Thought Prison

Bruce Charlton

• Publisher: University of Buckingham Press
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781789559934
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"Political Correctness is marginal and mainstream, ridiculous and mandatory, crazy and normal."

Political correctness is the dominant ideology of the Western intellectual world. It is what the West has instead of a religion. It is a thing of the political Left in its origins and central constituency. Yet, in recent decades, it's been embraced by the mainstream political Right and Centre.

Political correctness therefore represents the triumph of the Left. Nonetheless, it very obviously violates both common sense and logic and is destructive of all that is good, beautiful and true. So, at one and the same time, PC is marginal and mainstream, ridiculous and mandatory, crazy and normal.

Political correctness obviously dominates its core territory of politics, public administration (the civil service), law, education and (especially!) the mass media. But PC also substantially shapes everything else: foreign policy, the military, policing, the economy, health services, and personal life: the mating game, friendships and even family life.

This book explains how something so bizarre and wicked could become so ubiquitous and unremarkable.

THIRTEEN

“AND YOUR BIRD CAN SING”

I rang the Special Branch number for Mike Elliott and a voice told me that he had finished for the day. I realised it was almost 6 pm and he’d probably been working much of the previous night too.

“If it’s important, I can get a message to him.”

“Though I’m reluctant to drag him away from his well-deserved rest, I think we’ve got something for him that will tie up a lot of the loose ends of the case he’s been working on.”

“Will you come to Charing Cross? We’ll send a car.”

The car duly took us to Charing Cross Police Station. We hung around twiddling our thumbs for about half an hour, fortified by a mug of frighteningly strong tea. When Mike Elliott arrived, he looked in a particularly foul mood.

“This had better be good!” he growled, as we sat down in an empty office. “I’ve had practically no sleep for thirty hours and my family are beginning to forget what I look like.”

“We are very sorry to drag you away from your rest and your family,” I began. “But I think you’ll find what we’ve got for you is worth it. Basically, this tape contains all the information on who was behind the attempt to stop the Americans sending these high tech components to this country.”

“Oh God! What have you been up to now?”

“Unfortunately, I fear you’ll like what we’ve got, but not how we came by it.”

“Tell me all,” he said wearily. “The tape can wait ‘till later.”

“You know I went to the East German Embassy after I thought Rosemary had been killed...”

“How could I forget it! It took quite a lot of persuasion and the goodwill you had over there to keep the Security boys from getting you in and giving you a good going over.”

“Oh! Well, the East German chap I met when I went there ...”

“Captain Guenther Droehn.”

“Oh! I’ve never known his name ... Anyway, he telephoned this morning while we were interviewing and suggested a meeting ...”

“Which you couldn’t refuse to attend, of course! And which you felt unable to tell anyone about!”

“I wanted to hear what he had to say. Besides he’s already made it absolutely plain that if I involved any of the British authorities, he’d have nothing to do with me.”

“So you met him ...”

“He said they’d been investigating who had caused the death of Lt Hoefgen, the young woman who was killed at our flat. They’d managed to get stuff out of the Russians about ‘Peace in our time’. This was partly because they and the Russians began to realise that the ‘Peace in our time’ people had deliberately set them up to get Lt Hoefgen killed as a warning to me. He told me that ‘Peace in our time’ was funded by the KGB, indirectly, of course, because it was a useful way of acquiring and disguising information about Western technology and weapons and organising demonstrations against the Vietnam war. The mastermind was an American agent who, they’d been told, had been turned when captured in Cuba and was now working for the Russians, while pretending to his American people he was still working for them. What the East Germans reckoned they’d discovered was that he was actually duping the Russians and that the attempts to get me to make my report go against sending the American stuff here were masterminded by him.”

“So who is this mastermind they identified?”

“An American called Petterson ... I forget his Christian name ...”

“Jerome D,” added Rosemary.

“So, knowing that, what did Captain Droehn expect you to do?”

“To tell you or the Security Service. But he said if I did that, we’d never find Pettersen. Either he’d be dead or they’d’ve spirited him away.”

“Did you believe him?”

“Yes. It seemed to me they had a strong motive for revenge, which would only be tempered by what Petterson might disclose or be worth to the Americans.”

“Evidently he offered you a deal.”

“Yes. He’d give us the opportunity to get information we wanted out of Petterson before they dealt with him. So either we got something, but not Petterson, or we got nothing, but not Petterson either. I thought it was a deal worth having.”

“So you just popped over to Petterson’s place ...”

“Yes. He lived in Kew, close to the river. The East Germans reckoned he had a motor-boat parked nearby. Anyway, they fitted me up with a transmitter and microphone, so our conversation could be recorded and we went in ...”

“Both of you?”

“Yes. Apart from being less suspicious at the critical moment when he first opened the front door, he was the sort of bloke you wanted two people to have their eyes on at all times.”

“When you say ‘eyes’, you mean ...”

“Guns. Yes – both of us have been in possession of East German guns this afternoon.”

“I should also confess to firing one,” added Rosemary. “He tried to make a move, so I shot him in the knee.”

“Illegal weapons ... causing grievous bodily harm ... the list mounts up.”

“But you’ve only our word for it – and if you find anyone with a shot kneecap, he’ll be past worrying about GBH,” remarked Rosemary.

“Or so you hope....Go on.”

