Former United Kingdom Public Servant, Clive Ponting (pictured) has died aged 74, he was the whistle-blower who leaked documents about the sinking of the Argentinian cruiser, General Belgrano, during the Falklands War in 1982.
The following year he was sensationally acquitted by a British jury despite his breach of the UK’s then notorious Official Secrets Act.
Mr Ponting also went on to expose one of Britain’s most unsavoury Cold War cover-ups — the 1952 attempt to develop bio-weapons during which a trawler off the Hebrides was accidentally doused with plague bacteria.
All files on the incident were destroyed, except for a single highly-classified folder, which Mr Ponting discovered three decades later, locked in his Ministry of Defence safe.
Mr Ponting grew up in the anti-authoritarian 1960s, his contempt for the politicians set over him in Whitehall and the Oxbridge types who ran the Public Service sprung from his roots in the West Country.
As a high-flyer, his presentation to Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher of his plans to curb military waste in 1979 was so effective that she asked him to repeat it to the full Cabinet.
Mrs Thatcher retained an unexpectedly soft spot for Mr Ponting, ensuring that his salary was restored to him after his arrest, saying of his treatment: “I think it is a bit rough. He and his family have to live on something.”
When he retired in 2004 he moved to a Greek island, but failing health drove him back first to a house in France, then to Kelso in the Scottish Borders, where he signed up with a surprised but pleased Scottish National Party.
Towards the end of his life, Mr Ponting’s view of the future became bleak.
He wrote privately in 2018: “I can’t believe what is happening in the world — I suppose we were children of the ‘60s, but at least there was hope then. Now there’s very little.”
London, 8 August 2020
