Tempus fugit

[Duncan Campbell]

Tuesday, 22 June

What a news day Tuesday has been - read all about Labour's abandonment of 
Freedom of Information at 8am, 10.30 at court to see a journalist indicted 
under the Official Secrets Act (the first since me under the last 
government Labour 22 years ago), quickly on to hear the inane and 
unimaginative National Criminal Intelligence Service proposals on stopping 
computer crimes and getting new decryption powers in the guise of 
e-commerce at 11.00.    3.30  Afternoon thrills and spills at the Home 
Office, for tea, telephone tapping plans and internet interception 
schemes.  Moments later its time for the evening news, Tony Blair telling 
us that Labour has not left its traditional values behind.

Tony is absolutely, completely right, of course he is.  It was just like 
this under Jim Callaghan and Merlyn Rees.  Why can no-one else see this?

Searching the memory cells a moment, I fuzzily remember a keen young 
liberal barrister who in 1980 wrote an NCCL pamphlet on the iniquities of 
the Official Secrets Act, after it was all over.   The writer?   Anthony G. 
....?  aye, time passes.

Six years later, there he was sitting on my Habitat sofa in Stoke 
Newington, now an up and coming MP with a junior treasury shadow job, keen 
as mustard for leaks - so keen he'd just rushed over from Hackney to get a 
copy of a secret report that the Bank of England didn't want anyone to know 
about.   He'd adjusted his name over the years.  Tony, it was.

The same Tony?    No, this dizzy moment of deja vu must pass, I'll get on 
topic soon.

So sorry.   I meant "on message".    I feel better now.    Tony loves us 
all.

Winston [Smith]