Directives from the Centre - A new take on an old genre
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The Russian Embassy in London, former base of the KGB resident and presumably of its successor agencies (Matt Brown, CC2.0).
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Britain’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation had some striking advice for foreign agents last week.
If I was a foreign intelligence officer of course I would meddle in separatism, whether Scottish independence or independence of overseas territories or Brexit. I would encourage extreme forms of environmentalism, hoping that policies generated would damage my adversaries’ economy or at least sow discord or hopelessness.
I would sponsor Islamism and Islamist MPs and contentious foreign policy issues such as Gaza within politics. Social media would be a delightful playground for wedge issues. I would certainly amplify the lie that the Southport killer was a Muslim who arrived on a small boat, and relish where an attacker had previously claimed asylum.
I would ensure that the UK hated itself and its history. That the very definition of woman should be put into question, and that masculinity would be presented as toxic. That White people should be ashamed and non-White people aggrieved. I would promote anti-Semitism.1
Jonathan Hall KC is also the the reviewer for legislation against state threats, so it might seem odd that his speech to the Policy Exchange think-tank was so keen to tell those state threats how to go about their business.
Yet this sort of exercise has a long history. MI6’s former Washington station chief John Bruce Lockhart drafted a whole directive for the KGB’s London resident back in 1980. It had some notable themes in common with Hall.
Your influence must be used in every way to encourage racial prejudices. That these existed strongly among the working classes has long been accepted by us. But in addition to working on the prejudices of the British working classes, you must increasingly infiltrate the coloured immigrant population, and encourage militant anti-white movements.2
Like Hall, Bruce Lockhart was contributing to a live debate about subversion. In 1978, a group of right-wingers, including former IRD propagandist Brian Crozier and former MI6 officer Nicholas Elliott, proposed the establishment of a wide-ranging counter-subversion executive to opposition leader Margaret Thatcher.3 This may have been what Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw was referring to when, after Thatcher’s election the following year, he asked MI5 director Howard Smith to brief him in order to counter ‘some of the rather extreme advice’ Thatcher had received.4
Events in the US had some parallels, with the CIA and FBI seeing off proposals for a single central counterintelligence organisation at the outset of the Reagan administration.5
In a period of growing inter-state conflict, subversion is rising up the political agenda again. In December, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper tasked Hall with considering whether counter-terrorism legislation could be adapted to address state-based threats such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).6
As Hall notes, subversion was an MI5 responsibility during the Cold War, but the term did not find its way into the Security Service Act 1989, ‘and the very concept of counter-subversion fell out of favour, associated with McCarthyism and some unjustified infiltrations of domestic protest groups by undercover police.’
The imaginary intelligence directives above illustrate the issue. While some of the activities mentioned are certainly happening, it is all to easy to join the dots to portray any chosen political opponents as subversive. In Hall’s case, the provocation may be deliberate, illustrating his point that 'the road to a legal definition of extremism is littered with wreckage.’
He goes on to argue that ‘if a sufficient definition could be found, then new laws would need sufficient safeguard in the form of judicial intervention – not cowed by excessive deference to the executive but ready to correct things when they go wrong.’
In other words, Policy Exchange’s campaign against the judiciary is undermining its own case for counter-subversion legislation.
One striking feature of the current debate in the UK is the extent to which more straightforward measures, with fewer implications for civil liberties, have been sidelined.
There are, for example, the 2021 proposals of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, chaired by former MI5 director-general Lord Evans, to restrict foreign donations in British elections. Such a ban was reportedly close to becoming Labour policy ahead of last year’s general election, until it was vetoed by the party’s own fundraisers.7
One could be forgiven for feeling there is a double standard at work. Recent days have seen a rapper charged with a terrorism offence for displaying a Hezbollah flag, but also legislative proposals that will allow the Government of the United Arab Emirates to own a stake in the Telegraph newspaper. The UAE is a significant covert actor in its own right and has congenial relations with Moscow. The legislation may also benefit sovereign funds from countries like Qatar, whose constructive role in Middle East diplomacy is partly a function of its strong relationship with Iran and its regional allies. Perhaps new directives are in order for the IRGC’s man in Doha, and for various Russian residents in Abu Dhabi.
In the face of these developments, it is tempting to agree with Labour peer Prem Sikka when he writes that ‘The UK is a two-tier society where money wields power. People can vote for whomever they want but corporations and their controllers always win as they fund political parties, hand consultancies to legislators, control the media and means of production.’8
That perhaps is the subversion that enables all others.
Jonathan Hall KC, "Terrorism and National Security: Internal Threats and Internal Fears" (Policy Exchange’s John Creaney QC Memorial Lecture, 19 May 2025).
John Bruce Lockhart, “Directive to the London Station No.59” in Roy Godson (ed.), Intelligence Requirements for the 1980s: Counterintelligence, National Strategy Information Center, 1980, pp.323-331.
Brian Crozier, Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941-1991, HarperCollins, 1994, p.142.
Christopher Andrew, Defence of the Realm, The Authorized History of MI5, Allen Lane, 2009, p.670.
Tom Griffin, State-Private Networks and Intelligence Theory: From Cold War Liberalism to Neoconservatism, Routledge, 2022, p.148.
Duncan Gardham, Britain may have to resort to anti-subversion laws, watchdog warns, Sky News, 19 May 2025.
Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, Labour dropped plan to ban foreign donors after Lord Alli intervened, Sunday Times, 3 February 2025.
Prem Sikka, Why the UK is a two-tier society where money wields power, Left Foot Forward, 23 May 2025.