Law in Action: au revoir

Spycatcher encourages me to take a career break of 23 years

Readers will recall from the second piece in this three-part series that I started presenting Law in Action on Radio 4 in 1984. Why, then, did I leave the programme just three years later?

Peter Wright must share some of the blame. The former MI5 assistant director retired from the Security Service in 1976 after two decades working in counter-espionage. He went to live in Tasmania and became an Australian citizen. Annoyed that nobody had paid any attention to his claim that MI5 had been penetrated by foreign agents, he decided to publish his memoirs in Australia.

The UK government was horrified. But how could it stop him? In September 1985, the attorney general Sir Michael Havers obtained a temporary injunction from the courts of New South Wales, where Wright’s publishers, Heinemann, were based. A hearing was scheduled for late the following year to decide whether the injunction should be lifted or made permanent.

First US edition of Spycatcher, 1987, signed (on a sticker) by the author (pictured)

There was huge interest in what was expected to be a lengthy and complex hearing. The cabinet secretary Sir Robert Armstrong, later Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, would be flying out to give evidence for the the government. Naturally, BBC News wanted its legal affairs correspondent to cover the hearing. But there was a problem.