Coppertop Hazel is the woman to tame 007
THE name’s Bond, Jane Bond. Or at least it could – and probably should – be if Hazel Blears succeeds in getting more women into MI5 and MI6. Miss Blears (Lab, Salford) is stepping down from the Commons at the end of the month. Madness. She is only 58 and is a plain-spoken, sparky, resilient, un-neurotic champion of north-western English values. I f she and her copper- wash hairdo were l eading Labour at the moment, David Cameron would be in real trouble.
Yesterday she held a small event to promote a report for Parliament’s ISC – the Intelligence and Security Committee (that’s the one Sir Malcolm Rifkind chaired until he accidentally swallowed a cyanide tablet last week). Political-speak being what it is, the report was entitled Women in the UK Intelligence Community. Community! I have hated that word since my schooldays when our headmaster gave us regular, soggy-Left lectures about how we had to be part of the ‘community’.
But are intelligence agents not lone cats, prone to standing aloof from a group?
Miss Blears had counted the female spooks and concluded that although MI5’s intake is now pretty much 50-50 men and women, MI6 and GCHQ are some way behind. This mattered, she argued, because our spies have to look like the country in which they operate. Also, women at head office might be able to stop the blokes reaching a man-orientated ‘group think’.
She herself had been the only woman on the ISC at the time. That was why she had been told to do the report. She had bridled slightly but had decided it was worth doing because ‘if I didn’t do it, nobody would’.
MI5 and MI6 needed to think about child care and maternity-- leave arrangements if they were to increase their female staff ratios. More adaptability on working hours and training would be an idea. I can’t see MI6 HQ going for an open day for possible recruits, mind you.
There was sometimes ‘a lot of testosterone’ i n spy agencies, particularly when the balloon went up in Libya, say, and an officer was given money, passport, tickets and told to scramble and get to the hotspot pronto. The mum of a toddler might not find such urgency congenial, said Miss Blears.
She blamed a ‘permafrost’ of middle managers who opposed change. People at the top, she said, were open to gender equality. Of course! Top jobs always go to greasers and yea- sayers who can sniff the political wind. Our Hazel – it is no doubt sexist of me to note that her hair yesterday was the colour of steak tartare – added that the office environment at GCHQ could sometimes be a bit ‘techy and geeky’. I bet that’s true: computer bods sitting round nurdling to each other about modem speeds, data interfaces and porn sites.
ALTHOUGH that may not be easy to change, she was encouraged t hat t he agencies now recruit via adverts in popular newspapers rather than what she claimed was the old Oxbridge ‘ tap on the shoulder’ method of recruitment which resulted in so many white, middle-class chaps becoming spies.
Miss Blears suggested that it might be an idea for the spooks to find future recruits at the Mumsnet website. Er, is she sure about that? I s Mumsnet not even more insufferably middle- class than Oxbridge these days?
It was hard to resist the conclusion that many of the things desired by her parliamentary report are already happening. For instance, spies are offered childcare vouchers. And there are apparently already ‘diversity champions’ and ‘talent managers’ working at MI5.
Will we see a diversity champion in the next James Bond film? Would that help the cause? Maybe, said Hazel. But what would a Diversity Champion (played, perhaps, by Ricky Gervais) make of 007’s attitude to Moneypenny, let alone Pussy Galore? Diversity clearly makes sound spying sense but it might work less well on the silver screen.