A Disgraceful Pattern

Peter Oborne writes:

Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood has a justified reputation as the king of Establishment cover-ups. Fresh examples of his seemingly pathological hostility to government openness emerge almost every week.

The latest concerns allegations of a serious miscarriage of justice back in the early Seventies.

Troubling evidence has come to light that Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath and his Home Secretary, Robert Carr, took an abnormally close interest in the trial of two political activists (one of them being Ricky Tomlinson, who later became famous as an actor in TV’s Brookside and The Royle Family).

They were trade unionists who formed part of a ‘flying picket’ trying to get non-union workers to down tools during a builders’ strike in 1972.

Both men were jailed after being charged with conspiracy to intimidate, unlawful assembly and affray. However, they claimed they were innocent and had been set up by the political establishment.

Forty-three years on, Tomlinson has accused the Government of failing to live up to its promises on transparency by refusing to release official papers relating to the case.

While you may not agree with the men’s Left-wing politics, I believe it is vital to establish the truth about whether a miscarriage of justice took place.

The Government’s refusal to make public the papers, according to police minister Mike Penning, is said to be ‘on the grounds of national security’. 

Penning has told MPs that the decision had been taken by Sir Jeremy Heywood. 

Certainly, this fits a disgraceful pattern of suppression and secrecy during Sir Cover-Up’s four years as Cabinet Secretary.

This includes the inexcusable delay to the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq invasion, ordering ministers not to air constituents’ concerns about a third runway at Heathrow until the Government has decided on the issue, and the collapse of a promised inquiry into allegations that British agents were complicit in the torture of terror suspects. 

Most worryingly, Sir Jeremy has been at the heart of a concerted official attempt to undermine open government through tinkering with the Freedom of Information Act, which has played such a valuable role in bringing to light official incompetence and corruption. 

Sir Jeremy is failing in his duty and endangering the reputation of the Civil Service, which, at its best, stands for fairness, integrity and accountability.

Ricky Tomlinson's career demonstrates that no one ever believed in his guilt. His and his comrades' convictions will be overturned by the Court of Appeal, or, failing that, annulled by primary legislation.

But there is also a nasty class dimension to the difference in treatment between the soldiers whom it is now clear can expect to stand trial (as perhaps they should) over Bloody Sunday, also in 1972, and the rather grander figures who conspired against the Shrewsbury 24. 

Heath, Carr and everyone else who can have been of any real importance are now dead. Even those who were a rung or two below must now be very old, if they are still alive. Any threat to our national security today bears no resemblance to any in 1972.

Even in death, however, the reputations of the great and good must be protected, despite the fact that everyone can now see the truth about them. By contrast, working-class men face imprisonment until they die over an event in the same year.

One or the other, please, and I know which I should prefer. But not both.

Speaking of annulment by primary legislation, Shrewsbury is only the aperitif. With Hillsborough winding its way to its conclusion, just wait for Orgreave.

In that case, such legislation might be enacted with the support of both front benches, rather than see the damage to the reputations of people who were either still alive or simply too great in the Pantheon to have the obvious reality of their character turned into a matter of legal record.