Which way for MI5?
01 March 1992
The demise of the Soviet "threat" has lead to far-reaching reviews of the role of intelligence and security agencies in the USA and Europe including those of MI6 (espionage) and MI5 (internal security). In Holland the Inlichtingendienst Buitenland (IDB) MI6's equivalent foreign intelligence has just been abolished. The internal security service, the BVD, MI5's opposite number, has recently completed a "threat analysis" for the post- Cold War era (see story below). A senior official summed up the direction of their thinking: "the days of domestic security doctrine are over: we are thinking European now". Is this the direction that MI5 will go in? If it does will it run up against opposition from MI6 and the Special Branch?
In the past the respective roles have been as follows. MI6, the Secret Service, collects intelligence (military, political and economic) and conducts espionage and destabilisation operations outside the UK and colonies. MI5, the Security Service, deals with espionage and subversion within the UK and the colonies. The Special Branch, founded in 1883 to combat Irish Fenian bombings, has maintained this role in Britain while also helping MI5 with espionage and counter-subversion.
The ending of the Cold War poses more of a threat to MI5's continued existence than to MI6. MI6 claims that there are many potential threats to the interests of the UK, in the EC, Eastern Europe and the Third World. The gathering of political and economic intelligence, countering rival espionage agencies, as well as keeping an eye on the nascent democracies in Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) ensures its role well into the future. The exchange of intelligence with the KGB and other East European agencies on Third World countries previously close to the Soviet Union is one of its current priorities.
With decolonisation MI5 saw its role contract but this coincided with the increased Soviet "threat" which gave it a new role. Counter-espionage against the Soviet espionage in the UK and counter-subversion against supposed Communist sympathisers were it main tasks. In the seventies it also developed a counter- terrorist branch. Now with the ending of Soviet espionage and subversion, real or imagined, and with their own assessment that internal subversion is at a low point, MI5 is searching for a new role.
One of the questions raised in a report currently being considered by the Joint Intelligence Committee is whether or not MI5 should extend its role and take charge of investigating IRA terrorism in Britain. Police chiefs alarmed at this possible extension of MI5's role leaked the story to the newspapers. If MI5 takes over terrorism then it will be drugs next is the police believe.
Terrorism has been the issue which has allowed MI5 to take a major part in the working groups of Trevi (the inter- governmental grouping outside of EC structures). It also participates in the "Police Working Group on Terrorism" - meetings of EC security services, Special Branches and police. It was MI5 who trialed and pinpointed three IRA people in Gibralta who were shot dead in 1988. Indeed, there is an argument that the EC is becoming part of the domestic rather than a "foreign" sphere. For its part, the Special Branch in the Metropolitan Police through its European Liaison Section (ELS) has established links with its counterparts since 1976 and has a dedicated communications system.
A direct connection is made in the discussion of a Europe without internal borders between terrorism, immigration and drugs. Any agency dealing with terrorism in the UK, and with a remit to cover the EC, has to have access to the intelligence databases on refugees, asylum- seekers, visa entrants and Third World migrants settled within the EC.
The main indexes on immigrants is held by the Immigration Department of the Home Office. It holds a suspect index, a port precautions index, and the intelligence unit index. Scotland