International Worker No 239, Saturday, September 13, 1997 The real truth about MI5 The revelations by former MI5 intelligence officer, David Shayler provide an opportunity for a look behind the facade of parliamentary rule at the real mechanisms of state power. Shayler walked out on MI5 and five months later published an article in The Mail on Sunday. It paints a picture of an incompetent security service employing drunks and "long-serving officers, who in the real world would have been sacked years ago", squandering the unpublished budget of some£200m a year. His stated concern was "how I was instructed to carry out operations against tiny organisations and harmless individuals who posed no conceivable threat to national security." As well as National Union of Mineworkers President Arthur Scargill , who was identified as an `Unaffiliated Subversive', he cites the more ridiculous targets for MI5's attentions in order to back this up. Among these were Blair's right hand man, Peter Mandelson, Home Secretary Jack Straw and Social Security Secretary Harriet Harman. Harman was targeted by the former head of the domestic surveillance department F2 , Charles Elwell, because of her position as legal director of the National Council for Civil Liberties. Jack Straw was deemed a "Communist sympathiser" because he was President of the National Union of Students between 1969 and 1971. The file of Peter Mandelson is said to contain photographs of membership cards for the Young Communist League and the Communist Party of Great Britain which he joined in 1972. Peter Mandelson's concern over the revelations was not for civil liberties, but his being labelled a communist. He told The Guardian, "Of course I do not like being bugged. But it is the muddle and incompetence that is amazing. This is an attempt by a Conservative-supporting newspaper to smear me and damage the government." According to Shayler, Mandelson's MI5 file contains a report of his attendance at a left-dominated World Youth Festival in Chile in 1977. The event actually took place in Cuba in 1978 and the facts on Mandelson's attendance paint a different picture of his early political career. Mandelson was chairman of the government-backed British Youth Council (BYC) and his fare to Havana was paid for by the Foreign Office. The trip came during a drive to prise Western youth movements out of the grip of the Stalinist-influenced World Federation of Democratic Youth. A newspaper report from 1978 refers to Mandelson "bulldozing through" a pro-human rights stance on Western terms as a loyal mouthpiece of the British ruling class. Shayler's concerns Shayler's concerns are over the ability of the security forces to safeguard Britain's interests in the changed international situation following the collapse of Stalinism. He writes, "Even in the early 1990s MI5 was still riddled with `Reds under the bed' paranoia and showed little inclination to get to grips with the threats posed to the UK in the post-Cold War world." He is wrong on this. The public naming of Stella Rimington as head of MI5 in 1994 was part of far reaching changes aimed at giving it a more central role in domestic policing and surveillance. This was extended under her successor Stephen Lander who, like Rimington, specialised in opposing "domestic subversion". His appointment coincided with proposals for the creation of a new national police force under the leadership of MI5, that were fully supported by then Shadow Home Secretary, Jack Straw. Straw's inclusion in MI5's files will make him no less enthusiastic in his support for the role of MI5 domestic policing. While Shayler dismisses internal monitoring as a diversion, the ruling class know that the greatest danger they face is not "terrorism" or foreign military powers, but the development of a politically conscious working class at home.

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