Countdown’s Richard Whiteley was a spy!
That’s the astonishing claim by the Royle Family’s Ricky Tomlinson — who says ‘Twice Nightly’ Whiteley was an MI5 agent who put him in jail. So what’s the truth?
Heath government’. One secret file reportedly reveals that Mr Heath, as Prime Minister, was shown a transcript of the film before the trade unionists’ convic- tion and informed the Cabinet secretary: ‘We want as much as possible of this.’ However, in December 2015 the government rejected calls to release the confi- dential files about the dispute.
Minister Mike Penning said the files could not be released on the grounds of national security. Tomlinson may have good reason to be suspicious. Documents released in 2007 show that in 1973 the head of MI5 personally warned he was involved in a Communist plot to destabilise the country and should not be released early.
The Shrewsbury 24 campaign has submitted documents to the Criminal Cases Review Commission in the hope of overturning the convictions.
But last night it emerged that Mr Tomlinson had simply misunderstood the documents he had been shown by justice campaigners — who said Mr Whiteley was not in any way implicated in espionage.
Eileen Turnbull, a researcher for the Shrewsbury 24 Campaign, who has spent the past ten years investigating their prosecution, said: ‘I believe firmly that there is factual evidence to show that there was Government interference in the charges that were brought against the Shrewsbury pickets and in the trial itself.
‘But we have found no evidence to support the view that Richard Whiteley was in any way connected to the security services, he was just the presenter.’
Meanwhile, however, Mr Tomlinson, an outspoken supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, does have something surprising in his own past.
He has admitted on several occasions that he was a member of the National Front in his late 20s, but is now bitterly regretful.
‘I was in my 20s and had strong Right-wing views. It was an immigration thing. You remember . . . all that Enoch Powell thing? A lot of us fell for it, although I’m not making excuses,’ he once explained.
Now there’s a whole other conundrum.