Published by Militant 1 Mentmore Terrace London E8 3PN April 1982 ISBN 0 906582 04 0
This collection © Militant 1982
“Who were They travelling with?“ © Richard Fletcher 1975
Printed by Cambridge Heath Press Ltd (TU) Mentmore Works 1 Mentmore Terrace London E8 3PN
CIA Infiltration of the Labour Movement
Introduction. The CIA and the Labour Movement
By Lynn Walsh
NATO, Washington and Labour’s Right Wing
Healey’s Bomb
The Secret Life of Denis Healey
Bilderberg and the ‘Agents of Influence
Our Secret Enemies – Britain’s Secret Security Forces and the Labour Movement
When the Labour Leaders called in MI5
Who Backed the Gaitskellites?
By Richard Fletcher
The Article the Editor of The Sunday Times Wouldn’t Publish: Who were THEY travelling with?
The CIA and the British Labour Movement
Introduction
As a prelude to a witch-hunt against the left – to clear the way for a reversal of the radical policies and democratic party reforms adopted by recent Labour Party conferences – the right wing on Labour’s National Executive have initiated an ‘investigation into the Militant tendency“. Callaghan, Healey, Hattersley, Shore and other right wingers have made it quite clear that they regard an investigation as a prelude to a purge of left-wingers from the party. Defeated on all the major issues of policy, the right are desperately trying to salvage their position by bureaucratic, organisational manoeuvres. Militant has nothing to fear from an investigation. Our influence has grown in the Labour Party and trade unions over the last period because there has been an enormous increase in support for the ideas of Marxism – to which active workers are increasingly turning as the only way out of the crisis of capitalism in Britain and internationally. All our finances, without exception, come from workers within the labour movement. Despite repeated smears from right-wing capitalist media and some of their echoes within the labour movement about „sinister“ sources of finance, they have not managed to produce a single shred of evidence to support their innuendoes.
But what about Labour’s right wing? Where did the various right-wing organisations and journals – which attempted to remove Clause IV from the Party’s constitution, and have consistently fought against any attempt by Labour governments to implement radical policies – get their finance? Now they are defeated, and their support within the ranks of the labour movement is reduced to a small rump, they are screaming about left-wing „infiltrators“. In their desperation, they can explain the profound swing to the left within the labour movement – a swing produced by the crisis in British capitalism and workers’ bitter disillusionment with the policies of previous right-wing Labour governments – only by conjuring up „plots”’, „conspiracies“ and stories of „infiltration“.
The truth is, however, that in the post-war years the Labour Party was penetrated – and was taken over by right-wing infiltrators. Middle-class interlopers captured the leadership of the Party, and for 20 years dominated the Parliamentary Labour Party, the National Executive, and the leadership of many of the trade unions. For over three decades, Labour’s parliamentary leadership consistently followed policies on the economy, on defence and foreign policy, and other issues, much closer to capitalist policy-makers in Washington than to the rank and file of the Labour Party. Their basis in the party was the middle-class infiltrators – the doctors, lawyers, professors, architects, journalists etc. – who saw the Labour Party as a vehicle for their own parliamentary careers. But there is ample evidence, as the material set out in this pamphlet shows, that organisations, groupings, journals, and some of the individuals were backed, through one concealed „conduit“ or another, by America’s Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA. In other words, the right-wing infiltrators were – in the words of Richard Fletcher – „star-spangled moles“. Whether they knew it or not, the right-wing were being backed and used as the “‘agents of influence“ of US imperialism.
This evidence – apart from occasional snippets in the „quality“ press – has largely been excluded from capitalist media, especially from the newspapers and television programmes which reach the majority of workers. This is hardly surprising, as the promotion of Labour’s right wing is clearly in the interests of the British ruling class, whose own intelligence services have worked hand-in-glove with the CIA. As we also show in this pamphlet, Britain’s own secret security services have conducted similar operations to the CIA’s in relation to the labour movement. On the basis of a mass of thoroughly researched evidence, built up over a decade or more, even the most sceptical observer would have to admit that there is what the lawyers call a prima facie case – in other words, a serious case which calls for thorough investigation and a weighing up of the evidence. For the ranks and file of the labour movement, however, who are well aware of the counter-revolutionary role of US imperialism, and the insidious, ruthless part played by the CIA and allied intelligence agencies, the ever mounting evidence of CIA penetration of the Labour Party and trade unions arouses increasing alarm and anger. They will demand – as a number of Labour Party and trade union organisations already have – that Labour’s National Executive should urgently instigate an enquiry into the penetration of the labour movement by the CIA and other intelligence organisations.
The CIA has long been recognised as one of Western imperialism’s deadliest weapons. It was set up in 1947 supposedly to gather and analyse intelligence to help US government policymakers, but most of its huge resources have always been used for spying and so-called „covert action“. After the Vietnam war had aroused outrage in America and internationally at the dirty methods used in South East Asia and elsewhere, two major Congressional enquiries (the CIA’s activities. They produced a horrifying catalogue of sinister and often bloody activities: arson, theft, bribery, blackmail, assault, and murder all deployed to assist the US’s „friends“ (more often than not, vicious military-police dictatorships based on rotten landlord-capitalist regimes) and destroy their „enemies“ (elected left-wing governments or radical or revolutionary regimes which threatened the economic and strategic interests of US capitalism). They also exposed a horrifying list of assassination attempts and para-military operations.
CIA “‘successes”’ include the overthrow of premier Mossadegh in Iran (1953), the coup against President Arbenz in Guatemala (1954) and the overthrow of Cheddi Jagan’s government in Guyana (1967). The CIA had a hand in the assassination of president Lumumba in the Congo (1961) and organised several unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Castro. Its efforts to „de-stabilise“ Castro’s regime failed, but its operations in Chile (1970-73) contributed the bloody overthrow of Allende’s Popular Unity government. In Laos the CIA initiated para-military operations which escalated to a full-scale secret war, and in South Vietnam the Agency gave active assistance to repressive Operations.
In 1970 control of the CIA passed to the „40 Committee“ run by Kissinger and his supporters, and was increasingly used by Nixon to implement foreign policy not approved by Congress. The criminal activities were stepped up, and this paved the way for the reaction to its dirty operations in the aftermath of Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. After the Congressional investigations, the CIA was forced to be more careful, and the Agency was shaken by the revelations of a number of its former agents. But under Carter, and especially now under Reagan, its operations continue, essentially unchanged.
Covert, para-military operations, however, are only one side of the CIA’s activities:there are also secret economic and political programmes. The Church committee revealed that the CIA „inherited programmes“ from the ECA – the Marshall Aid Administration, through which US capitalism directed the reconstruction of the war-shattered European economies. The most significant was the so-called „fledgling labor project“ – that is, the penetration and manipulation of newly revived trade unions. Later, this „project“ was extended to the penetration of Social Democratic and Labour parties. Significantly, at the end of the war, the chief economic advisor to the Marshall Aid Administration (ECA) was none other than Richard M. Bissell, who, as the Church committee showed, later headed the CIA’s covert operations. The massive CIA intervention in the world’s labour and social democratic movements, for which Bissell was later responsible as the CIA’s Deputy Director, Plans, was begun while he was still running Marshall Aid.
From the beginning, these American operations had serious repercussions for the labour movement in Britain. In 1949 the postwar Labour government came under enormous pressure from the Marshall Aid (ECA) bosses, as well as big business at home, to abandon plans to reflate the economy and to shelve many of Labour’s promised reforms. Instead of mobilising the movement against this pressure, the right-wing Labour leadership succumbed, almost losing the 1950 election and actually suffering a defeat in 1951. More recently, history has been repeated, with Labour governments in 1966 and 1976 abandoning their programmes under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, the Washington-based successor to the ECA.
In 1976, the US Senate’s Church Committee came to this conclusion about „Clandestine Activities, 1963-61“: „Financial support to individual candidates, subsidies to publications including newspapers and magazines involved in local and national labour unions – all of these interlocking elements constituted the fundamentals of a typical political action programme. Elections, of course, were key operations and the Agency involved itself in electoral politics on a continuing basis. Likewise, case officers groomed and cultivated individuals who could provide strong pro-Western leadership. Beyond the varying forms of political action and liaison the Agency’s programme of clandestine activities aimed at developing an international anti-Communist ideology … activities included operations to assist or create international organisations for youth, students, teachers, workers, veterans, journalists and jurists. This kind of activity was an attempt to lay an intellectual foundation for anti-communism around the world.“ (Final Report, Book IV, pp49-50)
One former CIA agent explained to the Church Committee how they worked: „When the friend is met clandestinely by the CIA, he is called an ‘agent of influence’ … Most covert activities utilising the agent of influence are useful to American ambassadors in achieving low-key but important objectives of US foreign policy.’ Bissell himself told a secret meeting of the US Council of Foreign Relations in 1968: “‘The technique is essentially that of ‘penetration’ … the essence of such intervention in the internal power balance [of a trade union, communist or social democratic party] is the identification of allies who can be rendered more effective, more powerful, and perhaps wiser through covert assistance … On the whole the Agency has been remarkably successful in finding individuals and instrumentalities which it could work in this fashion.“ Earlier Bissell told a Washington seminar that „many of the ‘penetrations’ don’t take the form of ‘hiring’ but of establishing a close or friendly relationship (which may or may not be furthered by the provision of money from time to time).’”
The evidence produced by these congressional enquiries amply confirms earlier evidence of CIA penetration – such as that set out in Richard Fletcher’s article (pp. 50-62) which the editor of the Sunday Times refused to print. Throughout the post-war period, a number of right-wing Labour MPs were associated with journals and organisations for which there is clear evidence of CIA backing. One of them, Denis Healey, is now Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, the narrowly successful candidate of the right wing in the recent contest. There is no evidence that Healey or the others knew that the organisations with which they were working were financed by the CIA. But clearly there was no incompatability between their views and the policies favoured by US government policy-makers: in fact, they largely supported the same policies. But rank and file members of the labour movement will want to know why they never questioned the source of the large sums of dollars being spent on the political activities in which they were engaged. They will want to know, too, why they so consistently pursued, contrary to many Labour Party conference decisions, policies which found such favour in Washington. Although they may not have known it, these right-wing Labour leaders were being fostered and manipulated by patrons who were part of a vast undercover operation. Surely, Labour’s ranks will ask, if they were unaware of the CIA’s covert role, they will be the first to support a thorough Labour Party investigation into interference by intelligence organisations?
When Militant put forward the call for an enquiry into CIA penetration of the labour movement in February 1980, the capitalist press reacted with near hysteria. Even the sober Guardian described is as a “‘bizarre new development“. Yet the Guardian itself had from time to time published fragmentary evidence of CIA penetration of the labour movement, though like other papers it was always more prepared to print stories of developments overseas than similar occurrences in Britain.
In 1977, for instance, The Guardian reported allegations of CIA penetration of the German Social Democratic Party. Reporting detailed allegations in the Washington Post and New York Times that the CIA had paid money to (among other world leaders) Willy Brandt, the SPD’s leader, The Guardian (21 February 1977) said: „The allegations against Herr Brandt were revived in 1975 when Washington intelligence sources said CIA money was being channelled into Mario Soares’s Portuguese Socialist Party through the West German SPD and the other European Social Democratic parties and trade unions. The New York Times later reported that the SPD has had close contacts with the CIA for nearly 20 years … in the late 1950s and the early 1960s most US government contacts with the SPD were through the CIA …“ Brandt strenuously denied these allegations. But since then, much more evidence of CIA intervention through European Social Democratic Parties and trade unions, in support of the right-wing leaderships of both the Portuguese and the Spanish Socialist Parties, has emerged. No doubt the CIA and their paymasters consider such funds well spent in so far as they made a contribution to the derailment of the Portuguese and Spanish revolutions – with serious repercussions for the whole world labour movement.
Perhaps The Guardian, however, considers that such things could not happen in Britain? They certainly happened in Australia, where the CIA – with the help of the British-trained Australian Special Branch and Intelligence services undoubtedly played a part in the downfall of Gough Whitlam’s Labour government in 1975 (see page 37). There is also evidence (see page 38) – which must be regarded as a serious warning by the labour movement – that sections of British intelligence, who always work hand in hand with the CIA, are quite prepared to contemplate some kind of action “to stop Benn“ or to block or bring down a future left Labour government. There is no doubt, as we show in the pamphlet, that British intelligence is well aware of the CIA’s activities in Britain. They have undoubtedly conducted operations of their own against the labour movement (pp. 36)
With their vast journalistic resources, the press and television could easily expose such activities – apart from the commitment of their owners and editors to uphold the present system and maintain the cloak of secrecy around the intelligence services. The blatant double standards of the media, who publish ‘investigations’ of Militant and others on the left based on lies, distortions and misinformation, but who refuse to investigate the right wing or report on their activities, is clear. The allegations, for instance, that former members of British intelligence were discussing with a senior Tory MP about action against a left Labour government (pp. 38) were removed from a Panorama programme on the direct orders of the BBC’s Director General. The Editor of the Sunday Times, Harold Evans, personally intervened (see page 51) to prevent the publication of Richard Fletcher’s article The CIA and the Labour Movement. Referring to the right-wing MPs whose connections were revealed in the article, he said: ‘“These are the people we support.’” On another occasion, the Sunday Times’s political correspondent, Michael Jones, as good as confessed to the press’s double standard. Commenting on a secret meeting of Labour’s right-wing Manifesto Group, he admitted: „Most newspapers … decided to let the story slip. To MPs on the other side of the Party it was a clear admission of Fleet Street’s double standards. Had the uncovered group been left wing … the Fleet Street view would have been very different, they said,“ (Sunday Times, 13 February 1977).
