Zircon affair

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The Zircon affair was an incident in 1986 and 1987 caused by the planned broadcast on the

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of a television programme about the ultimately cancelled Zircon signals intelligence satellite, as part of the six-part ''Secret Society'' series. It raised many important issues in the

British constitution The constitution of the United Kingdom or British constitution comprises the written and unwritten arrangements that establish the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as a political body. Unlike in most countries, no attempt ...

, particularly concerning parliamentary privilege and "gagging orders".

The Zircon affair

Development of programme

In November 1985 the Scottish investigative journalist Duncan Campbell was commissioned by BBC Scotland to present and research a six part, half-hour documentary series called ''Secret Society'', produced by Brian Barr.

GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Uni ...

became aware that a BBC Scotland crew were filming at

RAF Menwith Hill Royal Air Force Menwith Hill is a Royal Air Force station near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, which provides communications and intelligence support services to the United Kingdom and the United States. The site contains an extensive sat ...

, and when Campbell interviewed the former

Chief Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Defence The Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK's Ministry of Defence is responsible for providing strategic management of science and technology issues in the MOD, most directly through the MOD research budget of well over £1 billion, and sits as a full me ...

Ronald Mason in August 1986 he mentioned the Zircon Project (regarded as "exceptionally secret").Nicholas Wilkinson, "Secrecy and the Media: The Official History of the United Kingdom's D-Notice system", Routledge, London, 2009, , p. 413. Campbell had planned to use an episode of ''Secret Society'' to reveal the existence of Zircon, but found while researching the programme in mid-1986 that the head of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC),

Robert Sheldon Robert Edward Sheldon, Baron Sheldon PC (born Isaac Ezra Shamash; 13 September 1923 – 2 February 2020) was a British Labour Party politician and life peer who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Ashton under Lyne from 1964 to 2001. E ...

, knew nothing of the project. The Public Accounts Committee is a select committee of the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

, responsible for overseeing government expenditures. It had been agreed between Parliament and the British government that expensive military projects should be subject to scrutiny by the committee, and Campbell felt that Sheldon's ignorance of the Zircon project was evidence of the violation of this agreement. The concealment of Zircon, which had an estimated cost of £500 million (equivalent to £ billion in ), from the committee mirrored the parliamentary secrecy over a previous defence project, the

Chevaline Chevaline () was a system to improve the penetrability of the warheads used by the British Polaris nuclear weapons system. Devised as an answer to the improved Soviet anti-ballistic missile defences around Moscow, the system increased the pro ...

programme to enhance the Polaris nuclear missile. The previous head of the PAC, Lord Barnett, had been recently appointed the BBC Vice-Chairman. Barnett had withdrawn from a planned interview with Campbell for the programme after his BBC appointment, upset at the nature of the questioning that Sheldon had faced, who had accused Campbell of setting him up.

Intervention by BBC management

The

Director-General of the BBC The director-general of the British Broadcasting Corporation is chief executive and (from 1994) editor-in-chief of the BBC. The position was formerly appointed by the Board of Governors of the BBC (for the period of 1927 to 2007) and then t ...

, Alasdair Milne, later wrote that the Secretary of the D-Notice Committee made "remonstration noises" after the ''Secret Society'' series was announced at the launch of BBC 2's autumn schedule. According to the official history of the D-Notice Committee, the committee's secretary Rear Admiral W. A. Higgins had been prompted solely by the appearance of the series in the BBC's autumn 1986 publicity, and was not himself then aware of the Zircon Project. A meeting of the BBC governors was held on 13 November 1986, chaired by

Marmaduke Hussey Marmaduke James Hussey, Baron Hussey of North Bradley (29 August 1923 – 27 December 2006), known as Duke Hussey, was Chairman of the Board of Governors of the BBC from 1986 to 1996, serving two terms in that role. Education and career The so ...

