Memorandum by Craig Murray
I write to you as a former Civil Servant who
has submitted his memoirs, "Murder in Samarkand", for
approval to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and who has been
refused that approval. I am nonetheless determined to go ahead
and get the book published. The FCO have warned that they will
take legal action if I do. I believe that places me in a category
of person of particular interest to your Committee's current enquiry.
I was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from
August 2002 to September 2004. For over six years I was a member
of the Senior Civil Service, (or its Diplomatic Service equivalent).
I had a career of over 20 years in the Diplomatic Service.
I believe it is important that the committee
consider my category of case, which is very different to that
of other former Ambassadors such as Jeremy Greenstock and Christopher
Meyer. They left after long and distinguished careers drew to
a natural close. They then took jobs in organisations which are
close to, or related to, government.
By contrast I left the FCO on (very) early retirement
after a long and well publicised dispute with my employer. This
had drastic effects on my health. I am currently without work
at 47, I believe in large part as a result of the damage to my
reputation caused by false accusations brought against me by the
FCO. At the moment my future looks bleak.
It is the contention of my book that I was both
mistreated and traduced by the FCO as the result of an internal
policy dispute over our attitude to the government of President
Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, and over cooperation with his security
services allegedly in pursuit of the War on Terror. It is a fact
that I faced a lengthy investigation into 18 allegations made
against me, which were leaked in detail to the media. It is also
a fact that I was formally cleared on all 18 charges.
My name was cleared, despite the standard of
proof being balance of probability, not beyond reasonable doubt.
I am sure many of your committee will understand that makes a
major difference. It also lends weight to the question of how
such a huge raft of charges, none of them probable, could come
about. That is much of the story of my book. I was, incidentally,
found guilty of a nineteenth charge, that of talking about the
charges.
The FCO would deny that I was in any way mistreated.
They are perfectly entitled to argue that. But do the Select Committee
really believe that the government should be able to use an all-enveloping
definition of Crown Copyright to prevent me from setting out my
side of the story? It does not matter if you side with me or the
FCO on what happened. You do not have to support me in the dispute,
to support my right to freedom of speech.
I ask the committee whether, in this context
of what might be termed an employment dispute, an employer which
happens to be a government department should be able to stop by
diktat an aggrieved employee, who lost his job, from publishing
his account of events?
I would argue that in these circumstances the
laws of defamation and libel, the Official Secrets Act, the Data
Protection Act and the Freedom of Information Act provide proper
and secure boundaries of law within which an employee ought to
have the right to air his grievance. For the employer to simply
ban the book by refusal to clear it, and the threat of arguing
in court that the area of dispute is subject to Crown Copyright,
cannot be fair. It is an unjustified limitation of freedom of
speech.
My publisher has received formal legal advice
that, even if a document has been obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act or the Data Protection Act, the government may
still prevent its publication by exercising Crown Copyright. If
upheld, this would mean that a newspaper, which obtained a document
under the Freedom of Information Act, could nonetheless be arbitrarily
prevented from publishing it.
That seems to me to obviate much of the purpose
of the Freedom of Information Act. I would request the Committee
to consider this problem and resist the temptation to endorse
the government's musings about making more vigorous use of Crown
Copyright. I would further suggest that the Committee recommend
that the Government should state that, as a matter of policy,
it will not use Crown Copyright to suppress publication of material
obtained under the Freedom of Information Act or Data Protection
Act.
Allow me apply this to my own case. I received
a large number of documents pursuant to a formal application under
the Data Protection Act. The documents consist largely of minutes
about the handling of the disciplinary procedure against me. In
particular they give irrefutable evidence of the detailed personal
involvement of the Secretary of State Jack Straw, both in holding
meetings and in writing minutes, in the setting up and detailed
conduct of disciplinary charges against me. This evidence is included
in the text of my book. Mr Straw has repeatedly denied he had
any connection with the action taken against me.
One purpose of the DPA is to enable the citizen
to get at the truth of what government is doing in relation to
them personally. Does the Committee believe I should be prevented
from publishing those minutes about me, obtained legitimately
under the DPA, because of Crown Copyright? I do not expect the
Committee necessarily to take a view on the individual case. I
point out what I believe to be the unfair hazard for freedom of
speech of an aggressive use of Crown Copyright.
I have been informed by senior FCO officials
that in my case the submission on whether to give permission to
publish was put to Mr Straw. That seems to me to open questions
on whether politicians should be permitted to ban information
about their own conduct. The committee may consider such decisions
might be better taken by an independent body enforcing agreed
rules.
Let me be quite plain about the current situation.
The FCO has stated that it will not "Ban" the book,
but that if it is published it will sue under Crown Copyright.
That is an effective deterrent to any publisher, whose purpose
is to run a business publishing books, not to conduct extremely
expensive litigation. So in fact their aggressive attitude does
amount to a ban.
I should also like the Committee to consider
the ability of Government departments to use process to frustrate
an author. In my case I spent hundreds of hours over some eight
months in detailed discussion with the FCO on the text of my book,
including meetings, letters, emails and numerous long phone calls.
I made scores of textual amendments, some of them very major,
to try to meet their concerns. Only at the end of this process
did they turn round and say that they opposed in principle the
entire publication of the book.
After reviewing this large raft of correspondence
between the FCO and I, the publisher's lawyers, most distinguished
in this field, commented:
I agree with the author when he accuses the
FCO of delaying tactics by playing him along, implying certain
consents and then objecting in principle to the publication of
the book. However, there is nothing particularly unusual in this
. . . Government departments are capricious and that is their
nature.
Perhaps the Committee might consider whether
we ought to have to resign ourselves to capricious behaviour in
this regard. From my long knowledge of FCO process, my expectation
is that I was negotiating with civil servants who were diligently
applying rules, before the book was finally submitted to a politician
who simply wanted it banned.
I would conclude that, if the government or
an individual wishes to take legal action against me over my book
over alleged libel or a breach of the Official Secrets Act, that
is a perfectly legitimate course of action and to be decided in
court. But I do not view the aggressive use of Crown Copyright
or confidentiality, in effect to block publication, to be legitimate
in the case outlined above.
Book banning is in itself pernicious and should
always be specifically justified. Where there are two parties
to a dispute, for one party to use an arbitrary authority to suppress
a book about the dispute by the other party, leaves a nasty smell.
I am at the disposal of the Committee if I might
be of any assistance.
5 March 2006
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