THE ’60S HAD been an eventful period in the history of the Branch, not least because of the appointment, in 1966, of a new head, who was to become a legend in his own time.
Ferguson George Donaldson Smith was born in 1914 and died in September 2013, a few days short of his ninety-ninth birthday. He joined the Metropolitan Police in 1935 and Special Branch a year later. During the war he volunteered to serve in the Royal Air Force and flew as a navigator in Lancaster bombers, emerging, bloodied but very much alive, with a Distinguished Flying Cross and bar to his credit. He rejoined the Branch and successfully dealt with a number of high-profile cases before his appointment, in 1966, as head of the Branch with the rank of commander. He had 300 men under his command, many of whom, like him, had served with distinction in the war and were accustomed to seeing action and making decisions. These qualities would stand the Branch in good stead in the difficult years to come.
In 1970, Commander Smith was promoted to Deputy Assistant Commissioner and three new posts of commander were created in Special Branch, reflecting not only its growth in establishment but also its increasing stature within the Metropolitan Police Force. A quietly spoken Scotsman, ‘Fergie’, as he was affectionately known to his troops, had a charismatic personality and was particularly concerned for the welfare of his younger officers. He retired in 1972; it is an indication of the regard that all ranks held for him that over 100 former members of Special Branch attended his funeral on 30 September 2013.
In 1967, the Branch moved into yet another home when the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police was transferred to a modern office block in Victoria Street; this was to be its final resting place. Special Branch was allocated the seventeenth and eighteenth floors in the taller of the two blocks that comprised the building – a far cry from its original accommodation in a dilapidated office situated above a public urinal. The move was much needed, for the frequent increases in establishment had led to overcrowding, although open-plan offices were not to everyone’s liking. More office space enabled a training section to be set up, which included a lecture room – an essential provision, as MPSB had started a programme of training courses for officers from provincial forces who were setting up their own Special Branches.
The ’70s opened with two more espionage cases, both involving Czech intelligence officers. The first was unique in that, for the first time, a Member of Parliament was prosecuted for offences against the Official Secrets Acts. On 14 January 1970, Will Owen, Labour MP for Morpeth, was arrested by Detective Superintendent ‘Jock’ Wilson acting on information supplied by MI5 that he had been in the pay of the Czech intelligence service for nearly ten years. In his trial lasting thirteen days, the prosecution alleged that Owen had been supplying the Czech intelligence service with classified information from 1961 and had received money from them between 1967 and 1969, but the jury believed his story that he had never passed classified material to the Czechs and he was acquitted on 6 May.1
The following year, Nicholas Anthony Prager, an electrical engineer from Rotherham, was arrested on 31 January by Detective Chief Superintendent Craig of the West Riding Constabulary. Although liaison was maintained with MPSB, it was the local force that dealt with the case throughout, a sign of the increasing independence of provincial Special Branches. Prager was sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment on two charges under the Official Secrets Act 1911.2
In August 1970, a small bomb was detonated at the home of the Commissioner, Sir John Waldron. The incident, although comparatively minor, led to significant developments in the Yard’s response to terrorism. A time-honoured CID maxim, ‘When in trouble or in doubt, form a squad and run about’ – a paraphrase of a popular adage – was put into operation and a joint C1/SB unit, comprising a Detective Inspector, George Mould, two DSs from C1, two DSs from SB, Derek Brice and Tony Greenslade, and a SB DC, John Daniel, was put together without delay. The SB contingent busied themselves to learn about explosives and the principles of bomb-making, visiting the ICI Explosives Factory in Scotland, availing themselves of the knowledge and experience of Don Lidstone, a bomb expert at Woolwich Arsenal, and establishing a close rapport with the four explosives officers employed by the Metropolitan Police.
It was soon established that an anarchist group, styling itself ‘the Angry Brigade’ (hitherto unknown to Special Branch), was responsible for the explosion at the Commissioner’s home and, later, for a series of small explosions, some twenty-five or so in total, which continued throughout 1971, commencing with one at the home of Robert Carr, at that time the Employment Secretary, on 12 January. This was to trigger immediate reaction from the police, who drafted in reinforcements to the ‘Bomb Squad’, which was to be controlled by a Commander, Ernie Bond. Under him were two sections: one, under Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Habershon, was staffed exclusively by mainstream CID officers and functioned as a prosecution unit; the other, comprising Special Branch officers headed by Conrad Dixon (now a chief superintendent), and including DCI Peter Curtis, three DIs and a number of DCs, would, hopefully, supply the prosecution unit with the information necessary to make arrests and secure convictions. A Special Branch chief inspector, Riby Wilson, was appointed to ensure effective liaison between the two sections.
