Shrewsbury 24 (Release of Papers)

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

No, I am not going to give way at the moment. It is very important that people should understand the conditions that applied at the time. People who were going about their ordinary activities were subjected to intimidation. I became the hon. Member for Cannock and Burntwood in 1983 and I saw constituents of mine who were trying to go to work in Littleton colliery having bags of urine thrown at them by striking miners from south Wales.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

No, I will not give way. This was in the day of the flying pickets. These people would go around the country supporting trade unions that were engaged in that kind of intimidation, even though they themselves had absolutely nothing to do with the strike or industry in question.

The statistics make interesting reading, because it was at this time after the second world war that Britain was going substantially down the tubes. Successive Conservative Governments had failed not only to turn back but to arrest the ratchet of socialism that had driven through this country in the immediate post-war years. [Interruption.] I see that that has huge support on the Opposition Benches.

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[Mr Anderson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I give way to the hon. Gentleman who proposed the motion.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

The hon. Gentleman obviously knows the answer to that question. I have no idea. I was not involved in the trial and I was not at the trial, but I was involved in the public debate at the time.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I will give way to the hon. Lady in a minute.

I remind Opposition Members that in Margaret Thatcher’s excellent book, “The Downing Street Years”, she wrote about the Government’s attempts to deal with trade union legislation. At one point she says that

“when a dispute did occur the trade union was able to exercise what amounted to intimidation over its members—‘lawful intimidation’ in the unhappy phrase coined by Labour’s former Attorney-General, Sam Silkin.”

At the highest levels of the Labour party at that time, such practices were basically endorsed. I say to right hon. and hon. Members on the Opposition Benches that the country has moved on. If the Labour party wishes to occupy the Government Benches once again—I very much hope that it will not—its Members must understand that the public out there do not want to see any return to such behaviour or to hear any sympathy expressed for it.

The hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) has been extremely persistent and I am delighted to give way to her.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is talking about the dispute. The motion is about the request for papers. The Government cite national security as a reason for not disclosing those papers. What does national security have to do with an industrial dispute?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I will address that point in one moment. I only wish to make two further points and one of them will address the hon. Lady’s question.

Robert Carr, who became a peer in the other place—I will continue to refer to it as the other place, Madam Deputy Speaker—was accused of conniving with the police and the security forces at the behest of the construction industry. That is a conspiracy theory. Those of us who knew Robert Carr cannot imagine that he was anything other than a charming, polite and reasonable Home Secretary. I do not think that he was in the business of conniving.

Let me conclude by coming to the point that has been raised a number of times.

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[Steve Rotheram]

That is a good point, and as things develop more and more information is known. Some further information has been gathered by Eileen Turnbull, and I am sure other Members will refer to that in their contributions.

On 20 September 1972, a letter was sent to all NFBTE regional secretaries around the country from its head office in London. It was headed “Intimidation Dossier”. The dossier was presented to the Home Secretary, Robert Carr, who had previously been Secretary of State for Employment and overseen the introduction of the contentious Industrial Relations Act 1971. Out of 85 instances of alleged intimidation and violence detailed in the dossier, only six related to north Wales. Despite the undeniable fact that most incidents occurred elsewhere, the Home Secretary instructed the chief constables of West Mercia and Gwynedd police forces to carry out an inquiry into picketing in north Wales during the strike. Let us not forget that, as was said earlier, none of the pickets was cautioned or arrested on the day, the unions did not receive any complaints from the police about the conduct of the pickets, and photographic evidence shows that the police were present and mingling freely with strikers. Some police had their hands in their pockets—hardly intimidation.

We now know that of the 900 statements taken, 600 were disregarded by the authorities, presumably because they failed to corroborate what the police hoped they would say. On 11 October 1972, Robert Carr told this House that in his opinion there was no deficiency in the law as it stood, and the problem lay with enforcement. In other words, he was pressuring the police who he believed had failed to do their job properly. A few days later, the then Attorney-General, Sir Peter Rawlinson QC, gave a speech to the Tory 1922 committee in which he used strikingly similar language. Following that, we know that of the 200 or so pickets identified, just 24 were carefully selected for a political show trial at Shrewsbury Crown court, and charged with the offence of intimidation under section 7 of the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

As my hon. Friend may be aware, criminal lawyers in the legal community know that conspiracy charges are always used when there is no evidence of a substantive proper charge. It is the last resort.