“We managed to get inside and got him into handcuffs. He wasn’t very co-operative at first, but, as you’ll hear on the tape, Rosemary was quite persuasive and eventually he began to talk.....”

“I’m not sure I even want to think about that.”

“He told us that the work he was doing with ‘Peace in our time’ was essentially cover for working for the Americans. It was a good way of identifying Russian stooges, but the Russians liked all the demonstrations, etc. His employers, if you can put it that way, were a group calling themselves ‘Global Information and Security’ and are funded by both CIA unofficial money and certain US business interests. It was the business people who wanted to stop the computer components coming here.”

“Could he name names?”

“Unfortunately not. He claimed not to know even his contact in Global Information and Security. He said things were arranged through procedures, which he described as triple insulation.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. But presumably he did know the name of his Whitehall informant?”

“Yes – Lewis. He was very reluctant to give the name, as you’ll hear on the tape. I suspect because Lewis is actually a regular informant of the Americans, recruited when he was in Washington. Blowing a CIA stooge isn’t likely to endear him to his American colleagues.”

“And the ‘Peace in our time’ organisation?”

“Based in Compton Street in Clerkenwell. The office front was ...”

“David Jacobson and Associates,” added Rosemary. “Apparently there’s a safe there with loads of names and addresses, including the people who’ve been going round doing the surveillance and firing off missiles.”

“And this Petersen’s address?”

“21 Bushwood Road, Kew ... But I’d be amazed if he’s there ... unless he’s dead, of course.”

“And that’s it?”

“Yes. I’m sorry we couldn’t deliver him to you – but that was never on the cards,” I replied. “I hope the information will be useful.”

“Of course, the tape can’t be used in evidence - even if we did lay our hands on this Petterson. Indeed, as you evidently acquired it under duress – probably extreme duress, knowing you – it couldn’t be used to catch Lewis either. At best, we could use it to get him moved and we could keep a close watch on him ...”

“But there is still Rosemary’s plan to catch him using that phone.”

“Always assuming he doesn’t twig something’s up over the weekend. What if he tries to contact Petersen?”

“The plan fails, I suppose. But at least you know who the stooge is and can deal with it.”

“You do realise that you could be in deep trouble as a result of this, don’t you?”

“We expected it. But there didn’t seem to be much choice. Would you rather we left the East Germans and the Russians to deal with Petterson without us being able to get anything out of him?”

“But you have no real proof he was what you think he was. You could’ve been led up the garden path by the East Germans. Had you thought of that?”

“It crossed my mind. But sometimes you have to go with what your guts are telling you, rather than your head.”

“I’m afraid I’m a rather conventional copper. I prefer to use my head and stick to the rules. I’ve no doubt the Chief Super will be pleased by all this. But he’s another one for going on what his guts tell him. Even so, you’ve been consorting with our Cold War enemies, and probably gave them some information contrary to the Official Secrets Act. You’ve forced entry into premises without a warrant and on dubious grounds. You’ve held and threatened a man at gunpoint. Indeed an officer of the Metropolitan Police shot him, with an illegally-acquired weapon. I suspect that your tape, which I accept can’t be used as evidence in a court of law, would prove grounds for a serious investigation. At best, I imagine it’d end your promising career as a policewoman, WPS Storey. And heaven knows what it would do to yours, Storey. So I’m going to compound your felonies, by sending this tape off for destruction as confidential waste in the incinerator ... Was there no opportunity when you could’ve contacted us? After you met Captain Droehn? When you were in the house with Petterson? Presumably he had a phone?

“There was no opportunity from the moment we met Captain Droehn until we were in the house. Yes – we probably could’ve phoned you, though I bet the East Germans had the phone tapped. But if Petterson had believed you were on your way, I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would’ve told us nothing. And you’d’ve got nothing out of him either. He’d’ve pulled as hard as he could on his links to the CIA and offered all sorts of information about the Russians and ‘Peace in our time’ and would’ve denied anything to do with stopping this American high-tech stuff coming to this country. In view of what and who he knows – notably Lewis – don’t you think the Americans would have bent heaven and earth to get him out of our hands?”

“The fact that you may well be right, doesn’t really justify what you did, you know? If you believe that the ends justify the means, you’re not really very different from them.”

“I’m not sure that’s really how it was. We took advantage of an opportunity that would otherwise have disappeared for good. Despite what it might’ve appeared to Petterson, neither of us would ever kill anyone - and certainly not plan to kill an innocent person purely to send a warning message to someone else ... Though actually, if I’d seen Petterson that evening when I thought Rosemary was dead and I knew he’d planned it, I probably would’ve killed him.”

“That’s different. Though if you had done that, you’d now be behind bars. As it is, you can leave here without a stain on your characters – except with a warning from me that next time you might well not be so lucky, either with the people you take on or with the Metropolitan Police. As it is – and with this tape safely destroyed – I can offer you the Metropolitan Police’s thanks for providing some ve...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Introduction
• One: A New Job
• Two: You have to Start Somewhere
• Three: Paris in the Spring
• Four: The Importance of Meetings
• Five: Messages
• Six: Searching for Answers
• Seven: Demonstrations
• Eight: Stitching a Net Together
• Nine: Preparing the Ground
• Ten: Various Cheeses are Displayed to Tempt Various Rodents
• Eleven: Back-Ullaging
• Twelve: A Joint Enterprise
• Thirteen: “And your Bird can Sing”
• Fourteen: The Summer of Love
• Glossary