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368 INTO THE THATCHER ERA
last large-scale car manufacturer, which were intended to disrupt
a government recovery plan, had been organised with the cooperation
of the Communist Party of Great Britain, which was
in turn taking money from the Soviet Union. Although the
miners' strike of 1982 had genuinely domestic origins, the Soviet
Communist Party nevertheless funded it to the tune of more
than half a million pounds, albeit against the advice of the KGB.
Such active intervention in British internal affairs generated a
certain amount of paranoia in British government. This extended
to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which was also
watched closely by MI5 for evidence of foreign influence. Several
leading figures in CND were subjected to surveillance, including
the future Cabinet Minister Harriet Harman. The Ministry of
Defence was so worried about CND that it set up a special unit,
DS.19, to counteract its activities, and wild rumours abounded
that some of the protesters outside American bases were really
Soviet special forces or 'Spetnaz' in disguise. In fact, during the
1980s the most dangerous KGB mole was in none of these
places - instead he was at GCHQ. 3
Security within GCHQ had always been a nightmare.
Elsewhere in government, a person who was regarded as a
possible security risk could be gradually transferred to a less
sensitive area. This option did not exist within GCHQ, since
everywhere was sensitive. Security problems overlapped with
trade union worries. Even in the mid-1950s, some GCHQ
managers were anxious about Communist influence in the
Electrical Trades Union, which was prominent at Cheltenham. 4
There was also the sheer scale of positive vetting required in
such a large organisation: as we have seen, despite an increase
in the numbers of investigating officers, a backlog had built up.
Most of all there was the problem of document security. All of
GCHQ's basic 'working material' was highly secret, yet it was
so super-abundant that it could not be catalogued. In other
words it would be easy for a spy to smuggle out papers that his
or her branch was working on. 5 In the 1970s the Security
Commission had called for the certified destruction of top-secret