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[Simon Hughes]

No, I want to try to be helpful, and out of respect for the hon. Member for Blaydon, let me, please, unusually for me, be uninterrupted; I want to respond to as much as I can.

May I tell the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) and other colleagues that, not just as the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, I completely understand the issue to do with health and safety and decent wages generally and in the building industry in particular? I have campaigned on this issue. I understand the dreadful health and safety record in the past. Strong trade unions, particularly in the building industry over the past 40 years, were hugely important in ensuring that wages and conditions were better, which, thank God, they are now. I pay tribute to those who were part of that effort.

At the end of this episode, there were convictions for affray, unlawful assembly and conspiracy to intimidate. They are serious offences. They have led to people going to prison. I will return in a second to how the justice issues may be addressed. I know about the intensity of people’s views. I know about the efforts made to get the petition to the current number of signatures. I am clear what people hope I can say.

The Government are, of course, committed to transparency. We are agreed that as much information as possible should be in the public domain. The public would expect that, and the principles of the Freedom of Information Act, enacted by the Labour Government and now fully in force, are ones that we are expected to implement.

Most of the papers that relate to the Shrewsbury 24 are already available in the National Archives for public inspection. Of the records that date back to 1972, over 90% are available. Only 625 documents, I am told, are not yet publicly available—[Hon. Members: “Only.”]—across the Government, in relation to that year. The only material held by the Cabinet Office that is not available and that is the information at the heart of this debate is one report and three paragraphs—one in each of three separate documents—which I shall return to later.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Will the Minister give way?

[Simon Hughes]

No. If I have time a bit later, I will, but I am trying to make sure that all the information is on the record.

There has already been a decision, taken in principle by the Labour Government and implemented by this Government, to reduce the age at which historical records are made available. The period is coming down now from 30 to 20 years. [Interruption.] No “buts”. In parallel with that, we are reducing the maximum duration of the exemptions from disclosure from 30 to 20 years. That has started this year, and the period will also reduce, so that people in future will not have to wait as long to see records. So those are good changes, but let us be specific about the matters that relate to the request for these papers today.

The current law is, and the consistent practice has been, that under section 34 of the Public Records Act 1958, public bodies are allowed but not required to retain records after they would usually be required to be transferred to the National Archives—so, after the old 30-year period, which is reducing. Retention is allowed where it is necessary for administrative purposes or for “any other special reason”.

Since 1967, when Lord Gardiner was Lord Chancellor in the Labour Government, all Lord Chancellors—five Labour, five Conservative—have been satisfied that where the transfer of security and intelligence records would prejudice national security, they can be retained on the “other special reason” basis. That approval is recorded in an instrument, signed by the Lord Chancellor, which is more commonly referred to as the security instrument.

The current approval that governs security and intelligence records was, as colleagues have said—the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) referred to it—given by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) when he was Lord Chancellor on 19 December 2011. That does indeed last until 2021. That is public; it has been on the website. However, these papers are due to be reviewed by the Cabinet Office for their security and sensitivity every 10 years, as all other papers are, and they will fall to be reviewed next year, in 2015. I should like to tell the hon. Member for Blaydon respectfully that I suggest that he and his colleagues, who have a rightful interest in their being revealed, address that office and that deadline, and I will personally take an interest in this issue in the time up to next year, when they fall to be reviewed for their security.

What are the specific documents? One is a Security Service report, and the other three are single paragraphs, each of which has been redacted from letters and memorandums. The first was in a letter from the director general of the Security Service to the Cabinet Secretary dated 10 January 1975, which is public apart from one redacted paragraph. It refers—it is not a secret—to the fact that the assessment was that there was Communist party activity in relation to the campaign. The second was in a minute dated 13 January 1975 from the Cabinet Office to No. 10, which has been released apart from a single paragraph. The third was in a minute from No. 10 to the Cabinet Office dated 15 January 1975.