@@title@@

Winter 2001/2

Last | Contents | Next

Issue 42

Tittle-tattle

John Burnes

New Labour - old Spooks?

Fijian politics, which has been made increasingly chaotic by various coups and counter-coups over the last 14 years, is dominated by racial identity interests. On the one side are the native Fijians, the original Polynesian inhabitants of the island, and on the other, the Indian Fijians. The native Fijians, though still comprising 51% of the population, feel that that they are in danger of being relegated to the position of tourist fodder; while the Indians feel that their democratic political rights are being permanently hamstrung by constitutions which guarantee native Fijian political dominance. It's easy to see this situation as simply another of those anomalous problems originally created by the British Empire but now left as a circle which can never be squared, an intractable situation with right on both sides.

In his Observer column of 18 February 2001, Nick Cohen wondered why Matrix Chambers, of which Cherie Booth is a leading light, and which now specialises in human rights law, should have chosen to represent the military dictatorship which took over Fiji in the wake of the most recent coup led by George Speight. The military arrested Speight but acceded to his main demand that the Fijian government should be dominated by the Fijian native interest rather than that of the Fijian Indians, descendants of workers imported from India by the British in the 19th Century, and now dominating Fiji's economic and commercial life.

A closer look at Fiji's recent history suggests that the island may have received some outside help in achieving its recent political impasse. The only real multiracial political grouping in Fiji was/is the Labour Party. In his Rogue State (p. 153) William Blum gives a brief account of an apparent CIA operation concerning Fiji in 1987. (1) In April of that year, within a month of his winning a democratic election, Prime Minister Bavrada of the Labour Party was overthrown in a coup led by Lt. Col. Rabuka, third-in-command of the Fijian Army. Bavrada's mistake was declaring Fiji a nuclear-free zone, a policy on which he had been elected, but which made it impossible for the American fleet to land or refuel there. As Blum notes, when such a policy had been earlier broached in 1982, a former US ambassador to Fiji, William Bodde Jr, had said that, given US strategic needs in the area, it was unacceptable and that the US 'must do everything possible to counter this movement'. Two weeks before the coup which ousted Bavrada, Vernon Walters, a former Deputy Director of the CIA, and a man who had a history of showing up before coups, visited the island. In addition to meeting Bavrada, he also met his overthrower, Rabuka. During Bavrada's short spell in office, a bogus 'Libyan scare' campaign suddenly broke out in the Pacific area (Libya in the Pacific?). Rabuka used this to justify his coup. Immediately before the coup, various CIA-linked labour unions turned up in the area; as did the National Endowment for Democracy, which, as Blum notes elsewhere in the book, does overtly what the CIA used to do covertly. The day after the coup, the Pentagon announced that it was 'kinda delighted' that 'all of a sudden' their ships could go to Fiji.

Blum doesn't note a short article that appeared in the Fiji Times describing another visitor to the island some ten years later around the time the most recent bout of troubles began. This was Julian Faux, a then recently retired Deputy Director-General of MI5. Faux was working for a private Australian security firm and had been given the job of writing a report on Fiji's own security service. He recommended its abolition and that its functions be taken over by the senior echelons of the police force. The security service may have been small but it appears to have been loyal to the elected government. The police force, however, is widely held to be corrupt and is probably implicated in the recent murder of the island's senior Red Cross representative, the person who negotiated the release of hostages after the Speight coup, and was thought to have learned too much about the mechanisms behind the coup. The combination of the lack of a security service with a corrupt police force left the Fijian government with little chance of learning about the activities of foreign intelligence services in Fiji. Which possibly 'kinda delighted' the CIA.

The situation at the moment is that with the Fijian Council of Chiefs (a traditionalist body) permanently enshrined, Fiji is leaning towards a full return to the Commonwealth, complete with a Governor-General or equivalent. In a political jam, and as happened with Gough Whitlam in Australia, he could dismiss any administration not to London's liking. It simply suits the US/UK to have the body politic in Fiji permanently divided on racial lines but with an inbuilt native Fijian 'majority'. Given the choice between a multi-racial, socially progressive Labour Party and nuclear interests, there wasn't one. Now why was it that Matrix Chambers chose to represent the conservative interest in this legal conflict? To defend human rights?

Can they hack it?

An interesting British connection of Kissinger Associates is Hakluyt and Company Ltd, a recently emerged (and striking) example of a semi-commercial relationship between MI6 and the City. Unusually, there have been numerous leaks concerning the company in the British press over the last few years.

Hakluyt is a private commercial intelligence company owned and run by former senior MI6 officers, of whom the most important is Christopher James, its majority shareholder and managing director. Before his retirement from MI6, James was head of the M16 section that liaised with the private sector. Hakluyt was set up by James in 1995, on his retirement, with the permission of Sir David Spedding, then head of MI6. Hakluyt sells commercial intelligence to major FTSE firms. Much of its work is in the former Soviet Union and China. James says that they now perform for British companies the same services they once provided for government. They have an unusual legal structure. Although registered at Companies House and subject to normal company law, their board of directors is entitled the Hakluyt Foundation. As a trust - not a charity - they are allowed to make a profit. There seem to be two points here. Trusts have more legal privacy than normal companies, and they are usually constrained by some form of charter or governing document to direct and limit their activities to a clear and single financial end.

