The first terrible event was encountered by Nicholas Ridley, then secretary for trade, when he was enjoying his Easter holiday. Someone told him that customs had seized some rather unpleasant goods – vast cases of what appeared to be the biggest gun ever built, for export to Iraq.
This was lethal equipment even by Ridley’s definition. It had been made in two of the biggest engineering factories in Britain, who were in constant contact with the department of trade. ibid.
The second embarrassing event was that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Suddenly the whole public attitude is whipped up against Iraq. Everyone is in favour of prosecuting the merchants of death.
Customs arrest the engineer in charge of the supergun project and the managing director. Guilty as hell of breaking the export law, a straight-forward conviction is expected.
Except that customs are called in by the attorney general, Sir Patrick Mayhew, who says it is not a good idea to prosecute. He told customs they were free to do it but he would stop them going ahead with the prosecution. Customs withdrew – but they proceeded against another company called Matrix Churchill.
The directors were appalled. They said we did this in concert with the government and intelligence. One of the key intelligence agents in Iraq at that time was a man working for Matrix Churchill. Paul Henderson. He was managing director and a government intelligence agent.
They started to leak documents. One document leaked to the The Sunday Times said that Alan Clark, when he was minister of defence, held a meeting of all the machine tool manufacturers. He said from now on when you want to sell arms to Iraq put it under general engineering. ibid.
It is obviously going to come out that the defendants did what the government told them to do. They were guilty of selling arms to Saddam Hussein, but not half as guilty as the people who were cooperating with them in the government.
When the defendants wanted to prove the government had known about their illegal exporting, the government issued a public immunity certificate. Most people think this certificate has something to do with security. It has nothing whatever to do with security. It defends the discussions between civil servants and ministers from any revelation or disclosure.
But at the trial the lawyers forced the government documents out, the trial collapsed and the Scott Inquiry was set up.
There has been the most tremendous attack against the Scott Inquiry from the establishment. The ruling class is trying to protect itself from the revelations. Many of the people named in the Scott report have been promoted. ibid.
Open discussion of many major public questions has for some now been taboo. We can't open our mouths without being denounced as racists, misogynists, supremacists, imperialists or fascists. As for the media, they stand ready to trash anyone so designated. Saul Bellow
It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority. Benjamin Franklin
Inquiry is fatal to certainty. Will Durant
K was informed by telephone that next Sunday a short inquiry into his case would take place. His attention was drawn to the fact that these inquiries would now follow each other regularly, perhaps not every week, but at more frequent intervals as time went on. It was in the general interest, on the one hand, that the case should be quickly concluded, but on the other hand the interrogations must be thorough in every respect, although, because of the strain involved, they must never last too long. Franz Kafka, The Trial p27
Sir Robert, I want an official enquiry into the source of this leak. Good. No, I mean, the kind of official enquiry that never finds out the real culprit. Spitting Image s3e3, Leon Brittan, ITV 1986
Tonight, the Scott Inquiry. We ask, why didn’t he leave Star Trek before he got so fat? Spitting Image s15e5, ITV 1993
Arms to Agincourt Inquiry. Spitting Image s18e4, ITV 1996
The government expert working group next meets on March 27th 2017. The 7,000 Berlin documents seen by Sky News have been handed to the Inquiry. Their finds on hormone pregnancy tests will be published later this year. Primodos: The Secret Drug Scandal, Sky Atlantic 2017
The Metropolitan police has been described as ‘institutionally corrupt’ and its commissioner, Cressida Dick, personally censured for obstruction by an independent inquiry set up to review the murder of the private detective Daniel Morgan.
The findings of a panel inquiring into Morgan’s killing in 1987 triggered calls from his brother, Alistair, for Dick to consider her position.
The panel’s findings were a victory for the 34-year-long struggle for justice by the Morgan family during which they said they endured being ‘lied to, gobbed off, bullied [and] degraded’ by those institutions they believed they had the right to rely on. The Guardian online article Dodd & Sabbagh 16th June 2021, ‘Institutionally corrupt: Daniel Morgan inquiry condemns Met’
The Scott Inquiry provided the ammunition, but who apart from Paul Foot and one or two others have ever fired it? John Pilger, lecture July 1996, ‘The Hidden Power of the Media’
This is where Lord Justice Scott conducted his Inquiry into the scandal of Britain’s arms that went illegally to Saddam Hussein. The Scott Inquiry sat for four hundred hours and gathered evidence from more than two hundred witnesses, including the government’s chief arms salesman, Ian McDonald, who said, ‘Truth is a very difficult concept.’ John Pilger, Flying the Flag (Arming the World), ITV 1994
The truth is that as soon as Thatcher took power, her ministers courted Saddam Hussein. A procession of them went to Baghdad: Lord Carrington, Cecil Parkinson, John Knott, John Biffin, Paul Channon, William Waldergrave. In 1981 Douglas Hurd tried to sell Saddam Hussein an entire air-defence system. And when in 1985 Britain banned the sales of arms to Iraq the flow of British arms and money did not stop. ibid.
The Macpherson Report was published in February 1999 and concluded the police investigation into Stephen's murder was marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership by senior officers. Crimes that Shook Britain: Stephen Lawrence s4e1 *****
The Lawrence Inquiry would go on and have a dramatic effect on Britain. ibid.
The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people. The Macpherson Report: The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry
In the Public Inquiry that followed, the rig’s operator Occidental was heavily criticized. However, no criminal charges were brought against the company. Piper Alpha: Fire in the Night, BBC 2013
The Police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Press Complaints Commission, have all opened inquiries. But are we any nearer to the truth? Dispatches: Tabloids’ Dirty Secret, 2011
The police confirmed Max Clifford’s phone had been hacked, and the papers settled out of court with him reportedly for a million pounds. Gordon Taylor, Chief Executive of the Professional Footballers Association, also sued, reportedly accepting seven hundred thousand pounds in an out-of-court settlement. ibid.
News International nevertheless stuck to its line that this scandal involved only Goodman and Mulcaire. Until just last month. ibid.
The scandal had entangled a whole host of British institutions from the police to Downing Street to the News of the World’s owner Rupert Murdoch. ibid.
With the resignation of Andy Coulson, the seventy-nine-year-old Rupert Murdoch was suddenly galvanised. ibid.
But News International was not the only organisation in damage limitation mode. The Metropolitan Police were also on the defensive. Their original phone-hacking inquiry aroused fierce criticism. Limited in scope, it raised more questions that it answered. ibid.
Many blame what they see as an unhealthy relationship between the police and the News of the World. ibid.
The more cases that come to court the more pressure will build on Mr Coulson himself and on News International. ibid.
It now looks as if the crisis is spreading beyond the News of the World. ibid.
The Guardian – one of the few papers to cover the story. ibid.
They can also impersonate friends and family. ibid.
The Press Complaints Commission has now set up an investigation to investigate its original investigation. ibid.
The Shipman Inquiry now documents that he killed 284 people over a period of thirty years. Born to Kill? Harold Shipman, Channel 5 2012
Lawrence: Amazing Trail of Blunders By Police: Inquiry opens with catalogue of errors. Stephen: The Murder that Changed a Nation II: The System, Daily Mail, BBC 2018
Inquiry Chairman Accuses ‘Racists’: Lawrence police should ‘stop making excuses’: The police were accused of ‘institutionalised racism’ by the chairman of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry yesterday. ibid. Daily Mail