Spycatcher caused a commotion that no ban could quell, says Jonathan Sale


WRIGHT AND WRONG


I


n 1987, so long ago that journalists were based in Fleet Street and went out to lunch, I bumped into a highly bemused friend who worked at LBC.


It wasn’t so much the contents of the book in


his hand, entitled Spycatcher: the Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer by Peter Wright with Paul Greengrass, that initially intrigued him. It wasn’t, for example, the claim that a former head of MI5 was a Soviet agent. He was remarking on the fact that the publishers had only just delivered the sensational volume to the London radio station: “It comes out tomorrow,” he mused. This wouldn’t give reviewers much of a chance to speed-read it, let alone express a considered opinion. The reason for the haste soon became


clear. Fear stalked Whitehall. The explosive memoir was instantly banned in England. All media was barred from mentioning any of the material. Fortunately, the information gap was filled by the human voice. The youthful Alistair Darling, MP and chancellor of the exchequer-in- waiting, stood at The Mound in Edinburgh and read out selected extracts, thus making himself, together with fellow Labour MP Maria Fyfe, the 20th-century equivalent of a medieval town crier.


Russian spies who happened to be passing


would not have bothered to make notes from the recitation. They would have already splashed out a few roubles on their own copy. The book wasn’t banned in Scotland. As The Scotsman pointed out, Spycatcher had already been published in Canada and the US. Then there was Australia, where the British


government launched legal proceedings to stop Down Under publication. This attempt failed, not helped by Thatcher’s cabinet secretary


24 | theJournalist


Sir Robert Armstrong admitting when cross- examined by barrister (and future prime minister) Malcolm Turnbull that, if push came to shove, he would be “economical with the truth” to protect national security. Back in London, Tony Benn was one of those


who turned themselves into human audio books at a Hyde Park reading of Spycatcher. Extracts were set to music by Verdi and sung, improbably, in the Stock Exchange. Spycatcher had already been banned before it came out, in the sense that, after The Guardian and The Observer had used information derived from Peter Wright, both papers were injuncted from publishing anything else from that source. Wright had breached his duty of


Lunchtime secret of snaring spies


THE FIRST person to whom whistleblowing British security officer Peter Wright, who died in 1995, divulged his controversial secrets was Daily Express defence correspondent the late Chapman Pincher, author of Their Trade is Treachery. This came out in 1981,


before Spycatcher, Wright’s revealing memoir. The most explosive


charge in both books was the bit about MI5


director-general Roger Hollis moonlighting as a Soviet agent. Pincher later became


bitterly critical of Wright for breaking his legal vow of silence by writing the book – which sold enough copies to make up many times for the failure of MI5 to provide Wright with a decent pension. Pincher is


credited with spotting other


confidentiality to his ex employers, the British Security Service. You can see what got up the spooks’ noses. The tone of the book is set early on, with the job interview at which the personnel director began by giving Wright a Masonic handshake. (It was not returned.) “Just wanted to have a chat. Need to make sure


you’re not a Communist. Expect you were pretty left wing when you were young?” “Mildly,” admitted Wright. “I taught in the


Workers’ Educational Association.” “Fairly Communist, was it?” “Not in Cornwall.” “Ever been queer, by any chance?” “Never in my life.”


alien agents such as George Blake, thanks to his contacts in the security field, whom he would wine and lunch at his regular table in the West End restaurant L’Ecue de France. To encourage the free


flow of his guests’ conversation, Pincher did not make notes. “I never knew what


he was up to,” recalls his former colleague James


Wilkinson, whose first job was as science correspondent at the Daily Express. “He would disappear


every lunchtime; then he would come back and type. “When the restaurant


was finally closed down, they found a microphone at his banquette. All his conversations were taped.” The buggers had been


bugged. Chapman Pincher


was one journalist of whom it could be said that he was truly a legend in his lunchtime.


PA IMAGES / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO


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