Secrecy and security [1977]
01 January 1991
Secrecy and security [1977]
bacdoc June=1992
State Research, no 3. December 1977-January 1978
The Franks Committee, which was appointed to look into the use
of Section 2(S.2.) of the 1911 Official Secrets Act, presented
its report to parliament in September 1972. It recommended that
S.2. should be replaced by a new Official Information Act.
Despite public commitments by successive Conservative and Labour
governments to introduce legislation, nothing happened. The
present Labour government has announced that it does -lot intend
to bring in new legislation in the present session of parliament
(ie. before the autumn of 1978). However, a White Paper on the
subject is to be published in the spring.
Mr Rees, the Home Secretary, told parliament in November 1976
that a new Act along the lines of the Franks recommendations
would replace a `blunderbuss' with an `Armalite rifle' (Hansard,
22/11/77). The ambiguity of the present law was to be replaced
by one which would provide an effective deterrent and ensure
successful prosecutions. The embryo of the `Armalite rifle'
proposed by Mr Rees lies in the report of the Franks Committee.
Arthur Davidson, then a Labour backbencher and now a junior law
minister, commented in 1973:
`I do not care whether the government implements the Franks
recommendations because I do not think that these
recommendations would do very much at all to ensure that
the public gets more information. What worries me about the
Franks recommendations is that they would ensure a tight
list of secret documents, and in that respect the press and
other organs of information would be worse off in practice
than they are now' (Hansard, 29/6/73).
In the interests of `national security'
Meanwhile this same government has acted, in the interests of
`national security', to deport two journalists Agee and Hosenball
- and has given its consent to the prosecution under the existing
Acts of two other journalists and their source of information -
Aubrey, Campbell and Berry. In doing so they have shifted the
line between the desire of the permanent state employees for
secrecy, and the demand for more public information, even further
in favour of the state.
Without adequate information there is no basis on which a proper
democratic discussion can take place, and without a discussion
there is no basis on which the public can assent or dissent, as
the case may be, to the direction of government decision-making.
The danger in that situation is that the government becomes even
more dependent on the policy-making initiatives of the permanent
state employees - the civil service, the military, the police and
the security services.
A common thread between the proposed `reform' of the Official
Secrets Acts and the actions taken against these journalists and
their sources is an attempt to preserve the severe restrictions
on the information available in major policy areas - defence,
foreign relations, the intelligence and security agencies, the
police and the Special Branch. At present it shows every chance
of success. For many years the needs of `national security' have
limited effective questioning by Mps of policy-making in these
fields, and media coverage has been in the hands of a select band
of defence correspondents.
The emergence of a committed investigative journalism presented
a challenge to the bi-party `conspiracy of silence' in
parliament, and `managed' news coverage. The government, prompted
by pressure from the Ministries and the agencies in these key
areas, has acted to make an example of certain journalists and
to introduce a more effective law in the future - the `Armalite
rifle'.
The Official Secrets Acts: their role and uses
The three Official Secrets Acts. of 1911, 1920 and 1939, provide
governments with an all-embracing net with which to catch<