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Summer 2002

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Issue 43

Historical Notes

Scott Newton

The origins of Civil Assistance?

In the UK in 1974-75 a number of 'private armies' appeared, linked to retired senior military and intelligence figures. There were General Sir Walter Walker's Civil Assistance, Colonel David Stirling's GB75, and George Young's Unison. (1) These groups formed in order to frustrate the impact of strike action in the essential services, and were linked to rumours that elements in the military and intelligence establishment were contemplating some kind of coup to overthrow the minority Labour government which had taken up office in March 1974. This view was expressed at the time by Tony Benn (2) and supported by the later publications of Peter Wright, Paul Foot and Robin Ramsay and Stephen Dorril.(3) Now the consensus interpretation is that the 'armies' were products of a paranoia about 'reds under the beds' and specifically in the Labour Party and the unions which was common to much of the British Right at the time.

There is no reason to challenge this view - but there may be another dimension to the creation of the 'private armies' which is worth exploring. This is suggested by the existence of a paper recently released in the Public Records Office, PRO DEFE 5/188/12. The document is titled 'Implications of Wide Scale Commitment of Servicemen to assist in the maintenance of Essential Services', and is dated 10 February 1971.

PRO DEFE 5/188/12 is no routine exercise - indeed it draws attention to what service chiefs believed to be a serious weakness in contemporary contingency planning. The background was the growth of the tension between both sides of industry in the early 1970s. This was the period of sharp disagreement between the Heath Government and the unions over the Industrial Relations Act; and into the bargain there was a long-running postal strike in early 1971. The paper points out that there were 16 plans for assistance by the armed forces to keep public services going in the event of industrial action, and these had been made on the assumption that 'not more than two major strikes in different sectors of the public services would take place concurrently'. But the climate now suggested that a larger number of strikes could happen simultaneously. Particular areas of concern were gas works, sewage plants and electricity generating stations. If all these became caught up in strife at the same time the services would not be able to provide the labour, skilled and unskilled, to keep them running except by incurring severe operational penalties. Britain's ability to perform a meaningful role in NATO and in its wider commitments would be undermined.

DEFE 5/188/12 suggested that the new climate called for new contingency planning. Above all the maintenance of public services affected by strikes should now embrace the use of 'civilian volunteers', particularly skilled workers. These would be deployed in most cases by the Civil Authority, not subject to military discipline, but the armed services could be responsible for housing, feeding and transporting the volunteers - a role which would require legal and insurance cover.

The document's argument and conclusions were approved by the Chiefs of Staff, who 'agreed to forward it to the Secretary of State for Defence as an expression of their views'. What does it all suggest? That as early as 1970/71 senior members of the Forces expected growing industrial tension with strikes aimed at the disruption of public services, and that the only way of maintaining these services in a way compatible with Britain's strategic commitments as then defined was to recruit a volunteer army of strikebreakers which would if called on operate in tandem with the military.

It appears, however, that little was actually done, at least at a governmental level. Indeed Stirling, in establishing his GB75 organization, said:

'Recently I have done some probing into the Government's contingency planning arrangements to enable the country to weather the crucial first 3 or 4 days of a General Strike or one involving the Amalgamated Engineering Union and the Electrical Trades Union. I have talked to individuals of varying ranks in the Armed Services....and to some senior members of the late Conservative Government. From these discussions I have concluded that there is no effective contingency plan at the present time.' (4)

So it seems that Walker, Young and Stirling were, in 1974/75, acting on their own initatives in advertising their readiness to co-ordinate private armies designed to frustrate the left in Britain. But given the background of DEFE5/188/12, not to mention the conversations revealed by Stirling's document, it has to be likely that these characters were all linked to a well-placed network of 'apprehensive patriots' aware of the call, back in 1971, for revised contingency plans and only too willing to establish machinery which would bring them into existence, official government backing or no. This is another pointer to a level of disenchantment with and distrust for democratically elected politicians which goes well beyond the insignificant handful of eccentrics mentioned in most historical accounts of the time. (5)

The Heath government and war in Africa?

Ted Heath's Conservative government in the UK, elected in June 1970, tried to strike a hawkish pose on foreign policy issues. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, was something of a (admittedly mild-mannered) cold warrior. It was his initiative which led to the expulsion of over 100 Soviet diplomats from London in early 1971, on charges of spying; and it was Home who wanted to strengthen British links with South Africa, then of course firmly in the grip of apartheid and something of an international leper.

Why did HMG take this line? The answer can be found if we go back to 1964, when Home, then Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Prime Minister, negotiated the Simonstown Agreement by which Britain provided weapons to South Africa in return for use of the naval base facilities there. This deal reflected an enduring commitment in the Defence establishment to the maintenance of a world role for Britain, both as deputy to America's sheriff in the struggle to keep the west free from 'Communism' and in its own right as centre of an international trade and currency network. The pound sterling was still the most used reserve currency after the dollar, London was second only to New York as an international financial centre, and one-third of British commerce was conducted with the Commonwealth and what was left of the Empire.

