Stopping the Leaks
MHE distinguished members of the Radcliffe Committee on security procedures can hardly be accused of a fondness for witch-hunting, and some of their findings should therefore come as a salutary shock. In particular it is as well that they have drawn attention to the dangerous de- gree of Communist penetration into Civil Ser- vice staff associations and trade unions. A Com- munist official of such a body will not, of course, necessarily engage in espionage himself. In fact, he is very unlikely to be given the opportunity of doing so. What he can do, however, if given Access to stall engaged on secret work, is to in- dicate their names and addresses to intelligence olicers of the Eastern bloc, thereby enabling them to locate those individuals from whom they might learn something. The Government's de- cision to accept the r committee's recommendation that departments should refuse to negotiate with Communist union officials or to allow them accdss to such stall is perfectly sensible and justifiable. The officials in question will have the. right of appeal to the panel of three advisers which deals with the cases of civil servants regarded as security risks. A subsidiary advantage of these new precautions will be that members' of civil service staff associations may come to think twice about choosing officials who are unable to negotiate for them. This would be not the least of the services rendered by the committee's re- port. The other recommendations are less con- troversial. Disagreeable as increased emphasis on security may be, it is inevitable in a world where well-organised intelligence services are engaged in an underground struggle, and where so many more categories of information are regarded as State secrets.
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