. Hussey had been recommended as chairman of the BBC Board of Governors by Conservative government ministers. Opposition to Campbell from governors at the meeting came from

Daphne Park Daphne Margaret Sybil Désirée Park, Baroness Park of Monmouth, Order of St Michael and St George, CMG, Order of the British Empire, OBE, Royal Society of Arts, FRSA (1 September 1921 – 24 March 2010) was a British intelligence officer, dipl ...

, the former

MI6 The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...

operative, who said that Campbell was a "destroyer" who the BBC should never have employed, and the former diplomat Curtis Keeble. Hussey subsequently expressed the negative views of the governors to Milne after the meeting. Milne met the

Director of the Government Communications Headquarters __NOTOC__ The Director of the Government Communications Headquarters is the highest-ranking official in the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British intelligence agency that specialises in signals intelligence, information assurance ...

, Peter Marychurch, on 5 December 1986, on the same day that Alan Protheroe, the Assistant Director-General of the BBC, had written to Milne at his home, saying that the Zircon episode should not be transmitted. Protheroe was responsible for supervising journalism at the BBC, and was the BBC's member on the D-Notice Committee. Protheroe believed that the Zircon episode would damage national security after speaking to the Ministry of Defence. Initial cuts of all six programmes in the series were then viewed by Milne, who later showed the series to the governors. The governors subsequently felt that, barring a few changes, the series would be suitable for broadcast, except for the Zircon episode. However, not all governors were as opposed to the episode as Protheroe was. The governors held two further meeting before Christmas 1986, at which Milne was "hounded unpleasantly over ''Secret Society''". Milne finally made a decision not to broadcast the Zircon episode during the Christmas holiday.

Revelation of issue and government action

The Zircon affair was publicly revealed by ''

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'' on 18 January 1987, with the headline "BBC Gag on £500m Defence secret". An injunction was obtained by the Attorney General on January 21 restraining Campbell from talking or writing about the contents of the episode. On 22 January, Campbell published an article in the ''

New Statesman The ''New Statesman'' is a British Political magazine, political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney Webb, Sidney and Beatrice ...

'' against which the government issued an injunction. Campbell's article was sourced to a former employee of GCHQ and four unnamed defence officials, and the Attorney General instructed police from Special Branch to find their identities to establish whether the Official Secrets Act had been breached. Under the authority of a warrant under section 9 of the

Official Secrets Act 1911 The Official Secrets Act 1911 (1 & 2 Geo 5 c 28) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It replaces the Official Secrets Act 1889. The Act was introduced in response to public alarm at reports of wide-scale espionage, some of them f ...

, Special Branch raided Campbell's London home, those of his researchers Jolyon Jenkins and Patrick Forbes, and the ''New Statesman''s offices. On 31 January 1987,

Strathclyde Police Strathclyde Police was the territorial police force responsible for the Scottish council areas of Argyll and Bute, City of Glasgow, East Ayrshire, East Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire, Inverclyde, North Ayrshire, North Lanarkshire, Renfre ...

conducted a raid of BBC Scotland's premises in Glasgow which lasted for 28 hours. The Controller of BBC Scotland, Pat Chalmers was questioned by Special Branch police, and Protheroe was arrested and questioned by the Strathclyde police.

Screening to MPs and others

The matter now becoming public knowledge, opposition MP

Robin Cook Robert Finlayson "Robin" Cook (28 February 19466 August 2005) was a British Labour politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1974 until his death in 2005 and served in the Cabinet as Foreign Secretary from 1997 until 2001 wh ...

managed to obtain a video of the Zircon documentary and arranged a screening of it to MPs in the House of Commons. The Attorney General, Sir Michael Havers, sought an injunction in the High Court to prevent the video's screening, but the application was dismissed on the basis of parliamentary privilege. Frustrated, the Attorney General organised a briefing on the matter for the

Speaker of the House of Commons Speaker of the House of Commons is a political leadership position found in countries that have a House of Commons, where the membership of the body elects a speaker to lead its proceedings. Systems that have such a position include: * Speaker of ...

Bernard Weatherill Bruce Bernard Weatherill, Baron Weatherill, (25 November 1920 – 6 May 2007) was a British Conservative Party politician. He served as Speaker of the House of Commons between 1983 and 1992. Family He was the son of Bernard Bruce Weatherill ...

