Nuj Runs for Cover as Abc Trial Loom

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WHO IS NHC PHOTO: Andrew Wiard. Report International Telecommunication Convention ABC Defence demonstration at Cheltenham ramnaion nrevent the . effertively stronathon it and As the September 5 Official Secrets Act trial of Crispin Aubrey, John Berry and Duncan Campbell looms closer, NUJ leaders are pulling further back from any call for strike action to defend. them against possible 14-year jail terms.

The three defendants (two are journalists, while John Berry is an ex-soldier) are charged under Section 1 of the Official Secrets Actthe so-called "spying clause"

Useful

Yet not even the prosecution has claimed that they acted in any way as spies. The Act simply makes it illegal to "receive or communicate" any information that "may be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy"

Duncan Campbell has additionally been charged with collecting information-all of it from published and publicly available sources.

Behind the charges lies the support given by Aubrey and Campbell to the LEONARO HOOPER.- MILITARY HIS JOB IS A CONTRADE IN TERMS berts re Taless:

09$.590 208931980 campaign to LU PILYVIL deportation of ex-CIA agent Philip Agee by the Labour government, and a determination by top military and civil service officials to preserve the full strength of the Official Secrets Act, in the 1974 manifesto to repeal.

aside That pledge has now been cast aside and a Labour White Paper proposes changes only to Section 2 of the Act, which will DANLEY A B GONE salaaa. Tonestlises 21 Ocute: 1973 Kingdon 1034 further curtail democratic rights.

Strike action

At April's NUJ Annual Delegate meeting an overwhelming majority voted to support those sections that took strike action at the start of the trial in September, and right wingers vied with lefts' in defiant demagogic speechés denouncing the Official Secrets Act and calling for its repeal.

Yet now a mere month from the trial an NUJ circular calling for a mass picket of the Old Bailey on* September 5 makes no mention whatever of strike action.

And NUJ leaders have done next to nothing to mobilise other unions in support of Aubrey, Berry and Campbell, whose "crime" was to attempt to assert basic press freedom by holding a private-still undisclosed-conversation with John Berry, who seven years beforehand, had been an army corporal attached tò the top secret Signals Intelligence unit "SIGINT' The issue is one affecting and threatening all sections of the Labour movement. Labour parties and union branches should at once pass resolutions demanding Home Secretary Merlyn Rees order the dropping of the charges, and immediate steps to repeal the Official Secrets Act.

NUJ chapels in London and elsewhere should discuss strike action on September 5 in solidarity with the three defendants, as a part of the fight to broaden the action to other unions.

And the biggest possible delegations should attend the mass picket of the Old Bailey on Septem iber 5. • 805?