C6 MAINLANDER Saturday, October 8, 2011 THE PRESS, Christchurch Peace activist target of ‘official’ hit squad A new book on an old spy story has been launched from Christchurch. It’s a great tale with a twist – is it fiction or reality? JOHN McCRONE reports. ou couldn’t make it up, as they say. A spy story to rival anything by John le Carre or Ian Fleming. The setting: Margaret Thatcher’s unlovely 1980s YBritain. A government under siege in a country bitterly divided by its miners’ strikes, IRA bombings, cruise missile protests and the recently-concluded Falklands War. The Cold War is at its paranoid height, the enemy apparently rising within. The killing: A doughty 78-year-old spinster, a commercial rose-grower turned anti-nuclear campaigner living in the ancient Shropshire market town of Shrewsbury, gets rubbed out by Britain’s Murdered or secret police. Abducted from her home assassinated?: one Wednesday lunchtime with a leather Hilda Murrell satchel full of documents, then found dead in a copse three days later, mutilated and apparently sexually assaulted. The unlikely twist: Right as this abduction is happening, a 16-year-old petty thief from the local kids’ home about, then dashed out the bolted side Tucker assured them – as did Clark – spots the open door of the old farmhouse entrance when disturbed. Or equally, it that, if true as alleged, the intrusions and blunders into the middle of the raid. was just a deliberately unsubtle were nothing to do with local security Guns are held to his head to convince reminder from agents of the British forces and would clearly be a disgraceful him to forget what he is seeing. But 20 secret service to the couple that they violation of New Zealand sovereignty. years later – needing a conviction to end were still being watched. A case of ‘‘look ‘‘I hope their microphones were there awkward questions – the lad is sent down what we can do’’. to pick that up,’’ says Green gleefully. for the murder. Dewes throws up a hand, suddenly The idea of all this effort being The denouement: It is October 2011, remembering that only two nights ago expended in New Zealand over an event Christchurch, New Zealand. The she found the bolster she puts across the that happened back in 1984 does sound murdered woman’s nephew, a former front door had been shoved aside as if a crazy – ‘‘low grade Bourne Ultimatum Royal Navy commander in charge of nose had been briefly poked in. These stuff’’ – Green agrees. But time now to get nuclear weapons, and his prominent incidents are almost too commonplace to the full story out in the open and let the Kiwi peace campaigner wife, blow the lid be remarked upon now. world make up its own mind whether it off this and many other British security It has been going on for years, says is fact or fiction he says. scandals in an explosive tell-all book Green, ever since he moved to New printed up in complete secrecy at the Zealand in the mid-1990s. Strange men ilda Murrell was a Cambridge dead of night by their Masterton sitting in cars in the street for hours. scholar who took over the publisher. Break-ins whenever they are out of the family rose-growing business Fearing for their own lives after years country. Mail ripped open. There must Hafter the Second World War, of alleged harassment in their suburban be a whole team of operatives on their winning gold medals at the Chelsea Riccarton home, the pair tell of friends case they claim. Flower Show and becoming a noted and informants stalked, raped and They have got used to presuming that horticultural expert. murdered. their house is under continuous She had a sharp mind and was spry But how does this story end? With a electronic surveillance, their into old age. Green, who viewed her as a Britain rocked by the revelations, a conversations recorded. Dewes says with second mother after his own died in his Kafkaesque era of state-sponsored terror modern gear the spooks can hijack the teens, recounts how Murrell could still against nuclear whistle-blowers finally microphones on your own computer and chase off the local youths who invaded exposed? With an innocent man record even off the power cables in the her large fruit and vegetable garden. dramatically freed and the out-of-control wall as antennae. If there is an urgent On retirement Murrell became elements of an establishment brought to need to talk, the two go into the laundry politically active, interested in book? and switch on its noisy dryer. environmentalism and especially the Or is it indeed a case of the made up? Green says cheerfully he takes this perils of nuclear reactor waste. A wild conspiracy theory, a vivid continuing campaign against them as Nuclear was big at the time because of fantasy. The truth is instead simply what corroboration he is on to their dirty the Cold War and with citizen protest the authorities say it is – that a juvenile secrets. Dewes, who runs her Canterbury more pronounced over the US cruise robbery ended in the unfortunate death University-affiliated nuclear missiles based on UK soil. of an elderly woman. disarmament research centre from the But there was also the gathering house, is a lot less happy. protest over Thatcher’s plan to break the ommander Robert Green, one- She says as the mother of daughters coal-miners, the traditional powerbase of time bombardier on Buccaneer who have been alone in the house when the Left, through a crash programme of nuclear strike jets and a strange men with flashlights have been nuclear power plant building. A move to Cheadquarters intelligence caught wandering about, you can nuclear electricity generation would officer during the Falklands campaign, imagine that it is actually bloody mean striking miners could no longer arrives along with his partner, Dr Kate terrifying. ‘‘That did nearly put me off, turn the lights out on the country. Dewes, a New Zealand nuclear make me rethink [about] being A first plant, Sizewell B, was to be disarmament researcher appointed involved,’’ Dewes admits. followed by nine more pressurised water adviser to the United Nations secretary- For their own safety, Dewes says they reactors of the type that in 1979 had so general in 2007, bearing his heavy bags of have made sure that New Zealanders in nearly melted down at Three Mile Island files. high places know all about their in the US. It is an old habit. Green says its safest experiences. Murrell took it upon herself to make a to keep the evidence with him, their Dewes is a friend of former prime private submission to the Sizewell B house is broken into so regularly. minister Helen Clark through her years planning inquiry, presenting a paper on Dewes says the last time was about of disarmament campaigning. the health dangers of plutonium leaks two months ago. They had gone out for a National Party MP and minister Kate and long-lived reactor waste. half hour walk, but a male house guest Wilkinson was their family lawyer and Green says she was of course one of was in the shower in the small flat on the has confirmed she is happy to attend this many and had no particular expertise. top floor.‘‘He came out of the shower, Friday’s book launch in Christchurch, Hardly a threat even for a state acting on looked down the stairs, and saw a bolted although she has no official comment on the belief that energy security had door left open.’’ its content. become a matter of over-riding national Green believes an intruder came in The couple say they have even spoken interest. the front door, perhaps hoping to find a to the New Zealand Security Intelligence manuscript of his book, A Thorn in Their Service director Warren Tucker, first at Side: The Hilda Murrell Murder, lying his office, then at their home. Green says ❯❯ To C7 In print: Rob Green and Kate Dewes who are bringing out a book making allegations about old UK spy scandals. Photo: JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/FAIRFAX NZ.