In a number of articles in recent years, Militant has published some of the evidence on the penetration of the labour movement by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Now there is certainly much detailed evidence that could be brought together. But even a bare summary of the material makes clear the case for an urgent investigation by the National Executive. We do not believe that the CIA will defeat the struggle for socialism if the labour movement boldly follows the correct policies. But the counter-revolutionary role of the CIA is a clear warning that Labour cannot afford to allow this deadly organisation, or allied agencies, a free hand within the labour movement.
NATO Washington and Labour’s Right Wing
It was revealed early in 1980 that NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) had been paying a £6,000-a-year grant to a monthly press service sponsored by prominent right-wing Labour MPs, including Roy Mason, Roy Hattersley, David Owen and William Rodgers, and by right-wing trade union leaders, including Frank Chapple, Sidney Weighell and Terry Duffy. Through its Labour and Trade Union Press Service, the so-called Labour Committee for Trans-Atlantic Understanding distributed articles for free use by newspapers and trade union journals. Recent contributors at that time included Sir Harold Wilson, who had written on the need for a “fight-back“ against Labour’s left-wing National Executive, and Denis Healey, the Shadow Chancellor, on the essential link between pay and productivity (and hence, of course, the need for an incomes policy). In financing the Press Service, NATO has not only been backing propaganda for military policies diametrically opposed to Labour Party Conference decisions – higher defence spending, more modern armaments, and tactical nuclear weapons – but has been helping to propagate right-wing attacks on the left’s economic and social policies.
Details of this NATO finance were first widely publicised by the Sunday Times (7 February 1980). At the same time, however, this paper could not resist another snide attack on the Militant, while attempting (on its letters page) to excuse the editor’s suppression of earlier material on CIA funding for Labour’s right (see page 50). Evidently the editor had decided to cover his backside by throwing some light onto one of NATO’s less publicised activities. Details of the NATO finance, however, would have soon come out anyway. The Sunday Times was no doubt aware that the independent research group, State Research (Bulletin, No 16, Feb/March 1980) was about to expose the LTUPS’s links and that questions were about to be asked in Parliament. In his answer (26 February) to Labour MP Stan Newens, the Tory Lord Privy Seal, Douglas Hurd, disclosed that NATO had paid £6,000 to LTUPS in 1976; this rose to £6,535 in 1979, with £7,150 “‘earmarked”’ for 1980 – a total of £32,335 over five years.
Just as significant as the information itself was the panicky reaction of NATO and the right wingers associated with the committee. Initially, NATO officials refused to confirm their financial involvement but later „reluctantly admitted that they had given ‘a few hundred pounds’.“ (Sunday Times). Alan Lee Williams, the joint LTUPS’s editorial director and a former Labour MP, at first denied NATO funding. „It was only after ‘further consultation’ that he admitted that the bulk of the committee’s funds came from NATO. On top of its £5,000 per year, he said, another £2,000 came from Labour supporters’ (Sunday Times). Asked to comment on the committee’s funding, William Rodgers „said he could not remember being told but it would not have made any difference if he had been. ‘This is where the rot has got to stop if people are beginning to say that NATO are the CIA,‘ he said.“
But where does the rot stop?
When he made this comment William Rodgers was still in the Labour Party. Like David Owen, John Cartwright, James Wellbeloved, and Tom Bradley, right wingers who were also listed as vice-chairmen of the LTUPS, he has since defected to the SDP. Other sponsors, however, remain within the Labour Party. They include Roy Mason, LTUPS Chairman, and Roy Hattersley. Among the right-wing trade union leaders who were sponsoring LTUPS were Frank Chapple (of the EETPU), who was then listed as its Treasurer, Terry Duffy (of the AUEW), Hector Smith (of the Blastfurnacemen), John Chalmers (of the Boilermakers), Bill Sirs (of the Steelworkers), Sid Vincent (of the Miners), Anthony Christopher (of the Inland Revenue Staff Federation) and Sidney Weighell (of the NUR). All these right wingers, whether in the SDP or still in the Labour Party, share determined opposition to Labour’s left-wing conference decisions and the recent steps to democratise the Labour Party. Everyone has the right to campaign for their ideas within the movement. But Labour’s ranks will want to know why these prominent Labour and trade union leaders have been working with a committee clearly intended to promote the aims of NATO, a military alliance of capitalist states dominated by United States imperialism. The accelerated build-up of NATO’s nuclear forces, now including tactical nuclear weapons, has long since been opposed by Party Conference and the majority of Party members.
In reply to the Labour Party questionnaire in April 1980 the LTUPS told the National Executive that it was set up in 1973, „with a view to increasing trade union knowledge and support for NATO.” The Committee’s objects were „to advance the education of members of trade unions in the UK in the aims of the Atlantic Treaty – including problems associated with the promotion of closer links between the labour and trade union movement and the members of the Atlantic Alliance.’”
But what are the Alliance’s aims? It is not simply to defend Britain and its allies against possible military aggression. The fundamentally political, class aims of NATO were made unmistakably clear in a book entitled No Soft Option (1978) by Lord Hill-Norton, a former British and NATO chief of staff. NATO, he wrote, is based on „a treaty alliance … for the defence of a way of life, not only by military means but also through co-operation in political, economic, social and cultural fields“ (p. 15).
The „threat“ to the West, in the minds of NATO’s strategists, comes primarily from the Soviet Union. But the threat is not necessarily – or even primarily – a military threat, which the more balanced strategists of NATO admit, at least in private, to be a very remote possibility under present conditions. Aggression against the western capitalist powers could mean „a threat to the very way of life that the allies have chosen,“ writes the former Chief of Staff. “Within this concept,“ he explained, „the threat may include loss of sovereignty, loss of territory or loss of money on a national scale, or it may be posed by military power or action as well as by direct political pressure or blackmail, or more subtly, by economic measures.“ (p. 16) Is it fanciful to suppose that – in the thinking of NATO strategists – radical measures proposed by a left Labour government would fall within this broad definition of a “‘threat“ to „the very way of life which the allies have chosen“? Right-wing generals, businessmen and Tories are always ready to label the supporters of radical measures as „crypto-communists“, and link the danger of external aggression with an „internal threat“. Terry Duffy himself, in August 1979, attacked left-wing members of Labour’s NEC for „wishing to tear the Party apart in their lust for power.“ Such people, he said, “wished to turn Britain into an Eastern-European style people’s democracy.”
One of NATO’s many committees is the so-called Civil Emergency Committee, which has planning groups devoted to supplies, transport, communications, and civil wartime agencies which would take over government functions in the event of war or civil war. NATO planning for „civil defence“ includes measures to counter „anti-NATO, and anti-war subversives“ – including plans to smash resistance from the labour movement. One reason for the massive opposition to NATO in Greece, for instance, is that the military Junta utilised such NATO plans when they staged their coup d’état in 1967. Moves by senior officers to implement similar NATO contingency plans in Italy have also been exposed – and thwarted – in recent years.
How far Labour’s right wingers, who also defend the „mixed (i.e. capitalist) economy“ go along with this thinking is not clear. But whatever their intentions, in giving their support to what is in effect a NATO propaganda agency, they are themselves contributing to a massive effort to consolidate support for NATO’s military-economic aims, which are unmistakably the aims of imperialism.
While financed by NATO, however, LTUPS is linked, through a number of its staff and contributors, to other organisations dedicated to propagating policies favoured by capitalist leaders in Washington. LTUPS is not a unique organisation, nor one that jumped up out of the blue – it is one of a long chain of such organisations, groups and journals. Tracing their often obscure links is like delving into a labyrinth. But viewed from Washington – by the US government or ex-State Department, ex- Pentagon, and ex-CIA officials responsible for initiating or backing these bodies – they must appear as a well-organised propaganda network. Some of the people concerned have undoubtedly consciously set out to further the interests of their backers. Others, whose views have found approval in Washington, have unwittingly allowed themselves to be backed as the American leaders’ „agents of influence“.
In his April 1980 letter to the NEC, Alan Lee Williams said that the LTUPS had been inaugurated in 1975 as „a voluntary, autonomous body“ … „as the result of an international conference held in Amsterdam, sponsored jointly by the European Movement and the British Atlantic Committee in 1973.“ This initial association with the European Movement is significant. The British Atlantic Committee is the UK offshoot of the Atlantic Treaty Association, and is a semi-official NATO front-organisation, though it also has formal representation from the TUC’s international department. The European Movement, however, was shown in 1975 (the year LTUPS was formed) to have been financed by the CIA. The European Movement (EM), and its closely associated European Youth Movement (EYM), were set up to promote European unity, a development favoured by the US State Department, and they made a number of attempts to involve organisations of the labour movement. In 1975, Thomas W. Braden, a former CIA executive, admitted that as head of the CIA’s International Organisations Division he had channelled millions of dollars into youth, students, and cultural organisations, and trade unions and political parties – including the European Movement (Sunday Times, 25 May 1975). One of the politicians associated with EM was Morris Foley, former Labour MP and minister, who had worked full time for the European Youth Campaign (EYC). In 1975 Foley denied any knowledge of CIA involvement. When this denial was reported to Braden, however, his forthright reply was: „Bullshit“!
Morris Foley, in fact, must have been well aware of earlier allegations of CIA finance. In the early 1950s the European Movement, through the European Youth Movement (EYM), was energetically trying to promote bodies such as the World Assembly of Youth (WAY) and European Youth Campaign (EYC), actively trying to involve Labour youth organisations such as IUSY (International Union of Socialist Youth) and the Labour League of Youth, at that time the youth section of the British Labour Party. Representatives of the Labour League of Youth queried where all the funds were coming from, and alleged in 1951 that some of the money came from US government sources. In 1952 the Labour League of Youth conference decided to disaffiliate from the European Youth Campaign and produced a pamphlet explaining its reasons, material which Morris Foley must have seen. Questions about the EYC and WAY funding were also raised on the Committee of IUSY – which received cash from EYC. As far as IUSY was concerned, however, it was only later that the so-called „CIA infiltration“ scandal came to a head. It came out, after a special IUSY control commission had investigated in 1967 various dubious „private sources“ of funds which IUSY had received, payments over a lengthy period from bodies like the American Foundation for Youth and Students Abroad, which was widely considered by socialists to be channelling CIA funds.
As far as socialists are concerned, the European Movement, linked in Alan Lee Williams’ letter with the foundation of LTUPS, has nothing less than sinister connections. But his letter says nothing about the Press Service’s editorial committee, some of whom also deserve investigation by the labour movement.
One is Peter Stephenson, who was formerly editor of Socialist Commentary, for many years the ‘house journal’ of right-wing Labour MPs and trade union leaders. The role of Socialist Commentary and the links of some of its contributors, like the late Anthony Crosland with ClA-backed organisations like the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the magazine Encounter, are dealt with in Richard Fletcher’s article (page 52). Significantly, however, Socialist Commentary folded up in 1978. This was not for lack of funds. Although the journal must have had a very small paid circulation and was apparently distributed free to many subscribers, Socialist Commentary had in 1977 a reserve fund of over £100,000, which had been added to in recent years, according to Company House records, by block payments of over £10,000 each.
As a result of the questions we raised about Socialist Commentary’s finances, Socialist Commentary threatened legal action against the Militant in 1977. They denied receiving funds from „the CIA or any United States government fund.“ But they declined to give Militant an assurance that Socialist Commentary had never received money „from any source which Socialist Commentary knew, believed or suspected to be funded directly or indirectly from the CIA.”’ Later, the journal explained to its readers that its funds came from blocks of shares forming a capital reserve. This did not explain, of course, where the capital came from in the first place. Nor did it explain why Socialist Commentary nevertheless shut down – or where the funds went to subsequently. Perhaps Peter Stephenson would like to explain? Subsequently, Stephenson was co-founder with Stephen Haseler of the Social Democratic Alliance, a group of whose members were expelled from the Labour Party in 1980, although Stephenson subsequently left the SDA.
Then there is the question of LTUPS’s American links. Alan Lee Williams’ letter to the NEC completely fails to explain – or even mention for that matter – the US associations of LTUPS – associations which were undoubtedly decisive to its formation and role. Through the personalities of Joseph Godson, listed as a member of the ‘Editorial Committee’, and the three prominent US trade unionists listed as vice-chairmen – Lane Kirkland (president of the AFL-CIO, the American TUC), Sol Chaikin (International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union) and Albert Shanker (American Federation of Teachers) – LTUPS is associated with a number of American Organisations, which, long before Reagan got to the White House, campaigned in the US and throughout the West for extreme right-wing, „anti-Communist“ policies on economics and especially defence. Godson rejects the idea, that, just because many of these bodies are run by the same people, there are actual connections between the organisations. He could hardly deny, however, that they share common ideological aims – we would say, totally reactionary aims which are diametrically opposed to the interests of the working class. The interlocking positions of these people form a web of mind-boggling complexity. The links are analysed fully in State Research Bulletin No. 16 (Feb/March 1980). Here we can only outline a few threads.
