From Free Life No 24, December 1995

While I was reading this book, an item on the six o'clock news, on Radio Four, informed me that MI5 was said to believe that the cease-fire in Northern Ireland was close to breaking down. It has been unusual for the public to be advised what the Security Service is thinking and I wondered just what the source of this item was, and what kind of leverage it was intended to bring. On the Government, to concede on the issue of surrendering arms? A public relations exercise, to prepare the public for the first shots after an inevitable breakdown of the cease-fire? Pressure on Dublin, to avert a breakdown by making some new proposals? A time-gaining manoeuvre, to string along the paramilitaries? It could have been any of these things.

This is a new voice to the public consciousness. MI5 is increasing its public profile and this has to be part of a larger strategy. In any case, the entry of a previously secret organisation into the public arena is at least interesting. That this entry coincides with the apparent collapse of a former adversary makes it more interesting, as it increases the scope for expansion. Something is changing, but what?

And at the right time comes this book by Larry O'Hara. Right time, wrong author. Unfortunately, his book does not begin to get to grips with how the Security Service may be intending to operate in a new environment. Which is a pity, because this large organisation, covert in nature, skilled in manipulative and coercive techniques and looking for a new role is not likely to be a force for a free market in ideas. Remember, too, that the ultimate boss of MI5 is Michael Howard.

Turning up the Heat is well-researched (apparently at least, the footnotes are formidable) but badly written and gives the unhappy impression of a writer not up to the subtlety of his material. Mr O'Hara announces what his basis thesis is:

MI5 is a highly dangerous organisation, not subject to realistic controls. Consequently MI5 (and Special Branch) need to be resisted to minimise their harmful effects upon the domestic political scene. [p.5]

But he just doesn't address the vital corollaries of this statement.

The book, after an introductory chapter, looks at the relationship of MI5, and Special Branch, with various groups, including Red Action, Meibion Glyndwr, The Scottish National Liberation Army, and Combat 18. The focus stays intense and local. Not once does he approach the larger issue of what exactly the new political agenda of MI5 is, how it is shaped, and how it might tie into the development of a policy of tighter social control.

Where the interest of a book is, by the nature of the arcane subject, dependent on how well the writer can analyse the work of those with various axes to grind and tease the truth out of stubborn materials, it is disappointing and tiresome to find that he cannot make a distinction between a point of central importance and one of incidental interest. Reading this book becomes a slog through a single-toned diatribe.

Sometimes, though, this earnestness is comic. As when he contrasts the budget figures given by Stella Rimington in her 1994 televised Dimbleby lecture Security and Democracy, is there a Conflict? with costings in a brochure put out by MI5 a year earlier, MI5: The Security Service. He notes that 5 per cent of the budget was allocated to "subversion" in the brochure but that by the time of the lecture "'subversion' was allegedly below 5%" He successfully identifies the shift as slight: "so slight I have seen no comment on it." [p.8] Quite. He cites other variations and observes:

These shifts are minute and may not even be real, that very possibility underscoring the paucity of information available. [.p8]

Apart from the obscure thought process in the latter part of the sentence, you have to ask yourself if Mr O'Hara has wondered whether so slender a difference really lends itself to any point worth making.

The use of the word "allegedly" in the extract quoted above, perfectly encapsulates the tone of book: the amateur sleuth hot on the trail, eager to do well, knowing all the words, but not quite getting the thing right. He produces sentences like (of Hayes and Taylor who bombed a Victoria to Ramsgate train in 1993):

Conjecture on whether MI5 is likely to have known about them beforehand is necessarily highly speculative but worthwhile. [p31]

What does this mean? If that speculative then how worthwhile?

It would be wearying to cite many examples of just why this book is so difficult to struggle through. Like a demented artilleryman, Mr O'Hara sprays out a fusillade of missiles, some on target, some off target, and quite a few off the planet. Shining from every page, annoyingly, is the author's conviction that hoping something is true makes a convincing argument. Sometimes you have the feeling that he is playing a game to see how many hypotheses and suppositions can be crammed into a limited space. Take this example (John Tyndall is leader of the British National Party):

The December 1993 Organiser's Bulletin reads like Tyndall could have got inside information from somewhere inside the state apparatus. The obvious candidates would be Special Branch, whom it is reported Tyndall meets with frequently. For if it is the case (as I believe) that it is MI5's agenda to push the fascists in a violent direction, then this wouldn't necessarily please SB. Not so much out of a principled direction (although there may be an element of that) but because it wasn't Special Branch doing it. [p.81]

The problem of writing like this is, that you believe it only if you want to believe it; if you are unconvinced and open to being argued into a new position, it won't do.

