RIMINGTON'S FAKE REVELATIONS
Stella Rimington was the first Director General of the British Secret Services M.I.5 to be publicly named on appointment in 1985 - part of a strategy of carefully coordinated 'openness' that followed a number of public relations disasters, from the jailing of clerk Sarah Tisdall to the publication of Peter Wright's memoirs 'Spycatcher'. With the perceived danger of Soviet infiltration receding, the raison d'etre of the intelligence services was receding, and increasing numbers of spies from Richard Tomlinson to David Shayler have broken the Official Secrets Act, revealing details of their work.
Now, apparently, the former head of the Secret Services has joined them, publishing her own memoirs. Dame Stella claims that her decision to publish has led to a high-profile, establishment campaign to silence her, and is calling for a reform of the Official Secrets Act. Rimington's daring revelations of her work in the 1980s as head of counter-subversion in the UK include the claim that she opened a file of newspaper cuttings on National Union of Miners' leader Arthur Scargill, and that despite all the evidence to the contrary, the NUM official Roger Windsor was not in fact an MI5 agent. With revelations like these, MI5 has nothing to fear - indeed the fake storm of disapproval has succeeded in making her whitewash of counter-subversion seem more plausible than it otherwise would.
ZIMBABWE LAND REFORMS
A surprise deal between British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe to fund land redistribution was brokered by Nigeria through the Commonwealth. Under the previous Foreign Minister Robin Cook and his deputy Peter Hain, Britain organised a campaign to destabilise Mugabe's government, openly backing the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by Morgan Tsvangirai.
Mugabe became president in 1980 in a deal brokered by Britain to transfer the government from a white minority regime under the apartheid system, to the leaders of the African nationalist guerilla movement. The Lancaster House agreement was a great relief to the British, who succeeded in managing a switch-over of presidents, while de-railing the popular opposition to imperialism. Radical critics of Apartheid inside and outside of Zimbabwe prepared the ground by demanding that Britain act as honest broker. Concessions from the Patriotic Front leaders at Lancaster House guaranteed the sanctity of private property, and surrendered control of the police and military to Britain. The Economist reported bluntly that 'Britain has a new colony'.
The state of Zimbabwe was established on the basis of economic and diplomatic subservience to the West, frustrating popular aspirations for development. Without growth, divisions between Shona and Matabele came to the fore. Mugabe stabilised the country for imperialism through a campaign of terror against opponents, slaughtering Matabele in 1985, detaining middle class protesters in 1989 and harrassing critics. The ruling ZANU party formally renounced Marxism in 1991, while Finance Minister Bernard Chidzero instituted a local structural adjustment policy, ESAP. Collaboration with British Security Services continued with the abduction of Irish republican Nick Mullen in 1989 and British training for Zimbabwean police up to the late 1990s. Though Britain was grateful to Mugabe for stabilising Zimbabwe for investment, the moral defeat of European rule in Rhodesia was never accepted, and Britain continued to nurse the ambition to unseat Mugabe at a later date.
While Mugabe succeeded in constraining opposition from within the former guerilla movement led by Joshua Nkomo and Edgar Tekere, the strains imposed by IMF-demanded austerity measures led to the emergence of a middle class opposition movement led by Trade Unionist Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC. At the British Foreign Office Robin Cook and Peter Hain saw their opportunity to dictate a new political settlement, and cranked up the campaign against Mugabe.
Though it became a focus for popular opposition to ZANU, the MDC posed no political alternative. Indeed Tsvangirai outdid Mugabe in his promises to cut back public spending to meet Zimbabwe's international debts, and even endorsed the privileged white minority's complaints of victimisation. Courting Western support, the MDC failed to win over rural Zimbabweans, and lost in the elections to ZANU. Tragically, radicals uncritically embraced Tsvangirai's MDC as an alternative to Mugabe, just as they uncritically embraced Mugabe twenty years earlier.
In the event it was ZANU not the MDC that posed a solution - however phoney - to the problem of urban unemployment. The strategy of using the tribal trust lands to absorb surplus labour goes back to the Apartheid regime. By threatening the seizure of white farms for redistribution, Mugabe tied the policy to a pretence of anti-colonialism. By demanding that Britain fund the transfers, Mugabe created a rationale for a resumption of aid. Britain, seeing that the MDC had failed to provide an alternative decided to mend its fences with ZANU. For the unemployed Zimbabweans occupying white farms, though, the policy is a short-term one. At best it offers subsistence, but no hope of new jobs.
Britain's decision to fund land distribution has provoked squeals of protest from the MDC's sponsors amongst Western NGOs, that it has sold out to Mugabe. But in fact the funding deal comes with strings attached, as Britain's presumed right to monitor the aid will be used to discipline the ZANU government. -- James Heartfield