Joseph Godson is believed to have played a key role in setting up LTUPS. He is „European Co-ordinator“ of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) at Georgetown University, notorious for providing an academic base for retired and serving professionals from the US foreign policy establishment and the CIA. Godson is a former career diplomat himself, and was Labour Attaché at the US Embassy in London. Labour Attachés are appointed in close consultation with the AFL-CIO, and where the CIA is involved in financing labour activities they work closely with the Agency. Incidentally, Roy Godson, Joseph’s son and director of Georgetown University’s „International Labour Programme’, joined with Stephen Haseler of the SDA to produce the book Euro-Communism (1979) published by the Washington-based National Strategy Information Centre (NSIC). The main point of the book, according to an NSIC press release, was that the increasing power of European Communist Parties „can achieve what the Soviets themselves have failed to accomplish during the past thirty years – detach Western Europe from the West without war.”
The Georgetown University connection is also one of the threads leading to the almost ubiquitous Lane Kirkland. The fact that Kirkland is a vice-chairman of LTUPS would in itself be enough to arouse the suspicions of rank and file members of the labour movement about the background and aims of the body. Since 1979, Kirkland has been president of the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labour/Conference of Industrial Organisations). However, during the decades when Kirkland served as one of George Meany’s lieutenants, the AFL-CIO channelled millions of dollars abroad to develop support in the trade union movements of many countries for leaders and policies favourably disposed to the interests of US imperialism. Kirkland’s impeccable credentials from the point of view of US capitalist leaders are indicated by his membership of the Bilderberg Group (see page 27), the Trilateral Commission (a similar body involving powerful government, academic and business personalities under the leadership of figures like David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger) and the Council on Foreign Relations (a semi-official Washington „think-tank“ involving top capitalist policy-makers).
The AFL-CIO runs four overseas training institutes for trade unionists, which use their influence to turn international unions away from the left and towards collaboration with the bosses, particularly the US multi-national companies. There is irrefutable evidence that three of these institutes were formerly run in collaboration with the CIA. Another, the Free Trade Union Institute, operated in Spain and Portugal after the Portuguese revolution of 1974, backing right-wing leaders of the Socialist Parties and the trade unions.
Kirkland is also associated with another body which campaigns for right-wing defence and foreign policies. This is the so-called Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) which was formed in 1976, a few days after Carter’s presidential victory – to campaign for a tougher stand against the Soviet Union, a faster build-up of nuclear weapons, and a more interventionist US foreign policy. Two of the other union leaders involved were … Sol Chaikin and Albert Shanker, vice-chairmen of the LTUPS. Many of the academic and political figures involved in the CPD were „hawks” during the Vietnam war, and later opposed the Nixon-Kissinger policies on SALT and Detente as „too soft“ on the Soviet Union.
Yet another body associated with the CPD – and in which Kirkland, Chaikin and Shanker also play a prominent role – is the Washington-based National Strategy Information Centre (NSIC), which since its foundation in 1962 has provided money and backing for the extreme right in Britain. It gave financial backing, for instance, to the Institute for the Study of Conflict, which was created in 1970 out of the CIA-backed news-agency, Forum World Features (see page 36). It was the NSIC’s „Advisory Committee on European Democracy and Security” which published the right-wing analysis of „Eurocommunism“ by Roy Godson and Stephen Haseler mentioned before.
The NSCI, as might be expected, is particularly concerned about the future of NATO and was a principal sponsor of a conference in Brighton in July 1978 on “NATO and the Global Threat“. Among the British organisations supporting the conference were the Institute for the Study of Conflict and AIMS (formerly Aims of Industry). The Peoples Press Service (17 April 1979), which disclosed detailed information about the conference, concluded that it had been „a well-organised attempt strongly to influence NATO military personnel and governments to stand by South Africa and toughen up the attitude to the Soviet Union …“ Delegates at the Conference included prominent British and South African military personnel, members of the CBI, and top military leaders from Italy, Japan and the United States – not to mention, without a doubt, observers from a host of intelligence organisations.
The leading figures in LTUPS, CPD, NSIC, etc. are anxious to reject any idea of organisational links between the different bodies. One thing, however, is clear: they are all working in their own way to propagate extreme right-wing, counter-revolutionary policies for US imperialism and its capitalist allies. Clearly, the American organisers and sponsors of the Labour and Trade Union Press Service believe that this body, too, is contributing to their campaign. They obviously give particular importance to propagating these ideas within trade unions and the labour movement generally. Their ideas get little or no echo within the rank and file of the movement. Nevertheless, trade unionists and Labour Party members have the right to ask: What are the concealed political and personal links between LTUPS and other bodies encouraged or financed by the CIA and other US government agencies? Does LTUPS receive any finance or indirect support from bodies other than NATO? Above all, why are Labour MPs and trade union leaders collaborating in a body whose aims and objectives coincide with some of the most reactionary representatives of American imperialism – and are entirely alien and opposed to the policies and aims of the labour movement? [This article is based on material first published in MILITANT on 22 February and 29 February, 1980.]
[Tim Moody:] Healey’s Bomb
Even before Reagan, Denis Healey advocated the early resort to tactical nuclear weapons as part of NATO’s strategy. This is revealed in the recent memoirs of Henry Kissinger, former National Security Advisor to Nixon. While Minister of Defence in the 1964-70 Labour government, Healey challenged the established theory of the US State Department and Pentagon. This, according to Kissinger, was that deterrence relied on the “‘mutually assured destruction“ guaranteed by the super-powers’ huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons. US defence policy-makers at that time clung to the idea of a “fire-break“ between conventional and nuclear weapons. They considered this necessary to delay the decision to resort to any nuclear weapons as long as possible.
Healey, however, supported the view – then held by only a minority of US defence experts – that „parity“ between the US and Russia of strategic nuclear weapons undermined the effectiveness of NATO’s deterrent. In February 1969, during Nixon’s visit to London, Healey urged the US president to adopt a strategy based on „a flexible response“ with a commitment to an “‘early resort to tactical nuclear weapons,“ Kissinger reveals in his memoirs, The Whitehouse Years.
“In Healey’s judgement,“ Kissinger writes, ‘“NATO’s conventional forces would be able to resist for only a matter of days; hence early use of nuclear weapons was essential. Healey stressed the crucial importance of making the Soviets understand that the West would prefer to escalate to a strategic exchange, rather than surrender.“ Kissinger wryly comments that while advocating an early resort to tactical nuclear weapons, Healey, like other European leaders, also called for immunity of their territories from their use, proposing use of „a very small number of tactical weapons as a warning that matters were getting out of hand.“
„What Britain,” Kissinger goes on, „was urging [through Healey – Ed.] came to be called the ‘demonstrative use’ of nuclear weapons. This meant setting off a nuclear weapon on some remote location which did not involve many casualties, in the air of the Mediterranean, for example – as a signal of more drastic use if the warning failed …” What the people of Malta, Cyprus, Greece or North Africa were meant to think of this strategy is not mentioned.
Kissinger refers to Healey as „an old friend … Healey and I have known each other since the 1950s …”’ But Healey was going too far even for Kissinger, the architect of genocidal policies in Vietnam and Cambodia. „l never had much time for this concept [a ‘demonstration bomb’],“ he comments.
Today, however, the US government supports a strategy based on the use of tactical nuclear weapons in a limited „theatre“ such as Europe. Reagan is committed to the introduction of the neutron bomb, theoretically the ideal capitalist weapon, which destroys people but not property. They are apparently not perturbed by the fact that they have not answered Kissinger’s fundamental objection: that the „limited“ use of nuclear weapons would itself be catastrophic, and would not stop escalation to a world-wide nuclear holocaust. But this is not only the policy of Reagan – it !s the policy advocated by Denis Healey since at least 1969. Healey not only opposes the Labour Party’s commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament and opposition to the siting of US cruise missiles in Britain; he supports the insane „strategy“ of the most right-wing representatives of Western imperialism. [This article first appeared in MILITANT 18 December 1981]
[Lynn Walsh?:] The Secret Life of Denis Healey
Healey has been in the forefront of the Labour right’s campaign for an “‘investigation“ of Militant and a purge of its supporters from the party. Militant has nothing to fear: we have always campaigned boldly and openly for policies based on Clause IV, part iv, of the Constitution, which embodies the Party’s basic commitment to socialist change. But what about Denis Healey? Rank and file members of the Labour Party should be aware of Healey’s record over the years – which is far more in need of a thorough investigation.
Denis Healey joined the Labour Party with left-wing views (he was a member of the Communist Party until 1940), but with his appointment as head of the Labour Party International Department (1945-51) these gave way to right-wing, extreme „anti-Communist“, views.
During this period. Healey was very close to Labour’s Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin and his Foreign Office advisers. He worked with the FO in a campaign (through the secret so-called „Information Research Department“) funded by the Secret Vote (money voted by parliament for the secret service) to combat not only the influence of the CP but also the Labour Left, and to support the US in waging the „Cold War“.
The “Cold War“ was the period of post-war tension between US imperialism (and allies like Britain) and the Soviet bureaucracy. US economic and diplomatic moves against Russia were accompanied by a hysterical propaganda war in which all opposition to US policy was attacked as „pro-Communist.“ „Anti-Communism“ was directed not only against Stalinism, but against the genuine ideas of socialism, and even against radical and liberal critics of capitalist policies.
Healey helped to rebuild the Socialist International (the remains of the Second International, based on the social-democratic parties) in a form acceptable to western capitalist leaders. In 1948 he was commended by the US State Department for his-role in splitting the Italian Socialist Party because of Nenni’s refusal to campaign against the CP.
As a member of NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group, Healey argued for a strategy based on an early resort to tactical nuclear weapons. At the time this was opposed even by the US government’s military planners. Healey supported Reagan’s nuclear policies long before Reagan reached the White House!
During the 1974-79 Labour government, when Healey was Chancellor of the Exchequer, current defence spending continued to rise, even though previous plans for military defence spending were scaled down. This was despite Labour’s manifesto commitment to reduce defence spending, and in spite of strong opposition from Conference and the National Executive Committee.
It was revealed in January 1980, moreover, that Healey had been one of the secret “committee of four“ (with Jim Callaghan, David Owen and Fred Mulley) which during the Labour government authorised a £1,000 million modernisation of Polaris, Britain’s own non-NATO ballistic missile. This programme, which was kept secret from the rest of the Labour Cabinet and from parliament, was code-named „Chevaline“. The “‘committee of four“, directly contrary to Labour Conference decisions, also set in motion a detailed examination of options for a new generation of nuclear weapons to replace Polaris.
The secret was let out by Tory Defence Secretary, Francis Pym, to implicate right-wing Labour leaders in the grotesquely expensive nuclear plans being continued under the Tories’ 1980/81 defence estimates. When The Times (8 May 1981) reported the debate on foreign policy, which centred on relations between the super-powers and nuclear arms, it ran its parliamentary report under the headline „Healey supports main thrust of [Tory] Government’s foreign policy.”
For Denis Healey, support for „Chevaline“ (which failed in tests at Cape Canaveral in late 1981, casting doubt on its viability) was simply the latest of a long line of policy proposals and ministerial decisions which were much more in line with the thinking of the US State Department and the Pentagon than the views of a great majority of Labour Party members.
While defence minister, Healey also secured the omission of CS gas from the Geneva Protocol on chemical and biological weapons, and rejected the Transport and General Workers Union’s requests to be allowed to recruit soldiers into the union.
While Labour was out of office, Healey joined the Diebold Group International, a Liberian-based management consultancy group set up in 1971, as part-time vice-chairman, Late in 1973 the company was forced into liquidation, with some of its backers, like the ANZ banking group and the Crown Agents, making big losses. Healey is reported to have „regretted“ his association with this company.
At the Yorkshire Regional Council of the Labour Party in March 1981 Healey attacked „unrepresentative cliques” who were trying to “impose control“ on the Labour Party. ‘“These cliques,“ he said, „have too often been supported by members of the NEC who, year after year, have refused to accept conference decisions …” The record, however, shows that it is Healey who, year after year, has ignored Conference decisions in favour of policies warmly welcomed by Washington.
There is no evidence to show that Healey knew that many of the American organisations with which he worked were funded by the Central Intelligence Agency rather than from other sources. But he was aware that the Americans with whom he from time to time held confidential discussions were CIA officers. There was never any doubt, moreover, that the organisations concerned existed primarily to further the interests of American capitalism.
In mid-1981 Healey applied for membership of the National Union of Journalists (in spite of belonging already to the non-TUC affiliated Institute of Journalists). In support of his unsuccessful application, he claimed that he met the NUJ’s condition that he had „for two years been mainly dependent on journalism,“ with journalism accounting for two-thirds of his total earned income. Although the NUJ was not satisfied, The Times (20 May 1980) reported: *‘Apparently, Mr Healey claims to earn £500 a week from columns in the Financial Weekly and the New Standard …“ Both these journals, like the Daily Express, are owned by Lord Matthews’ Trafalgar House group. Matthews is notorious for his strong pro-Thatcher and rabidly anti-Labour views. The London New Standard, for example, has recently excelled itself in its hysterical attacks on the GLC and other Labour-controlled London councils.
In other words, Denis Healey has claimed to be ‘“‘mainly dependent“ financially on the right-wing newspaper group which has been in the forefront of the media campaign to stir up a witch-hunt against Labour’s left wing, split the party, and inflict the maximum possible damage on the labour movement.
