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| Letter: The power of Anthony Lewis's pen | Letter: The power of Anthony Lewis's pen |
| (6 months later) | |
| The influence of the New York Times journalist Anthony Lewis was to be felt in Britain long after his return to the US, and in my case to particularly good effect. Before dawn on 3 December 1998, my home was raided and I was arrested by an organisation known as the Ministry of Defence police. A seven-hour search of my home by six detectives was followed by several more hours of interrogation at a Herefordshire police station. My alleged offence resulted from my book The Irish War, a work in which I had quoted from a classified document, without harm to national security. I was awaiting trial on an Official Secrets Act charge a year later, facing a possible prison sentence, when Lewis devoted his column to my case. | The influence of the New York Times journalist Anthony Lewis was to be felt in Britain long after his return to the US, and in my case to particularly good effect. Before dawn on 3 December 1998, my home was raided and I was arrested by an organisation known as the Ministry of Defence police. A seven-hour search of my home by six detectives was followed by several more hours of interrogation at a Herefordshire police station. My alleged offence resulted from my book The Irish War, a work in which I had quoted from a classified document, without harm to national security. I was awaiting trial on an Official Secrets Act charge a year later, facing a possible prison sentence, when Lewis devoted his column to my case. |
| Headlined At Home Abroad; Big Brother Pounces, it began: "In a book on a long-running civil conflict, the author briefly describes how his government uses surveillance systems to trace suspected enemies of the state. He is arrested, charged with a serious crime, his house ransacked and papers seized. Did this happen in China, or perhaps Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore? No, it happened in Tony Blair's Britain. It is an astonishing story, and it discloses a dirty little secret. The Blair government has authoritarian instincts." | Headlined At Home Abroad; Big Brother Pounces, it began: "In a book on a long-running civil conflict, the author briefly describes how his government uses surveillance systems to trace suspected enemies of the state. He is arrested, charged with a serious crime, his house ransacked and papers seized. Did this happen in China, or perhaps Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore? No, it happened in Tony Blair's Britain. It is an astonishing story, and it discloses a dirty little secret. The Blair government has authoritarian instincts." |
| A week or so later, the attorney general dropped the prosecution. When I asked the prosecutor's office why – since I now wanted my day in court – no one could say. The reason was another official secret. | A week or so later, the attorney general dropped the prosecution. When I asked the prosecutor's office why – since I now wanted my day in court – no one could say. The reason was another official secret. |
| But Lewis was on the right track. In its 13 years in office, New Labour invented an estimated 4,200-plus new criminal offences, including one of attempting to access the wreck of the Titanic without government permission. | But Lewis was on the right track. In its 13 years in office, New Labour invented an estimated 4,200-plus new criminal offences, including one of attempting to access the wreck of the Titanic without government permission. |
| I concluded that the news department of the British embassy in Washington had taken note of what Lewis wrote and routinely reported the bad news back to the Foreign Office in London. There, Blair's spin-conscious team might just have noticed that a political cause celebre was building up in a very embarrassing place. The case was promptly dropped in circumstances that took my defence team entirely by surprise. Thanks, Anthony. | I concluded that the news department of the British embassy in Washington had taken note of what Lewis wrote and routinely reported the bad news back to the Foreign Office in London. There, Blair's spin-conscious team might just have noticed that a political cause celebre was building up in a very embarrassing place. The case was promptly dropped in circumstances that took my defence team entirely by surprise. Thanks, Anthony. |
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