“We were very aware at the time that CND was under political attack. Much of it focused around suggesting we were funded by the Soviet Union. Bruce Kent’s response to this was to offer a prize of £100 to anyone who could produce evidence of Soviet funding.”
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) General Secretary Kate Hudson writes about her participation at the ongoing Spycops Inquiry.
Last month I gave evidence at the ‘Spycops’ Undercover Policing Inquiry that is investigating decades of undercover policing work and its impact on individuals and organisations. CND is a ‘core participant’ in the Inquiry, as we were infiltrated during the 1980s at the height of our mass campaigning against cruise missiles.
We were very aware at the time that CND was under political attack. Much of it focused around suggesting we were funded by the Soviet Union. Bruce Kent’s response to this was to offer a prize of £100 to anyone who could produce evidence of Soviet funding. No one came forward to claim the prize, but wild, completely false accusations abounded.
Initially in the 1980s, attention came from MI5 and Bruce commented that they spied on CND efficiently:
But for brave Cathy Massiter, who left the Service and blew the whistle, we might never have known that nice old Harry Newton, who stuffed envelopes as a volunteer, was actually a government informer. Not that there were many secrets to reveal. I used to chat with him over the sink at 11 Goodwin Street, and for my pains he reported me to his superiors as a pseudo -marxist, which sounds even worse than being a real one.
But the truth is that British intelligence had concluded before 1983 that CND did not represent a threat to national security, and, as we revealed in our evidence, infiltration of CND was continued, not by MI5 but by undercover police working to advance the government’s own political purposes. Information gathered by undercover officers of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) was passed to Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine and his Defence Secretariat 19 (DS19) unit, which distorted and manipulated information to smear and discredit CND.
DS19 was set up ahead of the 1983 general election and at that time Labour’s policy was in support of unilateral nuclear disarmament. Heseltine’s main angle was that CND’s aim was the advancement of communism – complete nonsense of course. But these dirty tricks were used in particular during the election to undermine and discredit – by association with CND – our founder member and Labour Party leader Michael Foot. And in turn this impacted on the outcome of that election. Completely outrageous and anti-democratic behaviour!
We look forward to the findings of the Inquiry.
- You can find out more about the Undercover Police Inquiry here.
- Kate Hudson is the General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).
- You can follow Kate on Twitter/X; and follow the CND on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X.
