MY MOMENT OF TERROR WITH THE HEAD OF MI5
John McGurk
Harry Chapman Pincher was 100 on Saturday. I thought the old boy had died years ago because it was his name which was usually emblazoned across page one of the Daily Express, then the biggest selling newspaper in the world, when we were cub reporters.
We all wanted to be Chapman Pincher. When one of the trainees landed a scoop, he would be known, at least for a day, as “Pincher” although our exclusives were no match for the real thing which almost always involved spies, double agents or MI5 treachery.
The 1950's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan became so exasperated by Pincher that he wrote: “I don't understand how the Express, of all the newspapers, has got the exact decision we took at Cabinet last Thursday. Can nothing be done to suppress or get rid of Chapman Pincher?”
Pincher famously helped unmask the “Cambridge Four”-- Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt -- the ring of undergraduate spies recruited by the Soviets in the 1930's.
The “fifth” member was revealed by Pincher, in his fabulously-titled book “Their Trade is Treachery”, to be Roger Hollis who was the Director General of MI5 between 1956 and 1965.
Pincher believes a high number of British intelligence missions failed because the Soviets had been tipped off by a mole inside the service and, to this day, he is still pursuing more evidence.
Lord Beaverbrook's Express was the paper to strive for and Chapman Pincher was its ace reporter.
His reputation sparked other reporters to replace their first name with their middle name. The Express became the place for pretentious bylines which began with “Mackenzie” this or “Wilson” that.
Unfortunately, when most of us tried it we just sounded ridiculous. My best pal, also a trainee, had the middle name McClumpha; my own did not work much better.
Naturally, the tip-offs for Pincher's stories came from lunch. He always dined in a French restaurant in Jermyn Street, off Piccadilly, where those who knew things would happily impart their secrets over fine red wines; mostly in order to pursue their own agendas and ambitions.
The Labour historian E.P. Thompson described Pincher as a “kind of official urinal where the great and the good would patiently queue up to leak”.
MI5 got so fed up that they bugged the restaurant only to discover, when they removed their hidden microphones after it shut down, that the place had also been wired by the KGB.
Pincher was indeed “Dangerous To Know” the title of his 38th book published last month.
Surprisingly, despite a lifetime's work revealing national secrets, he has no time for the biggest leaker of the lot, Edward Snowden, the ex-CIA man now holed up in Moscow after disclosing thousands of classified documents which detail global surveillance programmes run by the US security service.
Pincher believes that Snowden leaked too many documents containing too much information which could be exploited by terrorists or hostile countries. While Pincher certainly embarrassed the UK government, he believes he never damaged national security.
He thinks Snowden is a “straightforward traitor “,adding quickly, “I would have him shot!”
The old boy is also fearful of what Putin may do next after Russia's land-grab of the Crimea from Ukraine.
“If he has a go at Lithuania, or any of the Baltic states, then NATO will have to do something.
“During the last few weeks, he's fired a long-range test missile and that's quite deliberate to alert the West to 'watch it'”.
The world, of course, has changed dramatically since Chapman Pincher strode the stage as a reporting giant at the height of the Cold War years.
Today the once-mighty Daily Express, like the Berlin Wall, has been reduced to rubble.Its proprietor is better known as a pornographer and its diet of stories is mainly a mixture of gossip and tittle-tattle about so-called celebrities.
In some ways, it's a pity that Pincher has lived long enough to see his old paper fall so far.
My own experiences of M15 were less thrilling than those of Chapman Pincher but perhaps still worth mentioning.
Their new Director General in 2002, Eliza Manningham-Buller, was the first chief spy-catcher to invite individual editors from Her Majesty's Press to a private lunch in her office at the security service's headquarters in Thames House on the north side of the river.
On the early morning shuttle from Edinburgh, I opened our files on her to discover that at school, she had been nicknamed Eliza Bullying-Manner.
Alas, it became extremely difficult to get this out of my head and I became terrified in case I accidentally blurted it out. When we finally met, the reasons for her nickname soon became apparent. She fixed me with a steel-eyed stare and then broke into a smile.
“Ah... Mr McGurk”, she said charmingly, having clearly read my file, “How very nice to meet you. Please take a seat here.”
I instantly had a vision of the seat flipping me backwards into a shark-infested tank which would automatically open up below the floor.
But helpfully, she then suggested, “Do call me Eliza”
John McGurk is a former editor of The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday and was managing editor of The Daily Telegraph.
SCOTS SMEs 'MORE CONFIDENT THAN UK'
Scottish small business confidence is now higher than the UK average, the latest Federation of Small Businesses’ (FSB) quarterly report shows.