[Based on material which appeared in MILITANT 22 February 1980]
[Lynn Walsh:] Bilderberg and the ‚Agents of Influence’
Every year 120 of the world’s top bankers, politicians, diplomats, military strategists, and bosses of the giant multinational corporations come together for three days to discuss perspectives and policies for the capitalist states. They are members of the Bilderberg Group, and their meetings are usually a closely-guarded secret. Sometimes, however, the veil is lifted a little, and the Daily Mirror (13 February 1980) recently revealed that „this year they will meet in the spa city of Aachen, just 45 miles from the German capital Bonn, from 18-20 April …Top of the agenda will be world politics and economics following the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.’” The Bilderbergers’ deliberations will not be reported, and, in any case, the informal talks between sessions will be just as important.
Writing in the Financial Times in 1975, the paper’s former Lombard columnist, Gordon Tether, said: „If the Bilderberg group is not a conspiracy of some sort, it is conducted in such a way as to give a remarkably good imitation of one.“ In another article, which the editor refused to print, Tether (who criticised Bilderberg from a right-wing, ultra-nationalist point of view) wrote: „It is [the] close identification with the megaton-weights of the international business community that has encouraged the growth of the idea that Bilderbergism is the arm of the movement whose main aim is to create ‘a world fit for the multinationals to live in’ …”
Until 1976 the Bilderberger get-togethers were chaired by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. But the Lockheed scandal, which revealed that Bernhard had received $867,327 in bribes for influencing various aircraft deals, forced the cancellation of the 1976 meeting. Former Tory prime minister Lord Home took over and chaired the 1977 meeting at Torquay, Devon. This year he is replaced by former West German president, Walter Scheel. Of the present Tory government, Mrs Thatcher, Lord Carrington, and Sir Keith Joseph have all attended Group meetings.
What will provoke surprise and anger in the labour movement, however, is that Labour leaders like Sir Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, and Denis Healey have also participated in Bilderberg. Most alarming, is the fact that Denis Healey, with the encouragement of the former Labour leader, Hugh Gaitskell, played a key role in the setting up of the Bilderberg Group.
How did this come about? The Group took its name from the Bilderberg Hotel, near Arnhem in the Netherlands, where it first met in 1954, This inaugural meeting was the outcome of careful preparation. The key figure was the somewhat mysterious, Polish-born Joseph Retinger, a friend of Hugh Gaitskell, who devoted himself to secret diplomacy of a private or semi-official kind. Retinger, who had come to rest at the Dutch court under the patronage of Prince Bernhard, had already secretly persuaded Shepherd Stone, then with the High Commission in Germany, to fund his European Movement out of so-called „counter-part funds“ – Marshall Aid repayments banked by the US in Europe. The aim of this organisation was to promote European Unity and foster closer understanding and friendship with the United States.
Retinger was now looking for a way to bring together for informal discussion a highly select group of European and American politicians, big businessmen, top civil servants and military leaders – people with considerable influence on governments, the mass media and ‘public opinion’ generally. Retinger persuaded Prince Bernhard to use his influence to establish the group by acting as chairman and figurehead, which he did very well – until the Lockheed scandal. Preliminary meetings were held, drawing in sympathetic people – including Gaitskell, shortly to become leader of the Labour Party. In 1953, Retinger visited the US, together with Gaitskell and Denis Healey, and had discussions with General Bedwell Smith, ex-head of the CIA, to seek funds for his project. According to a confidential US State Department report on one of the preliminary meetings at the Dutch Soestdijk Palace in December 1953, Denis Healey was a member of the ‘Advisory Committee’ which, under Bernhard’s auspices, ran what was to be the Bilderberg Group. Dick Taverne acted as deputy for Healey.
At the first, secret conference there were about eighty participants (including twenty Americans) consisting of prominent public figures and trade union and labour leaders. It is not at all surprising that the CIA should take a close and sympathetic influence in the Bilderberg Group. The recent Congressional Committee under Senator Church has revealed, with considerable evidence, that it is precisely through such groupings that the CIA attempts to exert its influence. Referring generally to the covert backing of such bodies, the Committee’s report says: “‘This kind of activity was an attempt to lay an intellectual foundation for anticommunism around the world.“
The Bilderberg Group was almost entirely composed of people who, whether they realised it or not, would be regarded by the CIA as important ‘agents of influence’. In 1968, Richard Bissell, a former head of CIA covert operations, explained to the Council for Foreign Relations how useful influential friends could be in achieving the aims of US policy. „The essence of such intervention in the internal power balance [of the country, particularly party etc. – Ed] is the identification of allies who can be rendered more effective, more powerful and perhaps wiser through covert assistance …“ The opportunities created by Bilderberg (as Bissell put it) for “‘finding individuals and instrumentalities with which and through which the CIA could work in this fashion”’ are clear.
The way in which the Bilderberg Group works as one centre of a complicated but purposeful network of contacts is shown by the activities of Denis Healey in relation to the setting up of the Institute of Strategic Studies.
According to his biographers (Reed and Williams, Denis Healey: The Politics of Power) Healey first became „really concerned about nuclear weapons around 1954“ and later contributed to a pamphlet advocating „graduated deterrence, designed to prevent a nuclear holocaust.“ Healey and others supported the idea of a centre for strategic studies, but this needed money, and „Healey’s international contacts were decisive in getting it.” Healey has given his own account of how ISS was funded: „I met Shep Stone, head of the social and political studies part of the Ford Foundation, at a meeting of the Bilderberg Group in Fiuggi, Italy, the day the Russians launched their first Sputnik I took him out for a walk … and said we were starting this thing and we would like about $10,000 to keep it afloat. He told me they never looked at anything under $100,000 but he was very interested in the idea, so if we revamped it and put in a formal request it would stand a good chance.”
Healey subsequently played a key role in setting up the ISS, together with a number of ‘Establishment’ figures like Christopher Woodhouse, formerly commander of the British military mission in Greece during the civil war and later Tory MP for Oxford. By the end of 1958 the ISS was established as a ‘strategic think tank’, with study groups, a journal, a library, conferences and research activities. The Ford Foundation provided an initial grant of $150,000 over three years – an enormous sum at that time.
Through the ISS Healey undoubtedly played an important part in disseminating among influential people the ideas on nuclear strategy developed in American academic and ruling circles. “There were not many people who paid much attention to this sort of thing in the mid-fifties,“ an American ‘expert’ is quoted as saying: „With the formation of the ISS [Healey] began making Britain a forerunner and with Alistair Buchan [Director of ISS] he began making defence thinking respectable in Europe.“ More to the point, however, Healey also made a commitment to an expensive and potentially catastrophic nuclear ‘deterrent’ and the NATO alliance ‘respectable’ within the Labour leadership. When a majority of the Labour Party rank and file were consistently opposed to nuclear weapons in general and a British ‘deterrent’ in particular, Healey played no small part in formulating a policy which entailed a steadily declining Britain spending a higher proportion of its GNP on arms than any other major western country apart from the US itself.
But there is another aspect of Healey’s involvement in setting up ISS which should be noted. From his own account, it is clear that Healey’s apparently casual conversation at a Bilderberg meeting with a contact who came up with considerable financial backing was absolutely crucial to ISS’s launching. Indeed, the biography of Shep Stone is itself extremely revealing, showing the way in which the Bilderberg Group network of contacts has intersected with a number of other organisations which have exerted considerable behind-the-scenes influence, both ideologically and politically.
Shepherd Stone had been in the US Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the CIA, and during World War II had worked in Psychological Warfare with Michael Josselson (later director of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). Later he was on the staff of the US Military Government in Berlin, with Josselson and Melvin Laski (later editor of the CCF-backed journal ‘Encounter’). In 1948 Stone helped Retinger organise the Hague Conference which launched the European Movement using secret US funds and in 1950 funded the launching of the CCF itself. It was shortly after this that Stone was appointed Director of the International Department of the Ford Foundation, recently reorganised by Richard Bissell, formerly CIA Deputy Director, Plans (responsible, among other things, for the ‘Bay of Pigs’ invasion of-Cuba). Stone also organised the CIA-backed European Cultural Foundation with Prince Bernhard. In 1967 he took control of the CCF – and is: now running the Berlin office of the Aspen Institute for Robert O. Anderson, owner of the ‘Observer’. In the light of this, is seems safe to say that Shep Stone’s role, through his Bilderberg contact with Healey, in providing funds for the ISS, was just one episode in a long career of channelling US resources to launch or strengthen organisations, publications and influence individuals whose ideas and activities corresponded to the interest of American imperialism throughout the world.
For obvious reasons, it is only possible to piece together the truth about Bilderberg and influences that worked through it long after the event. But is it so fanciful to assume that exactly the same sort of activities are going on today?
There is nothing surprising about the most powerful representatives of big business meeting, together with some of their political lackeys, to discuss strategy and tactics. But socialists should note a number of things. The Bilderberg Group is the answer to those who naively pour scorn on the idea that the thinking representatives of capital consciously attempt to plan the defence of their outmoded, crisis-ridden system against the threat posed by the working class. The hidden history of the Group also reveals just a few of the secret methods of political manipulation and persuasion used by the most deadly enemies of the world working class, the CIA. At the same time, it should be a serious warning to the ranks of the labour movement when members of the labour leadership are admitted to the innermost, secret councils of the bosses.
[First published in this form in MILITANT , 22 February 1980.]
[Lynn Walsh:] Our Secret Enemies: Britains Secret Security Forces and the Labour Movement
Fifteen Labour MPs were investigated by MI5, Britain’s internal security service, between August 1961 and January 1962. This investigation was at the special request of George Brown, at that time one of the principal shadow-cabinet lieutenants of Hugh Gaitskell, the Labour Party leader.
What makes this incident – related in the following article (on page 39) – particularly scandalous is that – in the words of a recent Labour Party Consultative Paper – „the Security and Intelligence services spend a considerable amount of time and resources in surveillance of the labour movement.
„This is especially true of the internal Security Services (MI5) and the Special Branch of each police force. Such information may be used generally to report on – and, if need be, to disrupt and otherwise control the activities of Labour and leftist trade union activities. … In addition both the Special Branch and MI5 recruit informers and on occasion pliant infiltrators.”
The definition of ‘subversives’ adopted by the anonymous bureaucrats who run the intelligence services is broad. It encompasses „activities which threaten the safety or the well-being of the state and are intended to undermine or overthrow parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means.“ In their view, in other words, many of the normal activities of the labour movement are ‘subversive.’
“The aftermath of the ‘Watergate affair,’ warned another Labour Party discussion document, “showed the world how easy and dangerous it can be for government security and intelligence services which are charged with defence of the state from external attack to become involved in the defence of the state from internal threat defined by the security services themselves.“ The British intelligence services have preserved their cloak of secrecy more effectively than the CIA but there is unmistakeable evidence that they carry out exactly the same kind of activities as their American counterparts.
The security services have vast resources but neither their huge expenditure nor their activities are subject to any effective kind of democratic accountability. MI5, the internal security service employs between 4,000 and 5,000 people; MI6, the external security service, employs at least 600 people at its London headquarters; and the Special Branch, formally a part of the police force, though working in close cooperation with MI5, has at least 1,250 officers. In 1979 the official figure for the “‘secret vote“ was £40m, but the real cost of MI5 and MI6 alone was estimated at over £100m (most of this concealed in defence expenditure).
Between them they have files on several million people.
Not even senior cabinet ministers, let alone MPs, are fully informed of the security services’ activities. There is ample evidence, moreover, that Labour ministers are especially kept in the dark by the bosses of the security services, though this has not stopped Labour ministers turning to them for help when it suited their purpose.
It was undoubtedly on the basis of „intelligence“ from MI5 and the Special Branch that Harold Wilson attempted to undermine the 1966 seamen’s strike by claiming that the seamen’s executive was being manipulated by a „tightly-knit group of politically motivated men“. MI5 regularly spies on trade union activists. In her memoirs former Labour Employment Minister, Barbara Castle, recalls how the security service supplied her with frequent briefings, including one with allegations about relations between Hugh Scanlon, then leader of the engineering union, and the Communist Party.
There is no doubt either, that the labour movement is subject to massive surveillance at every level, especially through phone-tapping. An ex-military intelligence man turned ‘security adviser’, Mr Ralph Matthews, claimed in 1974 that telephones in Labour Party headquarters in Transport House were tapped for long feet: under the Heath government in 1972 (The Times 4 October 1974).
Numerous instances have come to light – notably the case of British Steel’s Greenwich subsidiary in 1974 – of the Special Branch (possibly relaying MI5 material) providing the bosses with information about trade union activists. There are other cases, like that of Robert MacNeil, a first year student at Paisley College of Technology, who in 1977 was asked by the Special Branch to supply „secret and confidential information“ on his friends and associates. To his credit he immediately rejected this approach (‘Guardian’, 9 Feb 1978); but how many others have been recruited to spy on fellow-students or trade unionists? The experience of the CIA shows how easily, in the event of intensified social and political conflict, the security and intelligence services can slip from ‘mere’ spying to more active intervention. Northern Ireland is a warning for the future in this sphere too.
There is the notorious case of Kenneth Lennon, who claimed he was recruited by the SB to act as an agent provocateur within the IRA in Luton, conspiring with them to set up robberies. Shortly after he made his allegations public he was found shot dead in a Surrey lane. In the case of the Littlejohn brothers, who were jailed in Ireland for bank robberies and causing explosion in 1977, Tory Home Secretary Robert Carr admitted that Kenneth Littlejohn had been working with MI6 and was in touch with a SB Chief Inspector.
