No-one likes to be the victim of a leak. The very word is suggestive of how a leak is an unnatural breach in what should be a sound vessel, whether a company board, a sports club or cabinet government. If a leak makes the press, chances are that someone looks bad or is angered. The leader of the organisation that has suffered the leak, whether a chief executive, football manager, or prime minister, looks bad because it looks as if they do not have control over their staff. And the leak implies a loss of control – staff put the leak to the press above their duty to the leader – which makes the leader look weak, quite apart from the leader having to deal with the leak. Hence a business, a sports club or a government take a dim view of a leak, as shown by files at the National Archives at Kew.
Take file Prem 15/643 for example. It begins with an article in The Sun, bylined an exclusive by the newspaper’s political editor Anthony Shrimsley. A major reversal of the government’s ruthless ‘lame ducks’ government policy will be announced, he predicted on November 17, 1971. Shrimsley understood that the Cabinet had decided to save the Post Office’s Giro banking, even though it was loss-making. As background; the Conservatives had taken power in June 1970, seeking to be different from Labour in industrial policy in particular, and in general. The new Heath government had a policy of not ‘bailing out failing industries’ as Shrimsley put it. Giro had 3500 workers mostly on Merseyside; and unemployment was too high already at one million nationally.
This news, if accurate, was embarrassing, because as the Sun’s editorial said, what about the ‘lame ducks’ that had been allowed to go out of business? The same day, a memo went from civil servant Robert Armstrong, principal private secretary to the prime minister, to Miss JM Grose of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, which in pre-privatisation days was in charge of the Post Office which ran the country’s telephones. As the Sun had reported, the Cabinet decision would be a ‘victory’ for the Minister of Posts, Christopher Chataway (as an aside, the famed pace-setter for four minute mile runner Roger Bannister of 1950s Oxford).
Armstrong memo’ed: “The article seems to be rather firmer and fuller than can be expected simply on the basis of intelligent speculation and it seems possible that there may have been some kind of leak.” The ‘PM’ – Edward Heath – was thinking about an inquiry. Miss Grose, the private secretary to the minister at the Ministry of Posts, wrote back with care on November 19: “… it is certainly not impossible that this article was generated by some kind of a leak. On the other hand by no means certain,” and she went on to give other possible reasons. Such as; it could have been inspired guesswork by the journalist; after all, he would have a 50-50 chance of being right. Lobby journalists had been told days before that they could expect a ‘definitive statement’. As another aside, the ‘lobby system’ was whereby journalists were briefed anonymously about government business, without naming sources.
Miss Grose added that ‘particular precautions were taken here’, that is, at the Ministry, ‘to safeguard against any leak, that the few people who knew including a very limited number in the Post Office were individually warned about the importance of avoiding anything of this kind and that none of these so far as we have been able to discover even knows Mr Shrimsley still less had any contact whatever with him.” She summed up for her minister that the Ministry had considered ‘instituting an inter-departmental leak procedure in this case as soon as we saw the article’. But because of doubt about whether it really was a leak, the Ministry decided against.
Armstrong wrote a note to the PM’s office: ‘What do you think? I suspect the Post Office. I don’t discover the inquiry would discover anything and I think we have probably made our point by writing. I am therefore uninclined to press for an inquiry. What do you think? RCA.”
It did show that government took close interest in what was said about it in the press; and Heath did not let it go. As an unsigned letter dated November 24 under Armstrong’s name put it, ‘it is bad for the reputation of government if leaking becomes a chronic disease’ – again, interesting choice of words, implying that a body that leaked to the press was unwell.
Heath thought, so Armstrong wrote, ‘that those who were privy to what Mr Chataway’s statement was expected to contain should be asked to state whether they had any contact with Mr Shrimsley in the relevant period and whether if the answer to the first question is no they can account in any other way for Mr Shrimsley’s article.”
This was most sensitive, as in effect Heath was questioning whether his most senior fellow ministers had done the leak. As a confidential document summed up, several named minister had attended a Friday morning, November 12, 1971 meeting that decided upon a ‘u-turn’ to allow the Giro service to continue. Chataway’s private secretary had submitted a draft statement on the Monday, November 15, to Heath’s private secretary, which was duly made in Parliament on November 17; that is, hours after the Sun with the leak-article had appeared. There was a ‘strong suspicion’ of a leak; and a questionnaire was proposed, to those who had been in the know; to ask what they knew.
On December 2, Frank Wood at the Ministry of Posts wrote to the senior Home Office civil servant Sir Philip Allen that he had remembered that a note about the meeting had been circulated to the Home Secretary and the Employment Secretary. In other words, more possible suspects for the inquiry. As that implied, to investigate any wrong-doing, you have to know your organisation. The questionnaire went out, and Armstrong asked for replies from politicians and officials alike, 25 in all, by Tuesday, December 7. Chataway, an obvious suspect, said ‘no’ to whether he had contact with Shrimsley, or communication with any other journalists; and to the third question, ‘can you account for the article’, wrote ‘no, to the best of my knowledge I have never met Mr Shrimsley’.
The chief whip, Francis Pym, also said no to all questions, and suggested under how to account for the leak ‘unless intelligent guesswork due to rising unemployment’. On December 8, Armstrong wrote with the results to Frank Wood. A man part of 10 Downing Street’s staff answered ‘yes’ to contact with Shrimsley, ‘in the normal way’, through briefing of approved journalists in the lobby. The director-general of the security services was consulted, and replied no comment. As Armstrong put it on December 23, the inquiry had drawn ‘the predictable blank’. “The Prime Minister agrees that no useful purpose would be served by investigating this matter further.”
As with so much in politics and life, you could judge this one way or another. Had Heath made his point – that he would not stand for a leak that undermined the secrecy of cabinet government, whereby ministers could discuss affairs freely. Or, had Heath humiliated even his most senior ministers such as the Home Secretary Reginald Maudling and Chancellor of the Exchequer Anthony Barber – by in effect showing that he did not trust them?
Next: another leak scare for Heath.
