UNITED KINGDOM
The revelation that former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (pictured) ordered a list to be drawn up of “subversive” Public Servants is resonating today, with the largest Public Service union demanding to know whether the list still exists.
The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union says it will write to the Cabinet Office to ask whether any of its members have been caught up in the operation, which was led by the Government and MI5 in the 1980s.
A newly released National Archives file showed that the security services monitored 1,420 Whitehall staff, including 733 people who were identified as Trotskyists and a further 607 identified as communists.
Alongside the PCS, Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, Jon Trickett demanded transparency over whether PS employees were still spied on by the Government.
Although the list, drawn up during the Cold War, largely concentrated on left-wingers, there were also 45 people said to be fascists and 35 listed as Welsh or Scottish Nationalists, “black or Asian racial extremists” or anarchists.
MI5 also held similar lists of suspect Local Councillors and active trade unionists.
General Secretary of the PCS, Mark Serwotka said it was truly shocking that the Government could not confirm whether his members remained under surveillance.
He said the story revealed “the shocking depths the Thatcher Government and subsequent Tory administrations went to suppress legitimate trade union activity by ruining the lives of thousands of workers”.
“We will be writing to the Cabinet Office to seek information on whether a blacklist continues to operate and will take up the cases of any members caught up in this appalling form of State surveillance,” Mr Serwotka said.
Mr Trickett demanded to know how long the blacklist had been maintained.
“How many Civil Servants were denied career progression because of a paranoia that ran to the top of the Thatcher Government?” Mr Trickett asked.
“Former and current Civil Servants must be deeply unsettled.”
London, 28 July 2018
