National Security and Defence

Abstract

During the 1980s, issues of national security and defence attained considerable prominence in British politics. Government prosecutions of two civil servants, Sarah Tisdall and Clive Porting, under the Official Secrets Acts for revealing State secrets; its banning of trade union membership at GCHQ; the revelation that Anthony Blunt, the distinguished art historian, spied for Russia in the Second World War; the sentencing of a middle-ranking member of MI5, Michael Bettaney, for 23 years imprisonment on espionage charges; the Government’s sustained campaign in the courts to prevent the publication of Spycatcher, the memoirs of a former MI5 man, Peter Wright; together with a series of other episodes kept State security firmly in the public arena. This chapter deals with some central questions arising out of these episodes, focusing particularly upon the nature and accountability of the security services, the character of State secrets and the controversy over reform of the Official Secrets Acts. The constitutional and institutional background of these concerns has already been provided — in the discussions of the theory and practice of liberal democracy (Chapter 5), of Prime Minister, Cabinet, Civil Service and Parliament (Chapters 6, 7, 10), of the press (Chapter 14) and of civil liberties (Chapter 15). For the concepts of a liberal State, of ministerial responsibility to, and the control of the executive by, Parliament and of the freedom of the press provide the essential context for this chapter.