The idea that the British intelligence services would never use the same kind of ‘dirty tricks’ as the CIA has been dismissed as naive by investigative journalists like Bernard Nossitter, former London correspondent of the ‘Washington Post’. British intelligence, he says, ‘“‘stage-manages coups, burgles safes, blackmails the vulnerable and practices most of the curious arts familiar to well-endowed agencies with overseas interests.” MI6 undoubtedly employed ‘dirty tricks’ against Nasser in Egypt, and was involved with CIA moves against the governments of Mosadeq in Iran (1953) and Jagan in Guyana in 1964. One of the most dramatic allegations was that Harold Wilson had actually been bugged by MI5 both at Downing Street and in his private room at the House of Commons – when, as Prime Minister, he was officially in charge of the security services! Shortly after his resignation in 1976, Wilson. Made an extraordinary allegation to two BBC journalists: „‘I am not certain that for the last 18 months when I was PM I knew what was happening, fully, in Security,’ he said with obvious annoyance. He really could not rule out the possibility that individuals working inside MI5 and even MI6 had contributed to the ‘smears’, which, he complained, had frequently appeared in the press while he had been at No 10. He told the reporters that some people in the Security Services were ‘very right wing’. “They would naturally be brought up to believe’ he said, ‘that socialist leaders were another form of communist. They are blinkered…’.”
Wilson told them that a group within MI5 „were saying I was tied up with the Communists…the arch link was my political secretary Marcia (Lady Falkender). She was supposed to be a dedicated Communist!“ Wilson said he had first heard about these things in mid-1975. (Penrose and Courtiour, ‘The Penceourt File’ 1978).
Soon, however, Wilson thought better of his allegations and withdrew his support from the journalists’ investigation. He reverted to the role played by senior Labour ministers in the past, that of helping to maintain the cloak of secrecy around the intelligence services.
In fact, recent evidence which has come to light shows that Labour ministers not only decline to reveal the activities of the security services or to call for democratic accountability but were themselves involved in initiating new areas of activity – including activities partially directed against the labour movement. This is particularly the case in the field of covert propaganda.
This was recently revealed by Richard Fletcher (The Guardian 18 December 1981, with additional information in The Observer 20 Dec 1981).
It is now clear that the British intelligence services backed a network of supposedly ‘independent’ news agencies, centring on the Middle East and India, on an even bigger scale than the CIA. These specialised in ‘grey propaganda’, that is not outright lies (or ‘black propaganda’) but carefully selected factual material heavily slanted in the interests of British capitalism.
This was an outgrowth of the activities of the so-called Information Research Department, a secret agency of the Foreign Office (which also controls MI6). This was set up under the post-war Labour government under the general direction of Ernest Bevin, Labour’s Foreign Minister, and under the direct supervision of Christopher Mayhew, then a junior Foreign Office minister (who later deserted Labour for the Liberal Party). At least three of the people on the boards of the companies controlling these stooge agencies were Labour MPs (now no longer active in politics).
The Information Research Department was intended to counter “Soviet influence”. From the beginning part of its activities were directed against the left of the labour movement in Britain, The IRD paid a secret subsidy to a right-wing journal called ‘Freedom First’. This was run by Herbert Tracey who worked as a full-time official in the Labour Party International Department. It was distributed, mainly free, throughout the trade unions and Labour Parties. The IRD also secretly financed a publishing company called Ampersand, This was used to channel secret state finance to a number of established publishers, including the Bodley Head, Allen and Unwin and others – without them necessarily being aware of the source of the funds – to publish pro-capitalist, anticommunist and anti-Marxist books.
Far from being curbed by subsequent Labour governments the activities of the IRD were expanded by the Wilson government after 1966, especially with attempts to establish covertly further news agencies in Latin America. However, the IRD was closed down, at least officially, by a later Labour government in 1977. This was possibly because the Foreign Office was aware that their cover was about to be ‘blown.’ It is also possible that even right wing Labour ministers were becoming alarmed at the activities of some right wing characters involved in a bodies associated in some way with IRD or the British and American intelligence services.
One of the CIA’s major covert propaganda fronts, it should be remembered, was based in London. This was Forum World Features, set up in 1965 and run by the ultra right wing Brian Crozier. This also specialised in ‘grey propaganda’ favourable to the interests of western imperialism. Their material was frequently used by the capitalist press and television. An internal memorandum written by Richard Helms, then the director of the CIA, confirmed that Forum World Features was “‘run with knowledge and co-operation of British Intelligence”. In all probability it was what the security services call a ‘joint operation’. It was certainly no different from the covert propaganda operations of British Intelligence.
But Forum World Features was hurriedly wound up in 1975 pending its imminent exposure in various radical and left-wing journals – which also drew attention to the connections between Brian Crozier and characters like Robert Moss and Norris McWhirter, who were involved in bodies like the Institute for the Study of Conflict and the National Association for Freedom – bodies whose bitter opposition to the labour movement has never been in any doubt.
Perhaps even right wing Labour ministers had a sudden glimmering of the danger to the labour movement posed by these official and semi-official, covert and semi-covert activities.
Perhaps they had reflected, moreover, on the fate of the Labour government in Australia, which, under Gough Whitlam, was ousted in November 1975 by the intervention of the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr. Behind the scenes the CIA played an active role in attempting to engineer Whitlam’s downfall. This was suspected at the time but it was confirmed in 1977 at the trial in California of Christopher Boyce, a former under-cover electronics expert who, before being silenced by the Judge, gave details of CIA involvement. This led to calls, by leaders of the Australian labour movement for an inquiry. „One union leader,“ reported The Guardian (29 April 1977), „claimed that he had proof that the CIA had been paying money to union leaders to affect strike activity. Another claimed that a Labour Party official was on the CIA payroll…”
In its under-cover political manoeuvres the CIA enjoyed the cooperation, if not the active assistance, of the Australian Special Branch. Australia may seem a long way away, but its security system was set up in 1949 by a former head of MI5.
South Australia’s Police Commissioner, moreover, was previously a Chief Constable in Yorkshire. And as far as his discredited Special Branch was concerned, was only continuing British practices. But action by the labour movement had positive results. Salisbury was dismissed from office and South Australia’s Special Branch was completely disbanded in 1978 after an investigation had revealed that the Branch’s dossiers were „scandalously inaccurate, irrelevant to security purposes and outrageously unfair to hundreds of loyal and worthy citizens.”
When the SB was wound up, thousands of these files were officially destroyed. It was found that the Special Branch’s records included all the South Australian Labour Party politicians (both local and national representatives) and all the most prominent trade union officials. At the end of the enquiry the presiding judge commented that the files were based „On the unreasoned assumption that any persons who thought or acted less conservatively than suited the security forces were likely to be potential dangers to the security of the state.“
Could it happen in Britain? All the indications are that the secret intelligence services certainly think that it could. Last year a former MI6 electronic expert, Lee Tracey, alleged that possible „violent action to stop Tony Benn becoming a Labour Prime Minister was secretly discussed between former MI6 employees and the late Airey Neave just before the last election.“ He claimed that Neave, one of Thatcher’s closest lieutenants (later assassinated by Irish Republicans), feared that Labour might win the May 1979 election, and that a Labour victory could be followed by Tony Benn taking over as Prime Minister. Tracey claimed that he was asked to join a team of intelligence experts who would make sure “Benn was stopped.“ These allegation were included in a BBC Panorama programme- – but cut out after the direct intervention of the BBC’s Director General Ian Trethowan. The allegations were subsequently published in a ‘New Statesman’ article (20 February 1981). This incident shows the role that the intelligence services, along with the tops of the civil service, the armed forces and sections of big business would play if their system should ever be endangered by the labour movement.
Rather than collaborate in concealing the horrendous activities of the secret security services – which are followed closely by all major foreign intelligence services and kept secret only from the British public – the leaders of the labour movement should be campaigning to expose their activities to workers and warning of the danger they pose to the labour movement.
Labour should follow the example of the Australian Labour Party in relation to the South Australian Special Branch and demand the disbandment of MI6, MI5, the Special Branch, Military Intelligence and any other secret intelligence sections that exist.
Labour should demand an end to the all-pervasive surveillance of labour movement and other activists, and the destruction of the grotesque files kept on millions of people.
While campaigning on these policies, however, the labour movement should take immediate steps with regard to its own bodies: Labour’s National Executive has already set up a Study Group on the secret intelligence services, but this should be extended into an urgent investigation of the interference of the intelligence services within the labour movement, particularly examining possible secret links or covert manipulation of right wing organisations, groupings and journals within the labour movement.
[This article first appeared in MILITANT, 22 January 1982.]
[Lynn Walsh:] When the Labour Leaders Called in MI5
Why are the right-wing leadership of the Parliamentary Labour Party so opposed to an enquiry into the penetration of the Labour Party by the British security forces? There is ample evidence of such interference by the under-cover Organisations of the state. One scandalous reason is that in past Labour’s right-wing leadership secretly called on MI5 and MI6 to investigate the left within the party. Confirmation for this comes from Chapman Pincher, for many years a journalist on Beaverbrook’s right-wing Daily Express, in his recent book Inside Story (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1978).
In chapter two of this amazing book, Pincher relates how the Labour Party leaders, headed by the late Hugh Gaitskell and through the then George Brown (now Lord George-Brown) called in MI5 and MI6 (with a bit of help from Chapman) to uncover the so-called „crypto-Communists“ within the Party.
By his own admission, Pincher was for years used by the security services to publish officially inspired leaks, as well as deliberate “mis-information“. Nevertheless, for some obscure reason, Pincher enjoyed the highly privileged position of being well informed about the activities of the secret service. If the astounding revelations published over a period on the Daily Express had been printed in a journal like Time Out, the journalists, editor and publishers concerned would undoubtedly have been the victims of ruthless prosecutions under the Official Secrets Act, and would probably still be rotting in jail now. But Pincher was not only able to publish this material in the right-wing Tory press, but he has lived to bring it all together in his book. Many of Pincher’s revelations confirm and even amplify articles and books published by far more critical observers of the security services.
Chapter two is entitled A Lunch With George Brown. Pincher was invited sometime in 1961 to dine with Brown at the expensive Ecu de France restaurant in Jermyn Street. Brown was then Labour’s shadow defence spokesman. Later, as Lord George-Brown, he called on people to vote Tory in the May 1979 general election, and has subsequently joined the Labour renegades in the SDP.
George Brown, who was concerned about Labour’s press image in the anticipated general election (which came in 1964) “revealed that the Labour Party leaders, headed by the late Hugh Gaitskell, a true Social Democrat, had decided to rid themselves of the public criticism that some of their MPs were crypto-communists – dedicated pro-Russian Communists posing as socialists because they could exert more influence that way and might eventually achieve ministerial office … a small committee had indeed been established secretly for the purpose of exposing the fraudulent socialists and then expelling them from the party. The committee, consisted of Gaitskell, Brown and Patrick Gordon Walker…“
The Labour leaders hoped that from their surveillance records and telephone taps, the Security Service would provide them with evidence against „crypto-communists”’ in other words their left-wing opponents in the party! The security services agreed to help but produced results which were disappointing for Brown and the Gaitskellites. „Brown was called to the presence of the MI5 chiefs to be given the results. He was told that inquiries about MPs had proved negative but security men had discovered an agent of the Soviet bloc Intelligence in a high position in the Labour Party machine in Transport House.”
But this was not the whole story. According to Pincher, „Brown had misinterpreted what the MI5 chiefs had told him about the unproductive search for crypto-communists, or had been deliberately misled.“ There was evidence, Pincher claims, but the Tory prime minister, Harold Macmillan, had forbidden any disclosure about MPs. It would be opening up a Pandora’s box of unforeseen and potentially dangerous political repercussions. In any case, “Macmillan was astute enough to appreciate that it was better to the Tory Party if the public continued to believe that Labour was riddled with dangerous subversives.“
MI5 opposed taking action because they were unwilling to produce their evidence in public as: this, they claimed, would dangerously prejudice their sources. So they, too, had the best of both worlds. They could continue to feed a propaganda campaign against the Labour Party, and especially the left, without being obliged to produce any hard evidence. Their material, which really amounted to elaborate smears, was always ably retailed by Pincher, the right-wing Daily Express and other Tory papers.
Pincher’s credibility rests on his close, not to say intimate, relationship with the intelligence services. But his evidence is no stronger than theirs, which is conveniently secret. “Through my friendship with one of the girls who worked in the MI5 registry in Curzon street, where dossiers on some two million people are kept on file,“ claims Pincher, blandly admitting a blatant breach of the all-powerful Official Secrets Act, „I learned that more Labour MPs than Brown believed were officially suspected of being crypto-Communists.”
Well, who are these “crypto-Communists“? “‘Regrettably, libel again restricts disclosure…” How convenient these otherwise irksome libel laws can sometimes be! Nevertheless, Pincher persists with his allegations, which are periodically aired in the Tory press to try to damage the Labour Party. „Crypto-Communist“, like the Official definition of “‘subversive“, is an all-embracing term which can be readily used against anyone fighting for a real change in society. “As regards those crypto-Communists still sitting in Westminster,“ Pincher continues, “I can quote from a 1978 Intelligence report in my possession which states that ‘at least fifty-nine serving Labour MPs – 19 per cent of the Parliamentary Labour Party – have current or recent connections with Communist, Trotskyist or other Marxist organisations. The incidence of such activities has increased enormously over the last five years.’ A list attached to this report names the MPs and gives details of their activities. It includes five-ministers and four junior ministers.”