One constant feature of the book is a vivid streak of paranoia running through. Like a myopic viper, he sprays venom at shadows around him. He produces blanket condemnations easily. The programme "World in Action" he retitles "MI5 in Action". The Tyne and Wear Anti-Fascist Association - which had the temerity to expel the author - come in for a blast too. "They were simply acting in the interests of Searchlight and MI5 for whom they are a nice little training ground." [p.46] He assures us in a footnote that in his experience journalists are "shallow, politically illiterate, cowardly, lazy and venal".

And yet. And yet. Mr O'Hara's multiple fire does produce a few hits. It is not possible to finish the book without a heightened awareness of how the Security Service may run supposedly subversive groups. Also,he makes a good case for there being some involvement of the security services in a critical delay in the publication of the suspects' pictures in the Ramsgate train bombing. Even here though, his judgment is suspect. He just has to take his speculation beyond what is sensible. He suspects that MI5 are engaged in what he later calls 'job creation schemes' and writes:

in this scenario, the more bombs Hayes and Taylor planted, and logically the more casualties, the better it would be. [p30, my italics]

There may be a suspicion about MI5 being engaged in job-creation; it is likely that - like any professional body - its officers will look out for a chance to make themselves look vitally important and busy, but to say the more casualties the better is not logical. If this were the case, all the IRA, or any other group, would have to do is sit back and let MI5 and Special Branch demolish the inner cities together. More practically, in these cash conscious times, for MI5 to be seen to fail, to allow terrorists to strike - especially after taking over anti-IRA measures on the mainland - would not do their cause any good at all.

It is a mighty flaw in this book that Mr O'Hara spends much time convincing us what we already believe: that MI5 uses illegal methods; that it infiltrates bodies that it sees as subversive; that it makes efforts to control the actions of infiltrated bodies. In "Spycatcher", Peter Wright describes how he happily burgled his way across London on behalf of his masters. But anyway, does anyone doubt that an organisation like MI5 uses illegal methods? Most people take that for granted. When Mr O'Hara writes "I will further contend that MI5's operations are far from conforming to the 'police' model are highly participative, even instigatory" [p.14], the reaction is - Of course they are, the question is: where do you go on from there?.

Mr O'Hara spends a lot of energy accounting for possible MI5 infiltration of groups like Red Action or Combat 18 but stops there. Too many questions arise outside his narrow spotlight. Surely an MI5 whose working brief is extended brings with it a threat of a dangerous export of methods? What we want to know is, how far does any illegality spread? How exactly are the decisions to take illegal action arrived at, policy or local operators? Does an MI5 with a higher public profile reinforce the process of pushing at the limits of what is acceptable as public control? How has the supposed end of the Cold War affected the operations and political agenda of MI5?

It is extraordinary too, that, having said MI5 should be resisted, he does not look at the implications of the Security Service Act 1989 (which is appended to the brochure MI5: The Security Service). At least on paper, this places a number of constraints on MI5, not least of all visibility, as before the Act it was not on any statutory basis. Schedule 1, the Investigation of Complaints, which deals with the composition and procedure of an investigating Tribunal, starts with the words:

Any person may complain to the Tribunal if he is aggrieved by anything which he believes the Service has done in relation to him or to any property of his....

Of course we expect this statute to be evaded - but it exists and it could be useful. Mr O'Hara does not discuss it.

Perhaps it is naivety that makes the author spend so much time convincing us of what we already believe. In any case it was extraordinary naivety that allows him to start the book with an analysis of the language used by Stella Rimington in a televised lecture and in a public brochure put out by MI5. Surely he did not expect two PR exercises to reveal much of the "secret" service?

The book finishes with a list of journalists "whose work I have found very insightful in enabling me to determine the agendas of the agencies referred to below". The list by each writer's name gives the newspaper written for and the organisation whose interests were served. MI5 figures prominently. It is a nice finishing flourish to the book so it was maddening to read down the list while doubting the credentials of the man who had the wit and dedication to draw it up.

Michael Barry