The FSB’s Voice of Small Business Index, published yesterday shows that while small business confidence is growing across the UK, an average firm in Scotland is currently more bullish than its counterpart in England and Wales.
The analysis also shows that, as spare capacity in small business falls, recruitment intentions are at their highest level since the research began in the first quarter of 2010.
The Scottish Small Business Index, the FSB’s measure of small business confidence, rose substantially to plus 44 points in the second quarter of 2014, up 8 points from quarter one. This represents a substantial improvement from this time last year, when the index stood at just plus 9 points. Half of the small businesses surveyed expect business prospects to improve over the next three months, compared to just 12 per cent who expect them to deteriorate. Across the whole of the UK, the Small Business Index rose from plus 35.7 points to plus 39.7 points over the first quarter 2014, while the share of UK businesses expecting conditions to improve held steady at 47 per cent.
The proportion of Scottish firms reporting that they are running below capacity fell from 52 per cent at the start of the year to 46 per cent this quarter. Looking ahead, only 33 per cent of firms expect to be running below capacity during the next three months. Revenue and profits are looking healthier, too, with 37 per cent of respondents expecting revenues to increase over the next quarter. A balance of 16 per cent reported increased profits during the last quarter and 26 per cent of firms anticipate higher profits in the coming year. Further, 19 per cent of businesses plan to increase capital investment over the next year, compared to 8 per cent at this point in 2013.
Says Andy Willox, the FSB’s Scottish policy convenor, “While it is nice to see Scottish small business confidence climb above the UK average, more significant is the continued rise in small business confidence across the UK. Further, reduced levels of spare capacity means that more businesses are looking to recruit.
“This is good news for unemployed Scots and for the recovery – as is the fact that one in five businesses plan to increase capital investment this year. More businesses placing orders with suppliers means more full order books, more materials to be sourced and more staff to be hired. That is the key to rebuilding our economy.
“No matter how confident we are, though, none of this investment will happen without finance. Although the position has improved since this time last year, it has hardly moved in the last three months. We’ll need to keep a close eye on this trend and ensure things don’t start to slip back. Having worked so hard to build a recovery, we can’t have it stifled by a lending market which lacks our members’ ambition.”
Economy Forecast
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RETAIL LEVY 'PUSHING BUSINESS OUT OF SCOTLAND'
Scotland’s £95 million large retail levy “looks designed to push retail investment elsewhere”, the Scottish Retail Consortium claims in a pre-budget submission to Holyrood.
It argues that the non-domestic rates system “is no longer fit for purpose. It is a disincentive to invest in commercial premises, the tax seems to only ever rise, and retailers pay disproportionally more than other sectors.”
A comprehensive longer term overhaul of the business rates system is required, which would increase retailers’ confidence about investing in property, create more jobs and help revive high streets.
The large retail levy or ‘Tesco tax’ was brought in to assuage small firm concerns that the retail super-stores were sapping business from the high street and putting traditional and family businesses in jeopardy. Others saw it as a pure and simple tax grab by the Holyrood administration.
And there other improvements, the SRC argues, that can be made to support the retail industry. “The small firms’ relief is a welcome acknowledgement of the need to keep down costs, and avoiding the repatriation of control over the poundage rate to local authorities is sensible.”
However, it argues, the £95 million large retail levy was a significant departure from poundage rate parity.
“It has meant that for three years 240 retail outlets are paying 28% more than equivalent stores in Wales or England. The levy has been a conspicuous blot on the Scottish Government’s claims to have the most competitive rates regime in the UK.
“Indeed, the policy appears designed to push retail investment elsewhere in the UK, rather than attract it to Scotland, the very antithesis of the argument that the First Minister has been making recently in seeking to “rebalance the economic centre of gravity across these islands”. We welcome the pledge not to continue with the levy.
The SRC recommends that Scotland’s rate poundage rises no faster than that in England, it comes good on its promise not to renew the £95 million levy and rejuvenate the Business Rates Incentivisation Scheme to ensure that revenues accruing to local government from it are transparently re-invested in aiding town centre regeneration.
Transport is vital to the success of the retail industry. With 23,000 outlets in Scotland, located in every town and village, retailers rely on access to good quality and reliable transport for the daily operation of their businesses – for ease of access for customers, to deliver goods, and to enable employees to reach the workplace.
“We fully support the Scottish Government’s plans to dual the A9 between Perth and Inverness, and the A96 between Inverness and Aberdeen, but would urge a more ambitious timescale for delivery rather than the two decades currently envisaged. Improved connectivity to the North and North East will help unlock the economic potential of these two regions, help get goods swiftly to retail outlets as well as, as is increasingly the case, direct to customers.
