MEDIA STUDIES
Why is the government persecuting a decent, patriotic man?
STEPHEN GLOVER Things grow stranger and stranger in the Tony Geraghty affair, which I wrote about on 6 March and 22 May. Readers may remember that last December Ministry of Defence police raided the Herefordshire home of Mr Geraghty and removed dozens of files. He and Nigel Wylde, a retired lieu- tenant-colonel, were subsequently charged under the Official Secrets Act. The charge against Mr Geraghty relates to a six-page passage in his book The Irish War about computer surveillance in Northern Ireland.
One extraordinary aspect of this affair was the government's decision not to seek an injunction against the book. Before it was published last October, the Ministry of Defence was well aware of its existence: Admiral David Pulvertaft, secretary to the D-Notice Committee, even wrote to Harper- Collins, Mr Geraghty's publisher, asking to see the manuscript. The book went on sale and is still freely available in bookshops.
Nonetheless, the Ministry of Defence has sucessfully put the screws on HarperCollins not to publish the paperback. It was due to come out on 1 September and publication has been postponed sine die. During July and August, senior executives at Harper- Collins received three visits from Ministry of Defence police. On one occasion the boys in blue arrived in a van full of dogs which they parked outside, its lights flash- ing aggressively. The apparent purpose of these visits was to intimidate HarperCollins and in this they seem to have succeeded. One executive agreed to go to a police sta- tion to swear a statement.
All this is very odd and slightly scary. On the whole one associates visits by policemen to publishing houses with repressive regimes. A visit to the offices of Harper- Collins by officers from Scotland Yard would have been bizarre enough. But it is highly questionable whether the MoD police were acting within their jurisdiction. When the Ministry of Defence Police Bill was debated in January 1987, the relevant minis- ter, Archie Hamilton, gave an assurance that 'all serious crimes [would be] passed to the domestic police department'. The MoD police probably shouldn't have been stomp- ing around the Herefordshire countryside last year and they almost certainly shouldn't have been nosing around the London offices of HarperCollins last month.
Again we come back to the question: if a six-page passage in a book is so objection-
able, why didn't, and why doesn't, the Min- istry of Defence injunct The Irish War instead of sending its boys around to put the 'frighteners' on HarperCollins? I have no answer. I suppose it is possible that a group within the Ministry of Defence has got carried away by the whole affair without much encouragement from the govern- ment. And yet it is plain that the govern- ment is involved. No less a figure than the attorney-general is prosecuting Mr Ger- aghty under section 5 of the Official Secrets Act.
My impression is that Mr Geraghty does not live in much fear of a trial, which may take place next spring. He is a well-estab- lished author of moderate political views who served in the RAF as recently as 1990. For him to be successfully prosecuted under section 5, the Ministry of Defence would have to show that he had damaged military capacity and put lives at risk. Is this really credible? I have read the passage in The Irish War, and I fail to understand what the fuss is about. Plainly Mr Geraghty has received some inside information. But if the intention is to scare off servicemen from passing information to authors and journalists, this seems an amazingly heavy- handed way of going about it.
Two months ago Lord Williams of Mostyn was appointed attorney-general in place of John Morris. Lord Williams is said to be a man of liberal views and earned a reputation as a civil-rights lawyer. If he has any sense he will drop this case, in the pub- lic interest. It is also very much in the gov- ernment's interest for him to do so, So far, the media have scarcely noticed this case, but if it were to come to court it would become a cause célèbre. Could the authori- ties justify their behaviour so far? Does it make any sense to persecute a decent, patriotic man like Mr Geraghty when Sovi- et spies such at Melita Norwood have been let off scot-free? In a way I rather hope the case does come to trial — it would be a fine spectacle, and it would clarify important issues such as the jurisdiction of the Min- istry of Defence police. But Lord Williams would be wise to take a different view.
Last week I described how Lord Gavron, chairman of the Guardian Media Group, had seemingly interfered in an edi- torial matter on the Observer. Lord Gavron is a working Labour peer and a generous benefactor of New Labour. The Guardian Media Group has insisted that he never exercises editorial influence. But I revealed that on the evening of 20 February he rang Roger Alton, editor of the Observer, to plead the case of his friend, the government minister David Sainsbury, about whom the newspaper was about to publish an exposé. Lord Sainsbury also rang Mr Alton twice that same day. The effect of these calls was that the article was watered down in several important respects between the first and final editions, though Mr Alton seems to have fought his corner very well.
I admit I was expecting some sort of response from the Guardian Media Group or Lord Gavron, but at the time of writing none has been received. Unless Lord Gavron can explain why he telephoned Mr Alton that evening, the world in general, and journalists on the Guardian and the Observer in particular, will have to assume that Lord Gavron was acting ultra vires. And if this was the case, as it appears to have been, I am at a loss to understand why the Guardian Media Group, or the Scott Trust which controls it, does not do some- thing. Does Hugo Young, chairman of the Scott Trust, think that it is in order for the New Labour chairman of the Guardian Media Group to interfere in this way? Unless something convincing is said or done, Lord Gavron will have succeeded in tarnishing the reputation of the newspaper group for which he is responsible.
John Major's autobiography will be fasci- nating in more ways than one. I am particu- larly looking forward to learning why he did not recommend Stewart Steven, until 1995 editor of the Evening Standard, for a knighthood. Mr Steven naturally rallies to the underdog, and during Mr Major's dark- est days, when editors such as Kelvin MacKenzie were threatening to pour buck- ets of shit over the prime minister's head, Mr Steven was a sympathetic presence at Downing Street, gently pressing Mr Major's trembling hand and listening long-suffer- ingly to his woes. In a just world Mr Major would have offered him an earldom. A knighthood was the bare minimum. In the event he got nothing. I hope that Mr Major can supply a proper explanation for his seemingly despicable behaviour.
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