The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Secret talks about ousting union leaders
James Callaghan secretly urged officials to find ways of ousting left-wing trade union leaders, according to newly released official papers.
Files released by the National Archives show that as home secretary in Harold Wilson’s Labour government, Mr Callaghan was deeply concerned about the rise of a new generation of “politically motivated” union leaders.
He singled out Jack Jones, the general secretary of the giant Transport and General Workers Union, and Hugh Scanlon, the leader of the engineering workers.
In response to his call, senior officials suggested undermining those with suspected communist leanings through “inspired leakages” to the press.
The details are disclosed in a note of a meeting between the cabinet secretary Sir Burke Trend, the head of the Department of Employment Sir Denis Barnes, and James Waddell, a senior Home Office official.
Dated March 5 1969, it is marked “Secret and Personal” with only one copy to be retained.
It notes: “Sir Burke Trend recalled that the home secretary apparently had in mind that it might be possible by one means or another for the more ‘politically motivated’ trade union leaders – in particular Mr Scanlon and Mr Jack Jones – to be supplanted by others more orthodox; and it had been envisaged that further consideration might perhaps be given to this possibility.”
The officials were reluctant to act, fearing it could revive the controversy of three years earlier when Mr Wilson denounced the leaders of a strike by seamen as “a tightly knit group of politically motivated men” leading to accusations ministers were using MI5 to spy on unions.
But they did suggest one course of action: “Sir Denis Barnes said, however, that detailed exposure of Jones’ behaviour from time to time, perhaps by way of inspired leakages to the press, might be useful and productive.”
The file also includes a note from foreign secretary George Brown to Mr Wilson explaining how the English Section of the Foreign Office’s secretive Information Research Department – set-up to counter Soviet Cold War propaganda – carried out such selective briefings.
“By discreet dissemination of such papers to trusted contacts, eg to various Labour Party officials at Transport House over the years, and to selected journalists, the English Section has done much to expose the activities of Communist front organisations in Britain,” Mr Brown said.
In 1985 Margaret Thatcher authorised the revival of the secretive Whitehall Subversion in Public Life committee amid fears that the far left Militant Tendency was trying to infiltrate the Civil Service.
“Exposure of Jones’ behaviour, perhaps by way of leakages”