It's no secret

Judges decided that as his alleged 'crimes' were politically motivated, he could walk out of court a free man - at least in France.

Maybe instead of abusing the court which convicted him of assault for having the audacity to speak French, Geoffrey Boycott should have claimed the same defence?

"You can't convict me you Froggie berk, Aaaaah'm from Yorkshire," cuts little ice with the Gallic judiciary.

Of course, were Mr Shayler to return to Britain it would be a somewhat different story.

British judges, whom it must be stressed at all time are totally independent of politicians, would lock him up and throw the key away if a jury could be bamboozled by a clever prosecution lawyer.

The offence Mr Shayler is alleged to have committed is to have given away British secrets. Not to an enemy nation because, apart from the French of course, no enemy nation exists since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, but to the Mail on Sunday.

The secrets he has revealed amount not to a detailed list of British bases, armaments and plans to deal with world-wide strategy in case of war, but the trivial facts that MI5 agents keep files on everyone they consider subversive from people like Home Secretary Jack Straw to anyone who may be considered slightly to the political left of Genghis

Khan.

He also suggests they spent thousands of pounds of tax payers' money in a ridiculous plot to murder Colonel Gadaffi and that the whole silly department is riddled with

incompetence.

Obviously this was the British 'bargain'

version of the multi-million dollar plan which saw American bombers attack Libya in a bungled attempt to kill its leader.

Mr Shayler has a defence of course, and one which I might find overwhelmingly convincing as a jury member.

It is not a secret that Britain's security

services are incompetent, one cursory

examination of the Philby affair would

convince any outside observer.

But it is the very nature of the security

services and where its vested interests lie that produces the more ludicrous aspects of its operation.

Without discovering thousands of imagined threats to our national existence, the British security service would be completely

redundant.

What would thousands of otherwise

unemployable chinless Oxbridge graduates with degrees in classical Manderin poetry do if they did not spend their time convincing each other that anyone who ever expresses

a slightly pinkish political opinion was

likely to be at the same time plotting

an armed Communist takeover of Government.

Other than build up files on every left-wing politician in the country, just what are MI5 officers supposed to do?

The problem is compounded with the dissolution of the former Soviet Empire, leaving thousands of civil servants sitting about twiddling their thumbs instead of scouring the country in search of Russian agents wearing black hats and carrying secret plans.

Every time the Government tries to silence a security service whistleblower major

embarrassment results.

But the worrying aspect is that this Government is no better than the last one, when Margaret Thatcher tried to prevent Peter Wright publishing his tedious 'Spycatcher' book.

There is no question of a risk to national security so the issue boils down to the

principal of secrecy itself.

No matter how damaging, incompetent, wasteful, dangerous, pointless and paranoid the activities of MI5 are, the population must not under any circumstances whatsoever be able to discover it.

In this Home Secretary Jack Straw is as obsessive as his Tory predecessors.

Perhaps he is keen to convince MI5 that there was no need to keep a file on him in the first place?

The views contained n this column are solely the writers and do not reflect those of the newspaper. Letters should be sent to Wharfedale Newspapers, 9 Orchard gate, Otley, LS21 3NX.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.