Such allegations emanating from the intelligence services are not surprising. Their hostility to the labour movement is not in doubt. More serious are Pincher’s comments on the security services’ penetration of the Labour Party. „The security surveillance of certain Labour MPs goes back long before the Gaitskell-Brown attempt to make it official. The late George Caunt, once Wilson’s election campaign manager, told me that as part of this process the Labour Party was penetrated by MI5 agents. Some of these were MPs and others were insinuated into Transport House. Caunt recalled that he was approached himself as a possible contact by an official of Transport House who was already working for MI5 in 1963 …”
More specifically, Pincher goes on: “‘I know of two Labour back-benchers who were on the payroll of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, though there are probably more than that in the Parliamentary Tory Party. I have little doubt either that both major parties have been penetrated for many years by agents of the CIA. One of these, now dead, was a senior Cabinet minister in a Labour government…”
These revelations – just one chapter of a book full of information which has alarming implication for the labour movement – fully justify the decision of Labour’s NEC to begin an inquiry into the activities of the secret intelligence services. Almost every week brings to light fresh evidence which underlines the urgency of a full and thorough investigation. It is scandalous that former Labour leaders themselves approached the security services, which are among the most deadly enemies of the labour movement, to investigate members of the Labour Party. Even some of the leadership, at least at one time, began to realise the danger posed by the secret services.
Harold Wilson himself once raised (and then quickly dropped) the question of the dirty role played by the intelligence services. Shortly after his resignation, which still has not been fully explained, he urged two journalists to “‘investigate the forces that are threatening democratic countries like Britain.”
In 1924, British Intelligence agents faked the so-called „Zinoviev Letter“ which was used to fuel the hysterical anti-Labour campaign which helped bring down the first Labour government. Nothing much has changed as far as the outlook and aims of the security services are concerned. We may be certain that, as the industrial and political battles arising from the capitalist crisis intensify, they have plans, together with the police and the army, to intervene even more actively and ruthlessly to disrupt and ultimately destroy the labour movement. That is why there must be a full investigation of the activities of British and foreign security services, and a campaign to warn the rank and file of the danger they pose.
[First published in MILITANT 21 March 1980]
[Lynn Walsh:] Who Backed the Gaitskellites?
Introduction: Labour’s right wing have always operated a blatant double standard. If left-wingers come together to campaign for their policies, they are vehemently denounced for organising a “‘party within a party.“ But this has never stopped the right setting up organisations to capture leading positions, reverse Conference decisions, abandon the Party’s basic socialist aims, and generally propagate pro-capitalist policies. In most cases, moreover, the organisations of the right wing have been backed by ample funds from undisclosed outside sources. This double standard is exemplified by the leaders of the so-called ‘Solidarity’ group. Speaking to a meeting of Solidarity supporters in Sheffield (14 February 1982), Roy Hattersley, Solidarity’s chairman, denounced ‘*‘purges and pogroms.“ Yet in the same breath he called for a purge of Militant supporters, whose presence in the Party, he says, is “‘intolerable.”’ Hattersley, however, apparently sees nothing wrong in Solidarity setting up an organisation within the Labour Party to oppose Conference decisions on key issues of policy and party democracy!
Solidarity group MPs, in January 1982, sent out a letter to supporters in the country. On House of Commons notepaper, it was signed, among others, by Ted Graham (MP for Enfield, Edmonton) and Roland Moyle (MP for Lewisham East). “Labour Solidarity,“ read part of the letter, „is attempting to form groups in the localities to promote the objects of the organisation. If there is not one already in your area we would like to help form one. You will be given as much help as possible to do this.“ The words „to form groups … to promote the objects of the organisation”’ dispel any idea that Solidarity is just a loose grouping of like-minded LP members. It is an „organisation“ (and it would be interesting to know whether the promise of „as much help as possible“ includes financial support?).
Solidarity, however, is just the latest of a long line of groupings and organisations set up by the right wing of the Parliamentary Labour Party. In February 1977, for instance, at the height of a hysterical campaign by the capitalist media to stir up a witch-hunt against the Militant, the right-wing Manifesto Group sent out confidential invitations for a secret meeting – to be held in Westminster “without the glare of publicity“ – intended to initiate a new counter-offensive against the left. The letter was signed by Ian Wrigglesworth, the Manifesto Group’s secretary, and John Cartwright, then a right-wing member of the NEC and PPS to Shirley Williams. The meeting was chaired „in an entirely personal capacity“ by William Rodgers, then transport minister in the Labour government.
“Since the last annual conference,“ said the letter, “‘many people have expressed deep concern about the way things are going: the failure of the NEC to rally support for the government; the lack of a sensible voice im some constituency parties; and the evidence of infiltration by elements alien to the democratic socialist tradition. The widespread feeling that something must be done has led us to take the initiative. Our wish is to respond to the strong views expressed to us and to enable like-minded people from all over the country to discuss, without the fanfare of publicity, what action might be taken.”
The Manifesto Group (like their cohorts in the mis-named Campaign for Labour Victory) were out to reverse Labour’s move to the left, which the right try to blame on “infiltration“, “‘Marxist plots,“ and so on. They imagined, no doubt, that they could repeat the success of the earlier Campaign for Democratic Socialism (CDS). In the 1950s and early 1960s CDS had organised to consolidate the hold of the Gaitskellite leadership on the Parliamentary Party and the National Executive Committee. But the situation then was entirely different. Almost everything was in the Gaitskellites’ favour. The post-war boom induced a political backsliding in the labour movement, and the parliamentary leadership could rely on the powerful backing of well-entrenched right-wing leaders in the trade unions.
But by 1977, under the impact of growing economic crisis, there were the beginnings of a profound swing to the left in the labour movement. In particular, the failure of the 1964-70 and 1974 Labour governments to achieve any real change in society in the interests of working people led to the rejection by the rank and file of the pro-capitalist policies of the right-wing leadership which presided over those governments.
The Manifesto Group was, as it soon became clear, a rear-guard action by the old Gaitskellite right wing. Within a matter of months, most of the leading lights of the Manifesto Group had given up the ghost. First they formed the Council for Social Democracy, then they split away to form the Social Democratic Party, with Rogers, Wrigglesworth, Cartwright, Williams and the rest all deserting Labour for the SDP.
While the Manifesto Group decamped, however, the Solidarity Group remains. What real difference is there, however, between the two groups? Whereas the Social Democrats have given up the fight within the Labour Party, the right-wingers who support Solidarity have decided to stay behind to fight left-wing policies from within. Solidarity constitutes a Trojan Horse which, with the return of a Labour government, will be used to try to block the implementation of the radical policies adopted at recent Labour Party conferences. While Solidarity is new, it is unmistakeably an organisation in the tradition of the Gaitskellite CDS, whose history is therefore still of much relevance to Labour Party members
* * *
The Campaign for Democratic Socialism was formed by a group of fervent Gaitskellites in the Summer of 1960. Gaitskell’s position as party leader was more exposed than at any other time. His attempt to expunge Clause IV after the 1959 general election defeat had failed – though it might as well never have existed as far as his policies were concerned. In 1959-60 his position was threatened even more by the labour movement’s overwhelming support for unilateral nuclear disarmament. Commitment to the military alliance with US imperialism and the arms spending this required was the ark of the Gaitsekellite covenant. The right anticipated defeat at the 1960 LP Conference, and the CDS was formed just before Scarborough to prepare in advance to reverse a decision that went against the parliamentary leadership.
A number of right wing cliques came together in CDS. The ample secret funds used to organise CDS constitute one of the several unexplained injections of resources from which Labour’s right wing benefitted in the 1950s and ’60s. The activists, who made up the steering committee, were mainly young parliamentary candidates, many of them prominent in the recent right wing leadership of the parliamentary party. William Rodgers, secretary of the Fabian Society, International Bureau, was Chairman. Others included Dick Taverne, Denis Howell, and Brian Walden. The MPs closely associated with CDS were Gaitskell’s closest supporters, Tony Crosland, Douglas Jay, Roy Jenkins and Patrick Gordon Walker. Among the 54 Labour MPs who later sent a letter to CDS applauding its aims were Frank Tomney and Reg Prentice. This gives sufficient indication of its complexion. Several of these figures were subsequently involved in re-selection battles with their constituency parties: Taverne fought Labour as the ‘Democratic Labour’ candidate in Lincoln, and is now in the SDP; Prentice, after his de-selection in Newham NE, joined the Tories.
Although CDS was formed specifically to reverse the Party’s position on defence policy, its original ‘Manifesto to the Labour Movement’ made it clear that it was Gaitskellite through and through, Its language was strongly reminiscent of the Socialist Union, a right-wing organisation associated with the journals Socialist Commentary and Forward, which had spearheaded the campaign to revise the aims of the Party. This had culminated in 1959 in the campaign of Crosland, Jay and others to change the name of the Party, sever its links with the trade unions and renounce all intention of any further nationalisation. Defence of the Anglo-American alliance and the stockpiling of nuclear weapons was just one – for them important – part of an attempt to turn the Labour party upside down and empty out its socialist content. The Gaitskellites wanted something like the American Democratic Party as a more ‘respectable’ and supposedly ‘popular’ vehicle for their parliamentary careers. When Gaitskell was defeated at the Scarborough Conference – but defied the majority with his threat to ‘Fight, and fight, and fight again’ – the CDS had the nucleus of an organisation ready to support him.
This is the blatant double standard that operates on the part of the right wing – -and the capitalist press. In a mass party it is inevitable that there will be different tendencies, and it is in accordance with the basic democracy of the labour movement that they should be allowed to campaign for their ideas. Yet while the left, as at present, was continually accused of ‘infiltration’, ‘plotting’, organising ‘a party within a party’, not a word was said about the clandestine activities of the CDS, which was certainly an open secret among right MPs and Tory lobby correspondents. While the Bevanites and the supporters of ‘Victory for Socialism’ were frequently on the brink of expulsion, the supporters of CDS had all the praise in the world lavished on them by the leadership – and by the enemies of Labour, the capitalist press.
When the CDS Manifesto was sent to likely selected supporters, a card was enclosed for Party members to indicate their support by returning it to the campaign giving details for their LP and TUC positions. They were also asked for names and addresses of others in the labour movement who might be approached with a view to enlistment. Nobody was asked to pay a subscription – but then the campaign had other, undisclosed sources of finance. In one of the confidential letters (January 1961) sent out regularly to supporters, Rodgers reported that „Our confidential directory of supporters (and mailing list) continue to grow.“ The letter also provided a model resolution on defence: “‘This (organisation), recognising that Britain should remain a member of NATO and that the western alliance should not renounce nuclear weapons while the Russians retain theirs, urges the Labour Party to intensify its efforts to bring about all-round multilateral disarmament.”’ This letter accompanied the first edition of the CDS’s monthly journal, Campaign – which had an initial printing of 10,000. At the same time about 250 of the keenest supporters in different areas had been hand-picked by Rodgers, Howell, and Pickstock to act as ‘whips.’ Another confidential letter to CDS supporters in the Commons read: “‘In the meantime it is urgent and essential that we build up the number of good folk in the constituencies receiving Campaign … It is even more important that we are given the names of one or two reliable supporters in your constituency with whom we can maintain liaison. Will you please complete the form attached immediately and put it on the board in the inner lobby. (Signed Denis Howell.)“
This organisation, however, was not used to campaign for policies through discussion and debate. CDS preferred to work behind the scenes to persuade trade union leaders and people in key position to support their policies, especially when it came to voting on policy. They definitely avoided public meetings where they might be faced with opposition. These methods fully justified the comment made by Tribune at the time (18 August 1961): “Instead of being willing to thrash out the great arguments which inevitably rage in a democratic party, they run around organising groups of ‘reliable supporters’ who are apparently to be ordered to carry out their hatchet work. The essence of the whole of CDS smells more of the pitch and brimstone of the Inquisition than that of a group of people within a pany who join together to propagate similar views.”
In 1964, the CDS was wound up on the grounds that the election of a Labour government, based in practice on the policies of Gaitskell (who died prematurely in 1963, less than two years before the return of the 1964 Labour government, which was led by Harold Wilson), meant that they had achieved their objects. Gaitskell’s success, with the help of CDS in ignoring the Party’s policy on defence and later reversing it, certainly set a major precedent which the labour leaders have since exploited to the full in riding roughshod over Conference decision.
The most secret aspect of the CDS was who financed it. The original expenses were presumably met by the members of the steering committee. But following the press conference which launched CDS after the Scarborough Conference, it seems that the CDS received a donation of several thousand pounds. By the 18th November steering committee, they knew that they had enough funds to set up an office (27a Red Lion Street, WC1), pay a salary to Rodgers, employ a full-time secretary, and keep them going for a year. The committee also paid the travelling expenses of its members, for the printing of 20,000 well-produced copies of the manifesto and for the monthly Campaign which was distributed free to supporters. All this must have cost at lest £5,000 a year, a considerable amount at that time. The source of this cash was a closely guarded secret and even signatories of the Manifesto were not told. William Rodgers assured them it was a ‘socialist’ source. But one of the signatories at least, Bryan Magee (then prospective parliamentary candidate for Mid-Beds, more recently MP for Waltham Forest, Leyton – and now one of the latest defectors to the SDP), was not satisfied, and severed his connections with CDS in 1961.
