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THATCHER AND THE GCHQ TRADE UNION BAN 417
whim of the Prime Minister. Jim Prior, the Northern Ireland
Secretary, recalls that at that moment, 'Len Murray was lost.'
It is hard to escape the conclusion that both Margaret Thatcher
and the major unions used GCHQ as a pawn in a wider ideological
battle. Neither the managers nor the trade unionists at
GCHQ were directly responsible for what followed. 2
The issue of trade unions at Cheltenham is synonymous with
the Thatcher era. After its eruption in early 1984, it constituted
a running sore until it was resolved in 1997. Yet it is rarely
realised that union issues were not new to the secret world, or
indeed to GCHQ. Paradoxically, GCHQ had always had trade
unions because it was even more secret than its sister services,
MIS and SIS, which did not. This was because many GCHQ
workers were hidden inside other units - such as the Diplomatic
Wireless Staff (DWS) - that might reasonably expect union representation.
Moreover, unlike MIS or SIS, Cheltenham was effectively
a vast factory that produced intelligence on an industrial
scale. The majority of employees at GCHQ and its outstations
were working a shift system. In all factories, even secret ones,
there is a clear hierarchy, and good labour relations are of the
first importance. Yet the managers at GCHQ could be remote
figures who were rather conscious of their grades. As a result,
union issues had raged beneath the surface of British sigint since
the 1950s.
Disruption of GCHQ's activities through union action was not
the only source of anxiety. Officials believed there were also
security issues. Although they conceded that no union official
had ever been detected acting as a spy, nevertheless they worried
that a significant proportion of officials in some key unions were
Communists. Spy cases during the 1950s and 1960s had shown
beyond any doubt that Communist Party membership often
meant espionage, and Foreign Office officials feared 'a direct,
unfettered and undetectable line of liaison between staff having
knowledge of secret affairs and Communists'. Some senior officials
had pondered the alternative of a staff association, in other
words a tame internal union not affiliated to the TUC, for staff