Thatcher Foes Protest Seizure of BBC Film
Opposition politicians condemned Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government today after police raided BBC offices in Scotland and seized film intended for a series on British intelligence activities.
Special Branch detectives, in a 28-hour operation in Glasgow over the weekend, took away film and documents relating to a projected television series by the British Broadcasting Corp. called “Secret Society.”
Opposition Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock labeled the raid “deeply offensive to the standards of freedom” while centrist Social Democratic Party leader David Owen said it was an abuse of police power.
Episode Canceled
The raid came after a BBC decision to cancel one episode of the series concentrating on government plans to launch a $760-million Zircon spy satellite over the Soviet Union.
The left-wing New Statesman magazine published material on the Zircon spy satellite in an article by journalist Duncan Campbell, who scripted the BBC series.
His home and the New Statesman offices were raided by police last week, and today Campbell described the whole affair as “an unprecedented attack on the freedom of the press.”
The weekend raid and its political fallout have provoked a fresh crisis in the acrimonious relationship between the government and the state-chartered BBC, which Thatcher’s Conservative Party accuses of left-wing bias in its news and current-affairs coverage.
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