A recent interesting political addition to their board has been Lady Smith, the widow of the former Labour Party leader, John Smith. It's difficult to see what commercial or financial expertise she could bring to the position. However, John Smith was a lifelong friend of a now retired senior MI6 officer, Margaret 'Meta' Ramsay. With Lady Smith, she is a member of the House of Lords. Ramsay is said to be a lifelong member of the Labour Party and was head of MI6's Northern European desk before she retired in 1991. After retirement, she became a non-resident academic attached to the Department of Peace Studies at Bradford University. Both these facts are curious. Until recently senior civil servants in Britain were not allowed to be members of any political party. Perhaps an exception was made for MI6? CND was hardly popular within MI6. The DPS at Bradford has some distinguished members of CND on board such as Michael Randle, one of the people who broke MI6's George Blake out of jail.

The connection of some post-war Labour Party leaders with MI6 officers appears to be becoming traditional. Hugh Gaitskell was a close friend of the philosopher and ex-MI6 officer, Sir Alfred 'Freddie' Ayer. Alan Petty (aka author 'Alan Judd') an ex-MI6 officer and member of MI6's secretariat - in effect, the Chief's private office - is a friend of Tony Blair. 'Judd' was briefly the motoring correspondent of the Spectator. In one of his early columns, he joked that in his previous occupation he'd had to changes cars often - so he was well-qualified for his current job. The self-advertising clever joke - look, Ma, no hands - is an MI6 speciality.

The Hakluyt company name also appears to be an elaborate MI6 joke. Richard Hakluyt was an Elizabethan merchant, geographer and diplomat. He had high-level political connections - his patrons were Walsingham, the reputed founder of the Elizabethan intelligence service, and Burleigh, Elizabeth I's senior 'minister' and founder of the Cecil/Salisbury dynasty. (Its political role is still important: Lord Cranborne, the current holder of the title, was until recently the senior government (Conservative) peer in the House of Lords. He was also reputedly a recent visitor to the Pinay Circle, the discussion group where bankers, ex-finance ministers and assorted retired intelligence officers meet.) The whole of Hakluyt's career hinged on patronage motivated by interest in his geographical research. His biographers, Parks and Taylor, are both convinced that when Hakluyt served in the Paris embassy as Sir Edward Stafford's secretary he was really there as the client and agent of Walsingham to gather geographical information; that is he was an Elizabethan spook.

Trouble at t'Guardian?

A worrying story concerning two journalists, the Met and the Guardian re: police corruption briefly threatened to surface last July. So far it appears that the only published account of the affair, in English, is on a Dutch website http:// www.maomagazine.com/Article/ 0,1514,,00. html?Article=1892 This was written by Michael Gillard, one of the journalists involved. (2)

Gillard writes that, with Laurie Flynn, he was on contract to the Guardian, investigating corruption in the Metropolitan Police. In the wake of the Stephen Lawrence case, the Met revealed that it had set up an elite squad of officers, the Untouchables, to investigate police corruption. The Met's line was that the operation was a great success, netting major convictions after the investigation of over 250 bent officers. In an investigation published by the Guardian, Gillard and Flynn told a different story. After seven years of investigation, costing millions, the Untouchables had only secured nine convictions, none of them of senior officers. Financial deals with 'super-grasses' had been kept from the courts and there had been an illegal filtering operation which let senior officers off the hook. Some of the Untouchables were themselves under investigation for corrupt practices.

The Met began to apply pressure after the Guardian published the articles, attempting to get the Attorney-General to prosecute for prejudicing possible future trials. The A-G refused this first approach.

Gillard and Flynn pressed on. They investigated a story leaked to them from senior sources that the whole Untouchables operation had been merely a snow-job to distract attention from the Lawrence case and that, further, the offices of the Lawrence Inquiry had been bugged and burgled by either the Met itself or the intelligence services. A stolen draft of the Report had been leaked to the Sunday Telegraph, where it was rubbished.

Gillard and Flynn received more legal threats, this time via the Attorney-General. They believe the Guardian then began to get cold feet. Their version of events is that the Guardian, through its editor, Rusbridger, kept from them a letter stating that they were under investigation themselves and were facing a possible prosecution charging them with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Rusbridger's version is that the letter was overlooked during a holiday period. Anyway, the Guardian pulled them off the story which they continued to investigate in their own time. After being assaulted in court by a policeman, Gillard and Flynn were instructed by Rusbridger to stop the investigation even in their own time or cease working for the Guardian. He thought they were 'uncollegiate' loners. They thought he was being leaned on through a back-door to the higher reaches of the Met. They still hadn't been told about the letter from Hayman, the head of the Untouchables, threatening them with prosecution. Not by the Guardian at least. It existence was leaked to them from another source. The Guardian finally produced it after a search. They resigned.

This could all be put down to a series of misunderstandings, a case where journalists got too close to a story and lost editorial perspective. Gillard, however, makes a more serious allegation. He writes that it wasn't just a case of the Guardian getting cold feet. He believes that the real motive was the Guardian's concern to preserve the high-level police and security services contacts they had gained during the Stoke Newington corruption trials in 1997. That in fact the Guardian was selling out and willing to sacrifice them to become in effect part of the establishment. This is only Gillard's interpretation of the above events. But he mentions that unnamed senior journalists at the paper have suggested this interpretation to him. If there's any truth to it, however, it becomes worrying in a political sense. With the Guardian moving ever closer to the New Labour establishment, what else wouldn't they investigate if they came across it? Is the smell of incense currently wafting from the Guardian offices covering a more unpleasant smell?

Notes

1 See also Lobsters 14 and 15.

2 No, not the erstwhile author of the 'Slicker' column in Private Eye, but his son.

Last | Contents | Next