One suggestion has been that much of the finance was organised by John Diamond, then MP for Gloucester, and Treasurer of the Fabian Society, the original stamping ground of William Rodgers. John Diamond was an active businessman with directorships in several companies including World Natural Sponge Supplies, Sheffield Cabinet Company, and Capital and Provincial News Theatres. More significantly, he was the main auditor of the accounts of Socialist Commentary Publications Ltd. – another body which had large funds from undisclosed sources. It may be that the CDS’s funds came from .a perfectly respectable socialist source who/which, from modesty, preferred to remain anonymous. But it is now surely in the interests of the movement that we know where the money came from, particularly in the light of the astounding revelations of the US House (Pike) and Senate (Church).Committees about covert CIA. intervention in labour movements throughout the world.
The Church-Committee (Final Report, Book IV, 23.4.76; No 94-465. page 49-50), for instance, comments on “‘Clandestine Activities, 1953-61″: “Financial support to individual candidates, subsidies to publications including newspapers and magazines involved in local and national labour unions – all of these interlocking elements constituted the fundamentals of a typical political action program. Elections, of course, were key operations, and the Agency involved itself in electoral politics on a continuing basis. Likewise, case officers groomed and cultivated individuals who could provide strong pro-Western leadership.“
It is, of course, impossible to say that the CDS’s money came through a CIA ‘conduit’, even without the knowledge of those concerned. But the CDS certainly had a secret source of finance – which even caused disquiet among some right-wingers. These particular funds, moreover, were only one of several such unexplained injections of outside finances in support of right-wing activities.
In 1956, for instance, the journal Forward, a Glasgow-based socialist journal which was previously linked with the Independent Labour Party, and took a left-pacifist position, strongly opposing German rearmament, underwent a dramatic transformation. Suddenly put under new editors, it moved to London and reappeared in a much more expensive format – taking a strong pro-NATO line. In its new form, Forward carried one of the first and best-known ‘revisionist’ articles by Douglas Jay advocating that the party should change its name to Democratic Labour, dropping Clause IV and any commitment to nationalisation.
[First published in MILITANT 18 February 1977]
Who were they travelling with? The CIA and the British Labour Movement
The Article the Editor of The Sunday Times Wouldn’t Publish
By Richard Fletcher
Introduction: AI! the Fleet Street papers, and most of the provincial press, too, have taken their turn in attacking Militant. Early in 1980, the Sunday Times, a „quality“ paper which tries to project an image of „fearless“ investigative journalism, added its own contribution to the witch-hunt against the left in general and Militant in particular.
Singled out for „associating“ with Militant, Labour MP Ron Brown, a member of the Tribune group, replied to the paper: „… allegations about left-wing ‘infiltrators’ and ‘moles’ … only serve the interests of the enemies of the labour movement by creating a diversion and by undermining workers’ struggles against the Tories in this crucial period. These ‘divide and rule’ tactics are well known, having been used against Tribunites in the 1950s, when witch-hunting was quite common …”
Ron Brown concluded his letter with a challenge that clearly stung the Sunday Times: „In order to balance things up perhaps the Sunday Times will now publish its article about the alleged CIA involvement in the British labour movement – even though this information is a few years old. Or have the blue moles been granted diplomatic immunity?”
The editor responded with the following reply – brief, misleading and disingenuous: ‘The article, by a freelance journalist, was rejected by the Sunday Times because it was classic McCarthyism, a compilation. of guilt by association, not proof. It has been published twice since, recently by Militant, which apparently does not mind smearing the Labour Party – Ed.”’
The facts about Richard Fletcher’s suppressed article, however, make it clear just how misleading this reply is. The Sunday Times’s editor, Harold Evans (now editor of The Times), subsequently declined to publish answering letters from either Militant or from Richard Fletcher.
Richard Fletcher, the freelance journalist concerned, was commissioned by the editor of the Sunday Times Magazine to write on the CIA and the labour movement. He worked on the article with two of the Magazine’s senior staff, and all three were completely satisfied with the finished article. It was not a case of „guilt by association“. The article was carefully researched, mainly from documentary evidence. It was checked by three senior staff and by lawyers who asked for proof of some of the more contentious points – and who then cleared it for publication. Since the article was written, every point of substance has been confirmed many times over by the investigations of the CIA carried out by the US Congress (Pike and Church Committees), the New York Times, The Washington Post, and many others.
The finished article was not „rejected by the Sunday Times„: Harold Evans intervened personally to have it withdrawn, to the indignation of Magazine staff, at least one of whom considered resigning in protest. Insisting that the piece was „unfair“, Harold Evans, referring to the Labour right wingers mentioned in the article, said: „Anyway, these are the people we support.“
“The historical truth appears to be,“ comments Richard Fletcher, „that one of the ‘tendencies’ within the Labour Party – one which captured the leadership for some twenty years – has been much closer to ruling circles in the United States than to the Labour Party membership … star-spangled moles perhaps?“ Clearly, in the interests of this capitalist paper’s right-wing friends in the Parliamentary Labour Party, Harold Evans was quite prepared to suppress evidence that the American CIA had, through various front-organisations and „conduits“, funded right-wing Labour journals and groupings which were considered sympathetic to the interests of US imperialism.
Some of the Labour MPs, like Bill Rodgers, who are mentioned in this article have recently broken with the Labour Party and gone over to the Social Democrats. Others, like Denis Healey, still figure prominently in the right-wing leadership of the PLP. If they were unaware of the CIA’s covert role, surely, in view of the steadily accumulating evidence, they will support a thorough party investigation into interference by intelligence organisations? Today, there is certainly further, more up-to-date evidence of CIA interference in the labour movement, but this early article clearly presents the facts of the CIA’s massive post-war operations to subvert the labour movement.
When Gaitskell was Labour leader, he frequently attacked the left as „fellow travellers“. In answer to the right-wing leadership, this article gives force to the question: „Who were they travelling with?“ – Editor
* * *
The cloak and dagger operations of America’s Central Intelligence Agency are only a small part of its total activities. Most of its 2,000 million dollar budget and 80,000 personnel are devoted to the systematic collection of information – minute personal details about tens of thousands of politicians and political organisations in every country in the world, including Britain. And this data, stored in the world’s largest filing system at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, is used not only to aid Washington’s policy machine, but in active political intervention overseas – shaping the policies of political parties, making and unmaking their leaders, boosting one internal faction against another and often establishing rival breakaway parties when other tactics fail…
One of its targets in the years since the Second World War has been the British Labour Party.
The Labour Party emerged from the war with immense prestige. As the sole mass working class party in Britain it had the support of a united trades union movement whose power had been greatly enhanced by the war, and it had just achieved an unprecedented electoral victory … Labour was undisputed head of Europe’s social democratic family.
But as the euphoria wore off, old differences began to emerge with prolonged post-war austerity. The left wanted more socialism and an accommodation with the Russians, while the right wanted the battle against communism to take precedence over further reforms at home. And those who took this latter view organised themselves around the journal Socialist Commentary, formerly the organ of anti-Marxist socialists who had fled to Britain from Hitler’s Germany. The magazine was reorganised in the autumn of 1947 with Anthony Crosland, Allan Flanders and Rita Hinden who had worked closely with the emigrés as leading contributors. And Socialist Commentary became the mouthpiece of the right wing of the Labour Party, campaigning against left wingers like Aneurin Bevan, whom they denounced as dangerous extremists.
Crosland, who ended the war as a captain in the Parachute Regiment, had been President of the Oxford Union, and a year later, in 1947, became Fellow and lecturer in economics at Trinity College, Oxford. Flanders was a former TUC official who became an academic specialist in industrial relations and later joined the Prices and Incomes Board set up by the Wilson government. Rita Hinden, a University of London academic from South Africa, was secretary of the Fabian Colonial Bureau – an autonomous section of the Fabian Society which she had set up and directed since the early ’forties. In this position she exercised considerable influence with Labour Ministers and officials in the Colonial Office, maintaining close links with many Overseas politicians.
The new Socialist Commentary immediately set out to alert the British labour movement to the growing dangers of international communism… The journal’s extended American connections were further extended by its US correspondent, William C Gausmann, who was soon to enter the American Government Service, where he rose to take charge of US propaganda in North Vietnam, while support for the moderate stance taken by Crosland, Flanders and Hinden came from David C Williams, the London Correspondent of the New Leader, an obscure New York weekly specialising in anti-communism. Williams made it his business to join the British Labour Party and to take an active part in the Fabian Society.
This close American interest in socialism on the other side of the Atlantic was nothing new. During the war American trade unions had raised large sums to rescue European labour leaders from the Nazis, and this had brought them closely in touch with the American military intelligence and, in particular, with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), whose chief in Switzerland and Germany from 1942 to 1945 was Allen W Dulles, later, of course, to become famous as head of the CIA in its heyday …
In America the New Leader came to provide one focus for these activities, organising a weekly meeting of minds for professional anti-communists in the unions, universities and government service, both at home and abroad. It had a relatively large paid staff and a world-wide network of overseas and roving correspondents. Its guiding spirit as Executive Editor and business manager was Sol Levitas, a Russian émigré who … fled to the USA in 1923, bringing with him a life-long hatred of Bolshevism …
The New Leader claimed to be independent, but in 1949 it carried a piece by Allen Dulles advocating a „commission of internal security“ to examine subversive influences in the US and to „use the institutions of democracy to destroy them“ which, in the light of Dulles’ work helping the White House reorganise OSS as the Central Intelligence Agency, was rather like the head of MI5 writing for the New Statesman. And at this time too, although the New Leader was issuing frantic appeals for funds to pay off its $40,000 worth of debts, it started appearing in April 1950 as a new New Leader with an expensive Time-like magazine format.
The importance of this dramatically reborn publication for British and European Labour Parties was that it now began openly to advocate the infiltration of foreign socialist parties, echoing the arguments of James Burnham who, in his book, The Coming Defeat of Communism, proposed that “the Western world, led by the United States, should go over to the offensive by using the same sort of methods – open and covert – that the Kremlin has so massively employed.“ Allan Flanders contributed an article to the revamped magazine on the British labour movement, and in 1954 Denis Healey, who had entered Parliament as a Labour MP in 1952, became the New Leader’s London correspondent.
American Cold War strategy, as Burnham and the New Leader had proposed, now moved into the financing of world-wide front organisations, and in June 1950 the free world’s top men of letters were duly assembled in the Titania Palace Theatre in the US zone of Berlin, before an audience of 4,000, to launch the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a body whose purpose was to “‘defend freedom and democracy against the new tyranny sweeping the world.”
It was no coincidence that the main organiser and chairman of the Congress was Melvin Lasky, who in 1948 had been ‘lent’ by the New Leader to the US High Commission in Berlin, where he had set up a successful literary magazine, Der Monat, with the encouragement of General Lucius D Clay, head of the military government, Nor that the man chosen to head the permanent secretariat of the congress was an Official of the American military government, Michael Josselson, who administered and arranged the financing of the vast organisation.
The Congress seemed to have unlimited funds…
In 1953 the Congress for Cultural Freedom launched Encounter, an English language monthly which was an immediate success under the editorship of Irving Kristol, another of Levitas’s New Leader protegés and ex-Lovestoneite, and soon a bewildering range of publications in several languages had joined the CCF stable, with Encounter becoming one of the most influential journals of liberal opinion in the West.
As the CCF network grew it embraced many prominent figures in the British Labour Party – among them Anthony Crosland, who began attending CCF seminars, where he met Daniel Bell, who was at this period moving away from journalistic red-baiting in the New Leader towards academic respectability. Bell’s thinking was later summarised in his book – The End of Ideology, and it formed the basis of the new political thesis set out in the major work that Crosland was now writing and which was published in 1956 under the title The Future of Socialism. The book had also been influenced by the arguments put forward at the Conference of the Congress for Cultural Freedom held in the previous year in Milan, where principal participants had included Hugh Gaitskell, Denis Healey and Rita Hinden, as well as Daniel Bell and a bevy of American and European politicians and academics.
Put at its simplest, Bell and his colleagues argued that growing affluence had radically transformed the working class in Europe – and Britain – which was now virtually indistinguishable from the middle class, and thus Marx’s theory of class struggle was no longer relevant. Future political progress they thought, would involve the gradual reform of capitalism and the spread of equality and social welfare as a consequence of continued economic growth.
Crosland’s book, though not original in content, was a major achievement. In over 500 pages it clothed the long-held faith of Labour’s new leader Hugh Gaitskell in the academic respectability of American political science and was immediately adopted as the gospel of the Party leadership. Labour’s rank and file, however, still clung to their grassroots socialism, and Gaitskell’s obvious preference for the small coterie of cultured intellectuals and visiting foreigners who met at this house in Frognal Gardens, Hampstead, alienating the Party faithful, and gave added bitterness to the internecine quarrels that were to follow Labour’s defeat in the 1959 election.
In 1957 Melvin Lasky had taken over the editorship of Encounter which had, by then, cornered the West’s intelligentsia through its prestige and the high fees it was able to pay. Lasky was a trusted member of Gaitskell’s inner circle and was often to be seen at his parties in Hampstead, while Gaitskell became at the same time a regular contributor of the New Leader. Sol Levitas would drop in at his house on his periodic tours to see world leaders and visit the CCF in Paris.
