British Furor Over Media Coverage : When Spy Turns Author, It’s Rights vs. Censorship

LONDON — The British have long believed the very strength of their democratic traditions precludes the need for anything as basic as a bill of rights.

But a recent instance of Draconian press censorship more typical of a Third World military dictatorship than a Western democracy has raised new concerns about the limits to freedom of expression here.

The issue, which simmered for months through the lower courts, erupted last month when a controversial ruling by the country’s highest court blocked the British media from reporting excerpts of a former British secret agent’s memoirs already freely available to the public.

The memoirs of one-time British counterintelligence operative Peter Wright, entitled “Spycatcher,” were published recently in the United States, and British Customs has made no attempt to block travelers bringing it into the country.

The book quickly became a best-seller in the United States. Thousands of copies are believed to be circulating privately in Britain.

Indeed, “Spycatcher” is so widely circulated here that Atty. Gen. Patrick Mayhew, the man who has led the government’s fight to suppress the book, recently felt compelled to send a letter to the Times of London challenging an allegation by Wright that Mayhew at one time had close ties with the Communist Party.

“Does the law allow one to deny statements made in ‘Spycatcher’?” the country’s second-ranking law officer asked tentatively in his letter.

But the availability of “Spycatcher” to individual Britons has not swayed Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government, buttressed by the country’s highest judicial body, the Law Lords, which voted 3-2 to uphold the media ban.

The ruling apparently was based on the fact that Wright’s memoirs violate the oath of secrecy that every British agent makes upon joining the service.

“It’s quite simple,” declared a close Thatcher aide. “Our secret agents take an oath to keep secret. What we are trying to do is to make certain they stick to that oath.”

Among Most Secretive

The success of that oath, coupled with an official policy requiring government servants to deny the very existence of the secret service, has made Britain’s intelligence services, known as MI6 and MI5, among the most secretive in the world.

In a country that, more than most, enjoys a rich tradition of respect for the law, the judgment has been subjected to unprecedented criticism. So far, six newspapers have defied it by printing enough from the book to have criminal proceedings launched against them.

“Newspapers and journalists will have to learn to work as if they were in the Soviet Union,” said Andrew Neil, editor of the Sunday Times, which owns the British serialization rights. “The ruling shows the need for a bill of rights to defend freedom of speech in Britain.”

The paper has appealed to the European Commission on Human Rights in Strasbourg, an avenue that it has successfully used previously to overturn British legal rulings limiting press freedom. Britain, as a member of the European Communities, is bound by the rulings of the court.

Other news organizations demonstrated their contempt.

On the day after the Law Lords ruling, the tabloid Daily Mirror published Page 1 photographs of the three judges who voted to uphold the ban; the pictures were printed upside down, next to a headline that read, “You Fools.”

The highly respected weekly newsmagazine, the Economist, made the same point with only slightly more subtlety. Its review of “Spycatcher,” published in editions dated July 25, contained an advisory noting that in all but one of the 170 countries where the magazine circulates, the review appeared in full.

“The exception is Britain, where the book and comment on it have been banned,” the advisory stated. “For our 420,000 readers there, this page is blank--and the law is an ass.”

Following a similar theme, the cover of the satirical magazine “Private Eye” depicted three donkeys, with a nearby man asking them, “Have you come to a decision yet, your lordships?”.

Opposition politicians also joined the criticism.

Former Labor Cabinet minister Anthony Wedgwood Benn read aloud from the book at Hyde Park’s famous Speaker’s Corner, challenging newspapers to report his words.

The Times of London, one of the world’s most prestigious newspapers, gave Benn’s performance front-page prominence, listing the page numbers of Benn’s recitation, but not its content.

Bugging of Hotels

Aside from revealing details of MI5 operations such as the bugging of hotels and foreign embassies in London, the book’s main allegation is that Britain’s former counterintelligence chief, Roger Hollis, was a Soviet double agent. Another allegation is that the secret service used dirty tricks to undermine the Labor Party government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson, which it deemed too leftist.

While most of the details and allegations contained in the book have been aired previously, such information has never come directly from a British agent.

Several self-styled entrepreneurs have made combined weekend trips to New York with bulk purchases of the banned book, then set up sidewalk stands and sold the book at well over double the U.S. listed price of $19.95.

Last week, a man fined $75 for selling the book outside Harrods department store in central London said he had done it for the money, not the principle.

“This is Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, where everybody is told to use their initiative,” he said.

Ordered by Libraries

The book has been ordered by a growing number of public libraries in the country, but there is confusion about the potential consequences. The Library Assn., which represents professional librarians, has asked for government assurances against prosecution of its members, but the government is keeping its options open.

“They’ll just have to get their own legal advice to see if they are within the law,” commented an official at the central government’s Office of Arts and Libraries.

The Thatcher government has also extended the battle against “Spycatcher” beyond Britain’s shores to the Commonwealth, where legal systems rooted in English common law have granted at least preliminary injunctions against newspapers in Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong from printing Wright’s allegations. In Britain itself, the media ban even extends to the publishing of details of the cases outside the country.

The government considered action in the United States, but changed its mind after being advised that it had no chance of success there.

Media Solidarity

Media outlets in several Western European countries have also expressed their solidarity with the British media by printing or broadcasting excerpts from the book. A Danish radio station said Wednesday, for instance, that it would beam readings in English from the book to eastern parts of Britain later this week.

While a strong media reaction was to be expected in Britain after the Law Lords ruling, what has surprised observers here is unprecedented criticism from eminent former members of the judiciary--people who rarely, if ever, speak out against the opinions of sitting judges.

Leslie Scarman, himself a highly respected former Law Lord, said that in focusing on the breach of Wright’s oath of secrecy issue, the Law Lords had “overlooked the more fundamental law providing the right of the public to access to information already in the public domain and the public right of free speech. . . .”

He said the decision confirmed the need in Britain for a bill of rights “to educate all of us as to our true priorities in the law”.

‘Great Bulwarks of Liberty’

Alfred Denning, another respected former judge, felt compelled to quote from one of his judgments extolling freedom of the press as “one of the great bulwarks of liberty”.

Despite the intensity of all this reaction, it remains confined mainly to those directly involved either with the media, the law or civil liberties issues. The British public, long accustomed to a government working in greater secrecy than most democracies, seemed largely uninterested in the issue.

“The great British public doesn’t care one little bit,” said Michael Zander, a well-known lawyer and supporter of a bill of rights for Britain. “They are out yawning on the beach.”