, based on confidentiality stemming from their common membership of the Privy Council. That day, the

Speaker Speaker may refer to: Society and politics * Speaker (politics), the presiding officer in a legislative assembly * Public speaker, one who gives a speech or lecture * A person producing speech: the producer of a given utterance, especially: ** I ...

ruled that no part of the Palace of Westminster was to be used for the screening of the video, pending a report by the

Committee of Privileges The Commons Select Committee of Privileges is appointed by the House of Commons to consider specific matters relating to privileges referred to it by the House. It came into being on 7 January 2013 as one half of the replacements for the Committ ...

. With the help of sympathetic MPs Campbell tried to privately screen the programme in the

, though all BBC staff had been ordered to return copies of the programme. The Zircon project fell under the remit of the Defence Select Committee, who wished to see the episode, but were opposed by a civil servant from the Ministry of Defence. The dispute was ruled upon by the Speaker, who ruled that the episode could not be shown on the parliamentary site, it was instead screened nearby. The governors remained in a state of disquiet, with Hussey complaining to Milne that the episode should never have been made. Hussey and the Board of Governors demanded Milne's resignation on 29 January. However, by this time, copies of the video had been obtained by various civil liberties organisations, which arranged public screenings around the UK. The government was now placed in a difficult situation. The Attorney General stayed his hand and the matter soon faded in the public interest. The Committee of Privileges subsequently recommended that screening the video would fall outside ''proceedings in parliament'' and was, therefore, not protected by privilege. They further recommended that the Speaker's actions had been wholly proper. In 1989 a ''New Statesman'' article by Campbell stated Zircon had been replaced by a U.S. off-the-shelf satellite, under British control, launched by a U.S.

Titan 34D The Titan 34D was a United States expendable launch vehicle used to launch a number of satellites for military applications. Service history Derived from the Titan III, the Titan 34D featured Stage 1 and Stage 2 stretched with more powerful U ...

on 4 September 1989 (U.S. Labor Day).

''Cabinet'' episode

The sixth episode of the ''Secret Society'' series was titled ''Cabinet'', and focused on secret Cabinet committees. It was also held back from broadcast, and has not, , ever been shown. The broadcast of the ''Cabinet'' episode was cancelled due to the imminent 1987 general election. The BBC subsequently rejected Campbell's attempt to buy the episode for broadcast on

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

in 1991, in a season of programming about censorship. Instead the episode was remade using Campbell's scripts. In a parliamentary debate on civil liberties and the Bill of Rights on 15 June 1989,

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

Alistair Darling Alistair Maclean Darling, Baron Darling of Roulanish, (born 28 November 1953) is a British politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Prime Minister Gordon Brown from 2007 to 2010. A member of the Labour Party, he was a Member ...

, then in opposition, claimed that the true reason for the Zircon affair was to distract from the ''Cabinet'' episode of ''Secret Society''. Darling said that "The Government's actions are oppressive, as has been shown by their treatment of broadcasting. We saw the spectacle of police being sent to raid the BBC headquarters in Glasgow in the middle of the night. ... We saw the Zircon tapes seized as an elaborate blind." Darling said that the cabinet episode concerned "the election campaign of 1983, and the fact that the Government sought to undermine and spy on the citizens of this country. Their object was to prevent the programme from being shown, and the Zircon affair was a blind."

Footnotes

Bibliography

* * Bradley, A. W. (Spring 1987). "Parliamentary privilege and the Zircon affair". ''Public Law''. pp. 1–3. * Bradley, A. W. (Winter 1987). "Parliamentary privilege, Zircon and national security". ''Public Law''. pp. 488–495. * Milne, A. (1989). ''D. G.: Memoirs of a British Broadcaster''. {{ISBN, 0-340-49750-5. 1986 in law 1987 in law 1986 in the United Kingdom 1987 in the United Kingdom BBC controversies GCHQ Journalistic scandals Politics of the United Kingdom United Kingdom defence procurement