It was during the Fifties, furthermore, that Anthony Crosland, Rita Hinden and the other members of the Socialist Commentary group adopted the argument put forcibly in the New Leader that a strong united Europe was essential to protect the Atlantic Alliance from Russian attack, and European and Atlantic unity came to be synonymous in official thinking as Gaitskell and his friends moved into the Party leadership. They received transatlantic encouragement, furthermore, from a New York-based group called the American Committee on United Europe, whose leadership was openly advertised in the New York Times as including General Donovan, wartime head of OSS, George Marshall, the US Secretary of State, General Lucius D Clay and Allan Dulles of the CIA.
This high-powered and lavishly-funded pressure group – whose thesis was essentially that a United Europe would defend America’s interest against Russia – financed in Europe the so-called European Movement, whose inspiration was a friend of Hugh Gaitskell’s, Joseph Retinger, an elderly Polish James Bond, who, after an professional career as an éminence grise, had come to rest at the Dutch court under the patronage of Prince Bernhard.
Retinger had, furthermore, secretly persuaded Shepard Stone of the US High Commission in Germany to finance his European Movement out of so-called „counter-part funds“ – Marshal Aid repayments which the Americans banked in Europe. Later he promoted select gatherings of European and American politicians, businessmen, aristocrats, top civil servants and military leaders to propagate the ideas of Atlantic and European unity. Invitations to these Bilderberg Group meetings – named after the Dutch hotel where the first gathering was held in 1954 – were issued personally by Prince Bernhard on Retinger’s recommendation.
Few of those who received the card of invitation embossed with the Royal Netherlands coat of arms declined to spend three or four days in civilised discourse with the world’s leaders in luxurious surroundings – certainly not Hugh Gaitskell and Denis Healey, who were founder members of the Group along which such diverse personalities as the President of Unilever and Sir Robert Boothby.
Healey, an ex-Communist, had been head of the International Department of Transport House before entering Parliament in 1952. He was a convinced supporter of Atlantic Union and spread the message through Socialist Commentary and the New Leader, for whom he wrote nearly 80 articles before joining the Labour government as Defence Minister in 1964.
While top people were relaxing with Prince Bernhard, the Congress for Cultural Freedom was establishing solid ties with the coming man of the British Labour Party, Anthony Crosland, who was by now acknowledged as the Party’s chief theoretician. He had lost his seat at Westminster in the 1955 election, but in the following years was travelling regularly to Paris to plan the International Seminars of the CCF with Melvin Lasky and Michael Josselson under the directorship of Daniel Bell. Michael Josselson, who in 1967 admitted that he had for 17 years been channelling CIA money into the CCF, has described to us Crosland’s role at this period. Crosland’s contribution, he says, was “encouraging sympathetic people to participate in the Congress functions in Milan 1955, New Delhi 1957, the island of Rhodes 1958, and Berlin in 1962. Crosland himself travelled to Vienna in 1958, to Berlin in 1960 and to Australia and Japan in 1964 on a Congress-sponsored tour.
He was at this date a member of the International Council of the CCF after nearly a decade working to re-model European socialism in the image of the American Democratic Party, a cause for the sake of which the CCF had financed a systematic campaign of congresses, seminars and private gatherings for leading Socialists throughout Europe. This had been backed up by the fullest publicity in Encounter, Preuves, Monat and the other CCF journals – whose influence was further extended by discreet arrangements with Socialist Commentary for publishing each other’s pamphlets and articles.
Rita Hinden was by now the editor of Socialist Commentary and playing a similar role to Crosland in picking African participants for Congress seminars. Michael Josselson describes her as „a good friend of ours. We relied entirely on her advice for our African operations.“ She also visited India and Japan on a CCF-sponsored trip after the Suez-crisis, speaking on the theme that traditional socialism was irrelevant in a modern capitalist society where there was full employment.
This was the nub of the matter. Many of Europe’s socialist parties still had old-fashioned Marxist notions written into their rule-books, which had become an embarrassment to their leaders. A glaring example was the British Labour Party whose Clause IV – „common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange“ and so on – sounded like a passage from the Communist Manifesto.
The proof of its irrelevance seemed provided by the 1959 general election in which Anthony Crosland regained his seat at Westminster, but which represented a catastrophic defeat. Roy Jenkins, Anthony Crosland and Douglas Jay were among a small group who met with Gaitskell at his home. They decided that the time had come for Labour to drop its old commitments and get rid of its cloth cap image which had become an electoral liability.
Douglas Jay immediately wrote the now celebrated article which appeared in Forward the following week, calling for the abandonment of Clause IV and a change in the Labour Party’s name. And early in 1960, Socialist Commentary commissioned Mark Abram’s firm, Research Services Ltd., to carry out an attitude survey on *‘Why Labour Lost“.
The results were published in the journal’s May to August number, and they confirmed the Gaitskell thesis that nationalisation was a liability. This Abrams survey had been turned down by the Labour Party Executive before the 1959 election as being too costly. But now Socialist Commentary found the money to pay for it, and in February 1960 William Rodgers, General Secretary of the Fabian Society since 1953, organised a letter of support to Gaitskell signed by 15 young Parliamentary candidates. Shortly afterwards, a steering committee was set up with Rodgers as chairman, and including some of the signatories of the Gaitskell letter together with Crosland, Roy Jenkins, Patrick Gordon Walker, Jay, other Party members from Oxford and some sympathetic journalists.
This group started work on a manifesto to be released in the event of Gaitskell’s defeat in the defence of debate at the Party Conference. This duly occurred in the autumn of 1960, when the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament triumphed in its campaign to win the Labour party to a neutralist programme.
So in October 1960 Rodgers and his friends released their manifesto in 25,000 copies with widespread press coverage. Calling for “Victory for Sanity“ – a dig at their old enemies the „Victory for Socialism“ group – they appealed to Party members to rally behind Gaitskell and his Conference call to „fight and fight again.“ They also issued an appeal for funds with which to continue the campaign, and in mid-November Rodgers reported to the steering committee that many small donations had been received, together with a large sum from a source which wished to remain anonymous.
Rodgers’ windfall enabled the group to take a permanent office and appoint paid staff. The title Campaign for Democratic Socialism was chosen and a six-man Executive Committee set up with Rodgers as full-time paid Chairman. The Committee was told that available funds were sufficient for a year’s activities and CDS thus had a start on its opponents who, in spite of their widespread support in Labour constituencies and trades unions, were unable to raise more than a few hundred pounds over the following year and had to rely entirely on volunteer workers. At CDS’s disposal were field-workers in the constituencies and unions, whom it supported with travelling expenses, literature and organisational back-up, tens of thousands of copies of the manifesto, pamphlets and other publications, plus a regular bulletin, Campaign, circulated free of charge to a large mailing list ‘within the movement. And all this was produced without a single subscription-paying member. [Bryan Magee, at that time Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Mid-Bedfordshire and later an MP, resigned from CDS in 1961 when the organisers refused to disclose the source of their funds. – Ed.]
CDS achieved its objectives. The unions cracked under the pressure and the Labour Party returned to the Atlantic fold at the Party Conference in 1961 after a campaign by the most effective pressure group the Party has ever seen. Rodgers was its driving force. With financial backing assured, he created an organisation whose influence was out of all proportion to its original support among Party members. Whoever put up the money could justly claim to have influenced perceptibly the history of the Labour Party and of Britain in the 1960s.
Nor did the importance of CDS vanish totally after it had restored the Labour Party to commitment to NATO, for its adherents felt bitterly betrayed when Hugh Gaitskell later qualified his support for Common Market entry at the Brighton Conference in 1962. Standing at the back of the hall Rodgers turned to the Party press officer, John Harris – later Roy Jenkins’ PR man – and said “I’m through with that man, John.“ Anthony Crosland, furthermore, supported Gaitskell’s compromise and so also lost the backing of ardent marketeers, who henceforward rallied around Roy Jenkins.
One of the consequences of these divisions was that they helped Harold Wilson to capture the leadership on Gaitskell’s death. Finding the Parliamentary Party moulded in the Gaitskell image, its policies firmly rooted in Crosland’s Future of Socialism, Wilson made no attempt to alter the package which became the programme of the next Labour government.
Throughout this post-war period the Party apparatus remained firmly in orthodox hands, particularly the International Department of which Denis Healey had been head until he entered Parliament in 1952. Then in 1965 his old post was taken over by J Gwyn Morgan, one of the rising generation of party and union officials whose careers began in the National Union of Students to whose Presidency he had been elected in 1960 on an anti-communist ticket. As President he took charge of international affairs, representing the Union in the International Student Conference at Leiden, and on leaving the NUS in 1962 he became Assistant General Secretary of ISC in charge of finance. In this capacity he negotiated with the American foundations which supplied the bulk of ISC funds and supervised expenditure of the several million dollars devoted to world-wide propaganda and organisation. In 1964 he became Secretary General of ISC.
In his five years’ association with the organisation he visited over 80 different countries and got to know personally many heads of government and leaders of the world’s principal social democratic parties. An ardent pro-European and active supporter of Roy Jenkins, he was an obvious choice to fill the vacant slot as head of Labour’s Overseas Department at the beginning of 1965. Two years later Morgan was promoted to the newly-created post of Assistant General Secretary of the Labour Party, with the expectation that he would fill the top job on Harry Nicholas’s retirement.
But early in 1967 the US journal Ramparts revealed that since the early Fifties the National Student Association of America had, with the active connivance of its elected officers, received massive subventions from the CIA through dummy foundations and that one of these was the Fund for Youth Student Affairs which supplied most of the budget of ISC. The International Student Conference, it appeared, had been set up by British and American Intelligence in 1950 to counteract the communist peace offensive, and the CIA had supplied over 90% of its finance. The Congress for Cultural Freedom was similarly compromised. Michael Josselson admitted that he had been channelling CIA money into the organisation ever since its foundation – latterly at the rate of about a million dollars a year – to support some 20 journals and a world-wide programme of political and cultural activities…
[In 1961, William Bohn, New Leader editor recalled Sol Levitas’ apparently miraculous ability to finance the journal – Ed.]
The „Miracle“? was resolved by the New York Times: the American Labour Conference for International Affairs which ran the New Leader had for many years been receiving regular subventions from the J M Kaplan Fund, a CIA conduit.
The CIA had taken the lessons taught back in the early Fifties by Burnham and the New Leader to heart. With its army of ex-communists and willing socialists it had for a while beaten the communists at their own game – but unfortunately it had not known the whole structure was threatened with collapse. Rallying to the agency’s support, Thomas Braden, the official responsible for its move into private organisations, and Executive Director of the American Committee on United Europe, explained that Irving Brown and Lovestone had done a fine job in cleaning up the unions in post-war Europe. When they ran out of money, he said, he had persuaded Dulles to back them, and from this beginning the worldwide Operation mushroomed.
Another ex-CIA official, Richard Bissell, who organised the Bay of Pigs invasion, explained the Agency’s attitude to foreign politicians: „Only by knowing the principal players well do you have a chance of careful prediction. There is real scope for action in this area: the technique is essentially that of ‘penetration’ … Many of the ‘penetrations’ don’t take the form of ‘hiring’ but of establishing friendly relationships which may or may not be furthered by the provision of money from time to time, In some countries the CIA representative has served as a close counsellor … of the chief of state.”
After these disclosures the CCF changed its name to the International Association for Cultural Freedom. Michael Josselson resigned – but was retained as a consultant – and the Ford Foundation agreed to pick up the bills. And the Director of the new Association is none other than Shepard Stone, the Bilderberg organiser who channelled US government money to Joseph Retinger in the early Fifties to build the European Movement and then became International Director of the Ford Foundation.
When Rita Hinden died at the end of 1971 after 20 years as editor of Socialist Commentary, George Thomson – a pillar of CDS who resigned in 1972 from Labour’s front bench with Roy Jenkins – paid tribute to her key role in transforming the Labour Party. In the Fifties, he said, her „ideas were greeted with outraged cries of ‘Revisionism’. But by the mid-sixties the revisionism of Socialist Commentary had become the orthodoxy of the labour movement.” And Denis Healey’s comment was equally revealing. “Only Sol Levitas of the American New Leader,” he said, „had a comparable capacity for exercising a wide political influence with negligible material resources.“ He obviously hadn’t paid a visit to Companies House whose Register shows that in recent years Socialist Commentary has been drawing on a capital reserve of over £75,000.
Through its network of front organisations, magazines and subsidies the CIA in the late Fifties and early Sixties had a decisive effect on socialist throughout Western Europe, and in Britain in particular, but the Gaitskellism that it backed is now on the retreat. For those Labour leaders who, in all innocence, built their careers in the seminars of the Congress of Cultural Freedom and the columns of Encounter or the New Leader, rather than in the trade union branch or on the Conference floor, are now feeling the lack of a mass base within the Party.
Attacked by Gaitskell at the Labour Party Conference in 1960 as a fellow traveller, Michael Foot retorted „but who are they travelling with?“ and the question is one that other members of the Party echo. For the chairmen of the world’s largest capitalist organisations, monarchists, ex-Nazis, commanders of the American and German forces, the Crown Princes of Europe and CIA agents do indeed make strange travelling companions for Socialists.
[Richard Fletcher’s article, reprinted here in slightly abbreviated form, was first published as a pamphlet by Radical Research Services under the title Who were THEY travelling with? after publication in the Sunday Times Magazine was vetoed in 1972 by the paper’s editor Harold Evans. The article was published, with the author’s permission in Militant’s issues of 25 January and 1 February 1980. The full text is available in The CIA and the Labour Movement (Spokesman Books 1977) and Dirty Work: the CIA in Western Europe (Zed Press 1981).]
Schreibe einen Kommentar