785 Court Report Australia

First  viewed : 18  December  1986

This  was  a  late  night  Channel  Four  programme  providing  a  speedy  dramatisation  of  recent  events  in  a  Sydney  courtroom  where  the  British  government  was  trying  to  prevent  the  publication  of  a  memoir  by  a  former  M15  officer  Peter  Wright. Wright  now  lived  in  Tasmania, but  dissatisfied  with  his  pension, he  decided  to  publish  his  account  despite  having  signed  a  lifelong  confidentiality  agreement  on  commencing  employment. The  British  government  brought  a  case  in  Australia  that  they  should  co-operate  in  suppressing  the  book  because  of  this  breach  of  contract.

The  Spycatcher  affair  became  a  cause  celebre  for  the  left  because  of  Wright's  claims  that  fellow  agents  were  active  in  a  plot  to  bring  down  Harold  Wilson's  Labour  government.  To them, that  was  obviously  the  reason  Thatcher  wanted  it  banned .Even  those  of  us  in  the  centre  were  enjoying  the  sight  of  Thatcher  not  getting  everything  her  own  way

The  Australian  court  case  which  the  UK  government  lost  is  remembered  for  two  main  reasons. One  is  that  defending  Wright  gave  a  big  public  platform  to  an  ambitious  young  lawyer  named  Malcolm  Turnbull  who  is  now  sitting  pretty  as  Australia's  Prime  Minister. The  proceedings  also  left  their  mark  when  the  UK  government's  fall  guy, the  Cabinet  Secretary  Sir  Robert  Armstrong, conceded  to  Turnbull  that  governments  sometimes  had  to  be  "economical  with  the  truth", a  phrase  that  is  now  in  every  day  use.

After  the  defeat  in  Sydney, imported  copies  winged  their  way  into  the  UK  and  Labour  MP  Dale  Campbell-Savours  started  reading  extracts  in  the  Commons  to  get  it  into  Hansard  but  the  government  fought  on   for  the  next  eighteen  months  to  stop  it  being  published  in  England . On  the  day  of  its  final  defeat  in  1988,  a  special  Panorama  programme  was   broadcast. It  revealed  the  outcome  of  their  own  investigation  into  Spycatcher  in  which  a  cornered  Wright  admitted  that  his  headline  claims  were  sensational  exaggerations  to  generate  sales. The  infamous  anti-Labour  plot  amounted  to  nothing  more  than  a  lunchtime  pub  conversation.

What  was  that  about  sound  and  fury  and  signifying  nothing. ?