Subversión industrial en la Gran Bretaña de principios de la guerra fría
| Autor | Christian Schlaepfer |
| Páginas | 30-59 |
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Counter-subversion in Britain ceased to be a major concern of the UK in-telligence community in the 1980s. Nevertheless, many of the issues and challenges British governments dealt with in the early Cold War are as timely as ever and some valuable parallels can be drawn from a study of early Cold War industrial subversión and how it was countered. For exam-ple, the extent and limitation of legitimate surveillance or the problem of how to identify dangerous individuáis among members of a per se legitimate group — be it political, religious, or other — are questions that bear as much relevance to counter-intelligence or counter-terrorism today as they did to counter-subversion at the time. This article will explore how early Cold War British governments coped with such challenges and how they were supported by the intelligence community in this endeavour.
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), in the early Cold War, was increasingly suspected to be engaging in various attempts to sub-vert the British state and industrial subversión was a central dimensión of this. The CPGB, in comparison with many of its European counterparts, was very small and politically insignificant even though it enjoyed its most successful years during and after the Second World War; the wartime coa-lition following Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 had led to a steep membership increase and the CPGB had managed to secure a second seat in the House of Commons in the first post-war elections. Despite this numeric 'insignificance', however, the government took the do-mestic Communist threat from 'below' very seriously indeed. Particularly the party's influence in trade unions — in spite of its small representation in absolute terms (TNA CAB 21/4018, Working Party on Subversive Ac-tivities: miscellaneous correspondence', 'Communist penetration of trade unions', March 1948; Thompson, 1992: 7G)1 — fuelled fears of industrial disruption. Such fears were by no means limited to the post-war period only. Large scale disruptions from at least the 1926 general strike onwards through to the miners' strike in 1984-5 proved that such action could seriously affect the entire country's stability and potentially pose a real threat to national security. In the immediate post-war period, the twin challenges
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of economic recovery and the onset of the Cold War made it a particularly acute and serious threat. Simultaneously, the landslide victory of the La-bour Party and the appointment of numerous former trade unionists into top government positions — many of whom already had government ex-perience from during the war — not only transformed industrial relations but also the way in which the Communist subversive threat to British industry was assessed and countered by the government and the intelligence community.
Countering subversión was the responsibility of the British Security Service (more commonly known as MI5). It collaborated closely with the pólice in collecting intelligence on the role and significance of Communist activists in strikes. It analysed the threat based on such intelligence and on its extensive records on the CPGB and advised the government. In fulfill-ing this task MI 5 was facing the challenge — ubiquitous in domestic intelligence work — of balancing the protection of civil liberties and privacy with national security. Intrusión into the personal lives of many Commu-nists was necessary, but the governments, especially under Attlee, were careful to avoid excesses like Senator McCarthy's witch-hunt and methods they considered 'objectionable' (TNA CAB 128/20, C.M. (51) 58, 'Con-clusions: Atomic Energy Security', 4 September 1951). With regards to industrial subversión, the authorities had to balance their responsibilities towards workers and their grievances on one hand and the possibility of instigation of industrial unrest for political purposes on the other hand. In this, intelligence provided by MI5 and Special Branch was crucial as it al-lowed the government to assess clearly what the real extent of the threat and more importantly its limitations were. The public perception of MI5's role in countering subversión, however, has been negative. Certainly since the 1984-5 miners' strike it was suspected to have insufficient respect for civil liberties and was instead organizing 'dirty tricks' against the miners (Andrew, 2009: 677-8). This article seeks to explore what the actual role of the Security Service was in the effort of successive British governments in tackling the subversive threat to industry and how it influenced policy formulation.
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The Joint Intelligence Committee QIC) carried out an assessment of the Communist threat to Britain and the West as early as 1946. It warned that the Communists had managed to obtain high positions in a number of un-ions and that it was the clear intention of the party to encourage its mem-bers to put themselves forward in elections. The party therefore had a posi-tion which was 'far stronger than would appear from its actual membership in the industrial sphere'. Bob Darke, a trade unionist and former Communist, confirmed in his memoirs published in 1953 that it was 'not necessary for the Party to have a majority membership of the unions. It is necessary to have a hardcore who never miss a unión meeting' (Darke, 1953: 52). The JIC, however, maintained that thus far the CPGB had avoided antagonising the trade unión leadership and had 'clearly shown its intention to work by constitutional means'. Despite this, those 14,000 members who had been recruited befo re 1939 and stood by the party during its revolutionary and anti-war phases befo re 1941 ought to be regarded as prepared to make use of revolutionary and unconstitutional means (TNA CAB 81/133 JIC 'The spread of Communism throughout the world and the extent of its direction from Moscow', 'Annex: Part I: Extent of Communism throughout the Brit-ish Commonwealth', 23 September 1946). The issue of the CPGB's influ-ence on the trade unions was seen as sufficiently important to merit its own sepárate JIC report. It described the CPGB's objective as 'to capture the Trade Union movement by skilful penetration and swing it decisively to the left.' A hard-core of the party, estimated at c. 10,000 members, was believed to contain numerous potential 'enemy propagandists, spies and saboteurs' (TNA, CAB 81/134, JIC 'The spread of Communism throughout the world and the extent of its direction from Moscow', 'Annex II: The Communist Party as a fifth column in the event of war with Russia', 18 Novem-ber 1948). At first, the JIC was worried primarily about the Communist threat in case of war with the Soviet Union. The penetration of industry by members of the CPGB would enable the party to disrupt the British war effort substantially — especially as CPGB influence was greatest in engi-neering and transport, both of which were vital to any successful military campaign (TNA CAB 81/134, JIC 'The spread of Communism throughout the world and the extent of its direction from Moscow', 'Annex II: The
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Communist Party as a fifth column in the event of war with Russia', 18 November 1948). The threat, however, rapidly ceased to be limited to the military context only. With the beginning of the Cold War it became in-creasingly a concern of industrial policy and peace-time subversión.
In Britain, the decade following the Second World War started with a period of relative industrial peace that was nevertheless overshadowed ini-tially by intense insecurities about the economic stability and future of the country. Britain had to contend with serious and continuing difficulties of balance of payments. The war had made Britain the most indebted country in the world, consuming about a quarter of Britain's wealth, and the do-mestic war production had been increased at the expense of overseas invest-ments. The 1947 sterling crisis demonstrated how fragile and vulnerable the British economy was. Industrial disruption represented a very real threat to an economy already facing serious problems if it wanted to maintain full-employment and living standards while pushing through the ambitious social reforms. Particularly sensitive were disruptions in the docks which hampered import and export — only exacerbating the strains on the balance of payments. The suspicion that Communists might be exploiting legitímate grievances of workers in the docks and elsewhere to realize political and ultimately subversive aims resonated powerfully in these circumstances. Such suspicions were confirmed by the large-scale Communist-led strikes in France and Italy that erupted in 1947. Although the CPGB was not nearly as strong as many of its European counter-parts, British officials feared that because of the CPGB's disproportionally high representation in the unión offices and their very active membership, the relatively small number of Communist trade unions would nevertheless skilfully be able to exploit legitímate strikes for political ends.
Officially, the CPGB was pursuing a policy of co-operation with the government and trade unions after Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, and for some time after 1945 this cooperation continued. In fact, the Communist Party even applied once more for affiliation with the Labour Party in 1946. Despite the application's failure, the party still continued to support Labour candidates as late as September 1947. It even op-posed certain industrial action, as for example in the Yorkshire coal fields (Laybourn, 1999: 125). But their relations with the government and espe-cially the trade unión leadership deteriorated...
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