Theatre of the absurd
Andrew Boyle 49
A Matter of Trust: MI5 1945-72 Nigel West (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £8.95)
There is something rather peculiar about our secret intelligence services, so this small book must be looked at carefully. Those same services are, every so often, caught up in a high state of quarrel- someness, amounting to almost incredible absurdity. Yet nobody gets the slightest whiff of anything untoward in their actions; and these weird, ghostly characters con- tinue to be treated by the British public and even the hard-boiled press as if they were awesome gods to be placated. How can these sweeping contradictions be squared? After all, MI6 or MI5, or the rest of them, have not been in this kingdom for more than 80 years, despite the self-generating Myths which half the time have cosily sur- rounded them. That is the first point I must make clear.
In the business of contemporary history, far too many silly books have been written (and, worse, published) about such ridiculous myths. The thrillers, naturally, are quite different: normally, they prove harmless. Perhaps none of them will deserve to survive, whatever the publishers or the public do or say. And yet, an earlier book written by the same Nigel West (on M15) was curiously disappointing. In fact, lt might have been much better than it was. Which brings me to the most pertinent question of all about the new and extraor- dinary book by this young, cool, pushful author, still known as 'Nigel West', though why he, or anyone else, needs the dignity of Mortuary letters for his pseudonym, con- tinues to baffle me. I was not greatly sur- prised to hear that Mr West was forced to cut back heavily at the proof-stage in order to satisfy the severe requirements of our secret brethren of the intelligence communi- ty, British rather than American. For my money, he had been inviting trouble for at least four years. Naturally, he has at last lost the dubious confidence of his would-be hosts; inevitably, a quarrelsome skeleton at the feast.
As far as it goes, the author's latest book, 4 Matter of Trust: MI5 1945-72 at first sight seems fairly reasonable, if somewhat bland. It is short; and that does not necessarily mean neat. It is all over the Place. I would dearly like to know how many deletions and queries had to be made before the Attorney-General and others decided, very reluctantly, to call it a day. And I would equally dearly like to know what our American friends in the secret ,..c°rnmunity thought of it, at first blush. what with the Primes and the rest of them, quite apart from the possible triple-agents
lurking in our own Anglo-American midst, I can see perfectly valid reasons for the ban. In my view, the author was simply asking for it.
Once upon a time I became involved with that twilit secret world. I did so not because I enjoyed the hallowed experience of mole- catching, but because a former keeper of the Queen's pictures, namely a certain Mr Blunt, happened to be after me with the full panoply of the law; it was, for me, a matter of strict necessity, and Security Service didn't lift a finger to help me. There was no reason why they should have done so; I am not complaining, far from it. No doubt, as it proved, Blunt for all his bluster was much more scared than I was; nevertheless there were grim moments when the worst had to be endured, especially as our secret people did not wish to know. As it happened, I was striving to write a piece of autobiography, thinly disguised; equally it was, in a sense, accidently a part of my not uneventful life. Of course, I also discovered far more than I should have done; so it may well be that even the most astute practitioners of MI5, or MI6, have their off-days. Being an amateur rather than a professional, I had my distinctive insights which did not pre- tend to be absolutely perfect. As opposed to the new breed of would-be specialists, who frequently are too clever by half, they still manage somehow or other to stand deliberately in their own light.
As for Mr West's bold and intriguing offering, I'm afraid it contains much too much that is ingenious but irrelevant, even if a partial proportion happens to be true. That is the difficulty with fantasies, whether real or false. It may be a very sad spectacle for the really old hands who once gloried in their secret salad days; and still the younger professionals were at once up in arms, mainly because they felt really threatened by those whose cheating prerogative just seemed against all reason; indeed, any decent secret that were as recent as ten or 15 years ago would be too difficult and dangerous to handle. In the end, the in- siders carried sufficient weight to call a halt, no doubt through the good offices of the senior 'spook'. I don't wish to sound a last alarmist note; but Mr West, whether he realised it or not, was playing with fire. On- ly the KGB can afford to like such weird sports; and no doubt all of us will rue the day when we, the Americans as well as the British, become too involved with this devilish business. It is not at all like shadow-boxing where the hero merely pretends how strong and invincible he is; and I fear that nobody will win in that ap- palling game of double-bluff. There may be better things than inventing case histories for members of the secret world: if so I have
still to find them.. It is all theatre, I admit, the theatre of the absurd.
Was it not foolish for Mr West to say, at the start of his first offering on MI5, that 'there are, of course, many dangers in "naming names", as Chapman Pincher discovered when Mrs Thatcher branded his book as "inaccurate... distorted... and wrong?" I have tried to steer a middle course, avoiding the pitfalls of deper- sonalising events of historical interest and importance, while checking and double- checking the information I received.' What one long-serving officer once characterised as 'the blind leading the blind' still somehow goes on reminding me a little of Satan rebuking sin.
Despite Mr West's efforts, there is little fresh to say about this twilit theme. Surely nobody would ever admit that the whole story was sheer fabrication all the time? Perish the thought! And yet, and yet... who knows? Is it not a fact that secrets which are known to have been leaked, often are to be guarded by these 'spooks' with a special ferocity? The most complicated locks are almost always fitted, once the stable door has been left open and the horse has run away. It is no doubt the closed atmosphere in which the secret intelligence service operates that tends to loosen their hold on reality. That may well be Mr West's first and last mistake; he listened too hard and became quite bewildered. After all, it could happen to anybody.
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