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June 24, 2022
A long history of MI5 snooping on the innocent
Red List: MI5 and British Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century David Caute Verso, pp. 352, £20 The following is a fairly brutally condensed version of Alan Judd's Spectator review of this book. Judd goes out of his way to support MI5, so if you want to see his comments hit the link. If MI5 had a Cold War file on you, it didn't mean they thought you were a spy. Nor even that you were especially interesting. Many on the left were convinced that MI5 had abused its powers by investigating and persecuting patriotic trades unionists, honest journalists, truth seeking academics and honourable members of parliament. David Caute went through historic MI5 files at the National Archive, finding references to Kingsley and Martin Amis, Harriet Harman, Benjamin Britten, Jacob Bronowski, Paul Robeson, Doris Lessing, Michael Foot and many others. Clearly most, probably all, of these people posed no threat to national security but MI5 investigated them anyway. Too often MI5 pursued people simply for being "unafraid to express dissenting views", assuming guilt "by association", real or imagined. Most of the files are boring, largely comprising press cuttings, attendance lists, police reports, gossip from bugged conversations and the opinions of colleagues. Caute devotes considerable attention to relations between MI5 and the BBC, including vetting of employees. This is a link to writing by Mark Hollingsworth on the subject of MI5 and BBC vetting.
INDEX	June 24, 2022 Jonathan Brind.