It soon became apparent that there was little intelligence in SB records to assist in identifying the individuals responsible for the explosions and, in the absence of reliable informants in the anarchist fraternity, almost total reliance was placed on surveillance. An observation team, headed by Brice and Greenslade, used their own vehicles to carry out extensive surveillance in north London, which soon bore fruit. It was established that a group of anarchists was funding their terrorist activities through an extensive fraud operation involving stolen credit cards; a small joint C1/SB team pursued an investigation into their activities. The information that had pointed the surveillance team in the right direction was supplied by Jack Prescott, a prisoner in Albany Prison, who had boasted to a fellow prisoner of his connections with members of the Angry Brigade. Under intensive interrogation by Habershon and other members of the Bomb Squad, Prescott let slip information that led to the arrest of a total of twelve members of the Brigade, of whom five, including Prescott, were eventually convicted. Each one was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment (Prescott’s original sentence of fifteen years was reduced to ten years on appeal), despite the traditional allegations of fabricated police statements and planted evidence.
The Bomb Squad had effectively put an end to this anti-establishment campaign, through efficient organisation and professional police work in which Special Branch had played a not insignificant role. This new arrangement, combining the investigative ability of the CID with the intelligence-gathering skills of Special Branch, was adapted to deal with other terrorist campaigns, notably the mainland activities of the IRA and, much later, of Islamist extremists. As ‘the Anti-Terrorist Branch’, it was to enjoy considerable success in bringing to justice scores of terrorists and served to establish an excellent bridge between the mainline CID and Special Branch.
In their efforts to establish the identities of the members of the Angry Brigade, and subsequently to monitor their movements, the Special Branch intelligence section of the Bomb Squad soon came to realise their poor expertise in the field of surveillance. The lack of adequate and suitable transport for this specialised form of detection was partially overcome by officers using their own cars, and this practice continued for several years. In other ways, too, this small section improved their techniques to such an extent that the team was retained as a unit to assist the various squads within SB as and when required. The need for a permanent surveillance squad was identified and so a much larger and more sophisticated unit developed.
While the Bomb Squad was busy pursuing members of the Angry Brigade, other members of the Branch were busy investigating two more cases passed to them by MI5 as a result of the defection of Oleg Lyalin, a Soviet intelligence officer. The first related to two Greek Cypriot brothers-in-law, Kyriacos Costi and Constantinos Martianou, who were accused of various offences under the Official Secrets Acts. Although they had received training and spying paraphernalia from Lyalin, there was no evidence that they had passed any classified material to the Russians, they were merely required to pass on information received by them. On 7 December 1971, at the Old Bailey, they received sentences of four and six years’ imprisonment respectively.3
The second involved a Malayan subject, Siroj Hussein Abdoolcader, who was convicted at the Central Criminal Court on 8 February 1972 of offences under the Official Secrets Acts; he had supplied the Russian intelligence services with details of cars in which they were interested, obtained by him through his employment with the vehicle registration authorities. The registration details that the Russians were interested in related to cars used by Special Branch and MI5 surveillance officers, which were stored in a special file at the Greater London Council. He was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. Both cases were handled by Detective Chief Inspector Gordon Fryer.4
Following Lyalin’s defection, but not resulting from it, yet another espionage case surfaced in October 1971 with the arrest of Leonard Michael Hinchliffe, an FCO administration officer based at the British embassy in Algiers. Having confessed to his ambassador that he had been passing classified material to Soviet intelligence officers while stationed in Khartoum, he was ordered home and, shortly after his arrival in London, was detained by SB officers, taken to Bow Street Police Station and charged with offences under the Official Secrets Acts. He appeared at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court the following day and was remanded in custody for a week, a procedure that was repeated regularly until 17 April 1972, when he pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to a number of counts under the Official Secrets Acts and was sentenced to a total of ten years’ imprisonment.
No prosecution under the Official Secrets Acts is simple, but this was a comparatively straightforward case as Hinchliffe had already acknowledged his guilt when interviewed by his superiors in Algiers. The offences occurred during Hinchliffe’s service at the British embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, between 1970 and 1971, when he was contacted by a Soviet intelligence officer named Andrei who threatened to inform Mrs Hinchliffe of a liaison he had had with a married woman in the Sudan some months earlier.
