care. They searched be the second time he had failed to show up insidecushions, lifted every apple out of the for one. We had a vision of the poor man apple bowl, and checked the signature on getting hell from his wife that night. every Christmas card. They checked be- The entire Stoke Newington haul was one tweenthe page of every one of hundreds of flimsy and laughable army manual. The books, newspapers and magazines. Noth· former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, ing, not even the potted plants, was left Sir Robert Mark, in his autobiography In the undisturbed. Office of Constable wrote: Four long hours and three rooms later, the Special Branch had a different attitude. I would like to see the repeal of Section 2, but in the event of that not being forthcoming, I They had found one unexciting Army would hope for its increasing disregard by civil manual, and nothing more. Searching the servants in particular and anyone feeling that third drawer of the first of five filing cab- secrecy on any issue was harmful to the public inets, Woman Detective Constable Norwell interest. Convictions under Section 2 would now came to a bulging yellow file marked nowadays be difficult to obtain except in cases 'Secrets - Leaks'. Inside the file, on top of clearly motivated by self interest. the file, was a secret Cabinet paper, one 'Unauthorised revelation of maladministra- grade more highly classified and eight years tion', he has pointed out' ... would almost more up to date than the silly Army manual. certainly not involve any real risk these It was marked 'Property of Her Britannic days' for three reasons: Majesty's Government'. The Superin- tendent was eagerly summoned up the First, ... the Attorney General would not risk stairs. a prosecution; Second, ... a jury would be He turned it over and told Ms Norwell to unlikely to convict; Third, . in the unlikely put it back. 'It is a secret cabinet thing', he event of a conviction, the judiciary, if satisfied of the disinterested motives ·of the accused,· said, 'but it's only about pay negotiations.

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