BARONESS RAMSAY
The former MI6 officer on clashes with the KGB and what she thinks of the SNP
HOW do you interview a former spy? Actors and celebrities (and often politicians) are naturally drawn to the bright spotlight of publicity of course, but a woman who has spent part of her life in the shadowy world of international espionage – who didn’t just survive stints in Stockholm and Helsinki but thrived during the Cold War years? Would Meta Ramsay warm to the likes of me?
On meeting her in the elegant cafe bar in a discreet section of a Glasgow hotel, the first thought is Ramsay, at 77, looks rather gentle and elegant herself. The fire engine red jacket suggests she no longer feels the need to melt into the background. Or is the former MI6 officer hiding in plain sight?
But how does a nice “ordinary” Glasgow schoolgirl from the south side of the city progress from fee-paying Hutchesons’ Grammar to playing mind games with KGB officers? Ramsay reveals politics seeped into her psyche from an early age.
“I was in no way a rebel, but there was solid Labour left-wing politics on both sides of my family,” she explains. “My father was a union man, Church of Scotland, and my mother was Jewish. My great-grandmother came from the Ukraine in the 1890s and I actually spoke fluent Yiddish until I was six. So you can’t ignore that history. On top of that, my uncle had fought the election in Cathcart in 1945. And I was very proud of Red Clydeside.”
Meta Ramsay (Meta is the Gaelicised Margaret) entered Glasgow University in 1958 on a grant (her dad was a pattern maker, her mother a shop assistant) and became involved in student politics, alongside other bright young things of the day including Donald Dewar, John Smith and Jimmy Gordon (later Lord Gordon).
“We all thought we were future gods,” she admits, grinning. “We all thought we would run the world. And I was so lucky to be at Glasgow, this political centre, that was egalitarian for the time.”
Not so egalitarian the glass ceiling for woman didn’t exist, even though the phrase was yet to be coined. “I had to try harder,” she admits. “When I was standing for the SRC someone said to me ‘Meta, please don’t take this personally, but I don’t think a woman could ever be President.’”
Ramsay could, and then President of the Scottish Union of Students. And student politics took the fluent Russian speaker into the European arena.
Meantime, did the 1960s swing for Meta Ramsay? Seems not. She admits she liked to watch the odd rugby match – if it featured a player she fancied. And she liked The Beatles.
“I went to dances,” she offers. “But it was the debating side of life that interested me.”
Serious thinking. But how did she come to join the diplomatic service in 1969? “I don’t know,” she says, a little coy. “I was just asked.” Were you surprised to be asked? “Not especially, given I was in the international milieu.”
Was she suspicious her leftleaning ideals could be corrupted? “No. Not at all because we all thought it would be a good idea to go into the bastions of the power, that the Labour Party would form alternative governments. We had hope and idealism.”
Ramsay became a Case Officer with Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. In Helsinki in 1980, as the SIS Head of Station, she was involved in the successful exfiltration of the former KGB Colonel Oleg Gordievsky, which proved hugely important to UK (and world) security. Ramsay can’t go into detail of her work but she smiles when asked how does a nice lady survive as a spy in Finland for five years?
“I was very happy there,” she says, as if talking of working on a summer camp. Was she excited? Afraid? “Both,” she says. “Anyone who does this sort of work and says they were never afraid is lying. Or they’re over confident and don’t last very long. And you’re always afraid of how you can effect other’s lives, that you can endanger, so you never relax entirely. And when you’re in this. . . .” she pauses, searching for a description and laughs, “line of work. . .. you are naturally distrustful and questioning.
“You learn to wonder about people’s back stories. It makes you more alert.”
What characteristics allowed her to survive? “You have be able to get on with people,” she says, smiling. “They have to like you. It’s a bit like a journalist, isn’t it? You need to have a rapport.”
Was there sexism in her ‘line of work’. “Yes. There was a period when women weren’t recruited as Intelligence Officers. But while a woman can’t go into a seaman’s quarter of a city and pass over brown envelopes in a man’s lavatory she doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb if she’s having a drink with a man in a respectable cafe.”
But many men can be attracted to women also? “Yes,” she says, laughing. “And that can be a minus. It can lead to complications.”
Ramsay won’t expand on these complications. “Again, it’s like journalism,” she admits. “Too much of a personal exchange becomes a problem.”
Was she ever expected to be part of a honeytrap? “That’s usually an agent, and not a woman officer,” she explains.
“People often get it wrong. An officer talent-spots, recruits, runs an agent. The FBI confused it all by calling their officers agents. But the FBI are a complete law unto themselves.”
Did the work negate personal life? (She lives alone). “You travel a lot, so that effects it. And if you keep moving around a lot it’s hard to meet the right person at the right time.” Were men intimidated by her ‘line of work’? “Well, most people don’t know what you do. You tell them something boring and credible. I’d just say I was a second secretary in the Foreign Office.”
Was she ambitious? It’s been claimed Ramsay was shortlisted to succeed an earlier MI6 chief, Sir Colin McColl? “You mustn’t believe everything you read in the papers.” Would you have loved the job? “There hasn’t been a female head of MI6,” she says, most diplomatically.
Ramsay left MI6 and moved into full-time politics in the early nineties, becoming Foreign Affairs adviser to old pal John Smith. She was made a life peer by ‘Tony’ (Blair), Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale in 1996.
“That was strange to be in the Lords,” she admits.“But I felt I could make a difference.” With such drive how could she not?
Ramsay went on to become the Lords Chair of The Labour Friends of Israel and in 2005 was appointed a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, which provides parliamentary oversight of MI6, MI5, and GCHQ. She is an advisory council member of the foreign policy think-tank, the Foreign Policy Centre.
But has the woman who once marched for change in South Africa changed? She backed wholeheartedly Britain’s war with Iraq and isn’t against air strikes against Assad’s government in Syria, certainly if chemical weapons are used again. “Do I sound a little hawkish?” she says.
Her energy is also directed against the Scottish independence movement, believing Scotland can only survive economically and politically under the UK umbrella. “The arguments for independence just don’t add up,” she says in serious voice.
In fact, Meta Ramsay often speaks in a captivating, entertaining, but serious voice.
This is a woman who cares about the bigger picture. She’ll talk about trips to opera and theatre but you sense her life is enveloped by the world arena, the power plays and strategies.
Her nighttime TV watching features BBC News 24, Sky News or Al Jazeera.
“I’ve loved my career,” she admits of the ‘line of work. “And then I had to chance to go into politics, which my friends had. I’ve been lucky to have the best of both worlds.”
The world of espionage, of being alert and careful certainly hasn’t left her. She’s not on the electoral roll and won’t speak out her address into the tape recorder, (to arrange the above photograph), insisting on writing it down instead. Yet, the natural caution apart, Ramsay’s a fascinating woman. And able to enjoy a laugh. She admits to enjoying recent Bond film Skyfall, singing the praises of Daniel Craig.
“Sean Connery was the definitive Bond,” she says with a smile/shrug. “Although I can’t bear the man’s politics.”