Although the accused did not contest the charges, there was a vast amount of enquiry work to be done by the inquiry team led by DCI Gordon Seage, assisted by DI Malcolm Moffatt (who carried out the principal interviews), DS Geoff Battye (shorthand writer), DS Geoff Craft (financial enquiries), DS Rod Bennett (legal matters) and DC Steve Cracknell (general factotum). A Foreign Office security official, who assisted in a liaison capacity, played an essential role in assessing the damage caused to British interests by Hinchliffe’s treachery in passing classified material to the Russians. For once this was an espionage case in which MI5 played no part.
Despite Hinchliffe’s confession, it was essential from an evidential point of view that every aspect of his admission be substantiated. This required statements to be taken from the staff at the embassies in Khartoum and Algiers. DI Moffatt and DS Battye welcomed this escape from winter in London to sunshine in the Middle East. As a consolation for those left behind, they brought back gifts of ‘Khartoum Club’ ties (black with small pictures of General Gordon astride a camel).
Every week Hinchliffe had to be escorted from Brixton Prison to Bow Street Magistrates’ Court for a remand hearing. The trip was undertaken in a police car with four SB officers in attendance, normally a routine procedure, but one morning during the rush hour an incident occurred that illustrated that even the most mundane duties require thoughtful planning, constant vigilance and a degree of luck. Outside Brixton Underground Station, the car carrying Hinchliffe was hit by another vehicle. Fortunately nobody was hurt and uniformed police were quickly on the scene to take away the damaged car and convey prisoner and escort to the court, but had this been a contrived collision in an attempt to effect Hinchliffe’s escape, or if the escorts had been seriously injured, enabling the prisoner to get away, an inevitable inquiry would have been held and undoubtedly undeserved criticism would have been levelled at the police driver, although the resulting police inquiry found him blameless.5
Not all cases ended in success (for the Branch); The Hackney Arms Job, which was enacted late in 1971, was just such an operation. It foundered due to an unfortunate combination of factors, not least of which was the involvement of an informant, a species of the human race which, although indispensable in certain situations, is notoriously prone to mendacity.
John Parker had supplied SB with low-level information on Irish matters for a number of years and, in 1969, introduced a Branch officer operating under cover to a group of Irish nationalist supporters from Belfast living in the East End of London. According to Parker, the group intended to open a clothes shop at 257 Wick Road, Hackney, and send the profits to a relief fund for needy republicans in Northern Ireland. Special Branch believed that they were in fact members of the IRA and were planning to use their drapery business as a cover for clandestine IRA activities in Britain. Surveillance was set up in a convenient observation post and their telephone was tapped.
On the morning of 15 November 1971, premises in Sidcup used by the Kent Sea Cadets as an armoury were broken into and a small quantity of dummy rifles and eight bayonets were stolen. Suspicion fell on the group, two of whom flew home to Belfast the same afternoon; one of them, Martin Crawford, was promptly detained by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Special Branch and made a statement in which he confessed to taking part in the raid, adding that ‘Edward’ Parker was also part of the raiding team. On 17 November, the remaining members of the group (Marjorie Allen, Edmund Pettigrew, Laurence McGrandles, Patrick O’Sullivan and Donal de Faoit), with the significant exception of Parker, were all arrested at their shop by a posse of armed police officers and charged with the illegal possession of firearms.
At their eventual trial at the Central Criminal Court in June 1972, the five were joined in the dock by Martin Crawford, who had been escorted back from Northern Ireland that day by SB officers. His appearance was a waste of time and expense for, at the outset of the day’s proceedings, prosecuting counsel informed the Court, without giving a reason, that no evidence was being offered against him and he was discharged. The trial was marked by a further bizarre twist when, three days later, the Director of Public Prosecutions’ representative made the dramatic announcement that, ‘After considering the evidence over the weekend, it has been decided that it would not be proper for the prosecution to continue.’ The police refused to comment other than to say that to do so ‘would prejudice the interest of the state’. The prosecution also made no reply to accusations that the weapons had been planted by two police informants who had insinuated themselves into the group.6
1 The Times, 7 May 1970
2 Peter Rawlinson, A Price Too High: An Autobiography (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), p. 209
3 Evening Standard, 7 December 1971
4 The Times, 5 October 1971, 8 December 1971 and 9 February 1972; Rawlinson, A Price Too High, pp. 205–206
5 Rawlinson, A Price Too High, pp. 207–208; Recollections of DC Cracknell; The Times, 18 April 1972
6 Allason, The Branch, pp. 153–4; The Times, 9 November 1971 and 13 June 1972