South Africa was an important player in this would-be imperial game. It was a recipient of considerable British overseas investment and a magnet for exports. Indeed by 1967 it surpassed even Australia as a market: no other country in the sterling area took so many British exports (Ł261million). (6) But South Africa's value to Britain was not only economic. Home regarded it as 'as a pivotal point in the defence of the South Atlantic and Indian oceans' (7) - which was why he had set up the Simonstown Agreement. Arms exports were good for the balance of payments and domestic employment; and guaranteed the security of the sea lanes around the Cape.

The Wilson governments of 1964-70 had inherited the agreement from the Conservatives but had never been happy about it and by the time Labour left office exports of arms to South Africa had stopped. When the Tories returned, however, their first instinct was to resume the practice. And indeed sales did recommence - but not on a very grand scale.

The anti-climax (from the perspective of Tory imperialists such as Julian Amery) has been ascribed by recent historians to an unwillingness to upset the Commonwealth, especially the newly independent African states. Heath certainly ran into a lot of criticism on this issue at the Commonwealth Conference of January 1971, held in Singapore, and the intensity of the anger, with only Malawi being prepared to back HMG, took both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary by surprise. (8)

There is however more to it than public relations. Two recently released documents in the Public Records Office (PRO DEFE 5/188/5 and PRO DEFE 5/188/6, both from early 1971) suggest that the government feared a full-blown resumption of sales would spark off an unmanageable international crisis with devastating results for British interests in Africa. These papers, prepared by the Chiefs of Staff Committee, warned that, if Britain started selling weapons to South Africa again, there was a serious risk of an adverse reaction against British lives and property throughout Black Africa but above all in Zambia, Uganda and Tanzania.

The three specified countries were all governed at the time by radical leaders (Julius Nyrere in Tanzania, Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia and Milton Obote - shortly, to HMG's relief, to be replaced in a coup by Idi Amin - in Uganda). Britain's popularity in each had sunk low during the years after 1965, in response to the Wilson government's decision not to take military action against Ian Smith's illegal white minority regime in Rhodesia. There was now a good chance that resentment would turn into violence. The Chiefs of Staff accordingly were asked to prepare contingency plans for the evacuation of up to 103,000 'white UK belongers' if the worst came to the worst. In consequence the papers deal with contingency planning for a combined operation to put together a task force large enough and powerful enough to protect British assets.

PRO DEFE 5/188/5 considered two types of deterrent action. One consisted of a show of strength, involving naval and air demonstrations; the other revolved around armed intervention in the African states, to secure the white enclaves and if necessary to evacuate those in jeopardy. After detailed discussion and planning the paper concluded (a) that a show of force was likely to be counterproductive, (b) that intervention could only protect UK nationals within the immediate vicinity of the British forces themselves, and (c) such intervention could do nothing for the UK nationals elsewhere whose lives would be put at greatly increased risk. There was no easy answer and Heath's government, rather than risk war (because that is at root what these documents are talking about) with at least three African states, decided to do the minimum compatible with pre- and post-election rhetoric, supplying 'a few spare parts and some helicopters'. When in April 1971 the South African government offered to place an order for frigates with British shipyards, Heath ignored it. (9)

International realities reinforced ethics and meant that the Simonstown Agreement was bound to wither on the vine. It was scrapped by the Labour government of Harold Wilson in 1975, although this decision was interpreted, preposterously, by the Prime Minister's detractors as a sign of his covert pro-Soviet sympathies. In fact the whole Simonstown operation had been misconceived, a product of folie de grandeur which played no small part in generating the atmosphere of distrust and lurking acrimony in UK-African relations to which PRO DEFE 5/188/5 and PR0 DEFE 5/188/6 are witnesses.

Notes

1 Although Civil Assistance began as the civil assistance wing of Unison, Walker quickly fell out with Young and went his own way.

2 Tony Benn, Against the Tide: Diaries 1973-76 (London: Arrow Books, 1990), pp. 220-2.

3 Peter Wright, Spycatcher (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987); Paul Foot, Who Framed Colin Wallace? (London: Macmillan, 1988); Robin Ramsay and Stephen Dorril, Smear! Wilson and the Secret State (London: Fourth Estate, 1991).

4 David Stirling, 'The Great Britain 75 Organization', Peace News Special Issue 23 August 1974.

5 Kenneth O. Morgan's The People's Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 377-79, 485, barely touches on the episode and Ben Pimlott's Harold Wilson (London: Harper Collins, 1992) is not much more informative.

6 J. M. Livingstone, Britain and the World Economy (London: Penguin, 1966), Table 10, p. 100.

7 Christopher Hill and Christopher Lord, 'The Foreign Policy of the Heath government' in Stuart Ball and Anthony Seldon (editors), The Heath Government 1970-74: a reappraisal (London: Longman, 1996), p. 292.

8 Hill and Lord, op. cit., p. 293.

9 Ibid.

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