BACK at the beginning of the 1980s, I remember, the RAF came to my Northern Irish grammar school on a recruitment drive. It was, as you might expect, a bullish presentation big on flag-waving and national pride. But what I most recall of that day was the long-haired sixth-former at the back of the hall asking one of the RAF officers the simple question, “Have you ever killed anyone?”
That day and that question came back to me while listening to Nihal Arthanayake’s 5 Live special on Monday in which the broadcaster was given access to MI6 (aka the Secret Intelligence Service).
Such a curious programme: a mixture of mediated interviews in which agent’s voices were sometimes voiced by actors (a bit like Sinn Fein back in the day when Margaret Thatcher wanted to deny them “the oxygen of publicity") and a glimpse (but only a glimpse) behind the curtain of Britain's spy network.
The question Arthanayake was keen to ask was not “have you killed anyone?” No, he was more interested in why the service wanted to talk to the BBC? The reason seemed to be to get the message across that MI6 is looking to recruit a more varied range of employees. More women, more black and Asian people. Maybe they’ve realised that public schools aren't necessarily the best gene pool to be drawing on. (Look at what Eton has done to politics, after all?)
“We can’t afford to be an organisation that only recruits and develops people from one strand of society,” one senior SIS employee suggested. “We need people from diverse backgrounds to come in and work for us and we think the best way of doing that is to open ourselves a bit more than we have done in the past.”
A bit more is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, to be fair. I’m not sure we learned that much about MI6 here. Or not much more than they wanted us to, for all the obvious reasons.
Arthanayake did ask about the reputational impact of the weapons of mass destruction debacle before the war with Iraq. That was a long time ago, he was reminded. Things have changed.
What did we learn? Well, that being an MI6 agent isn’t much like being James Bond. Talking to one agent he called “Chloe” (not her real name and not her real voice), Arthanayake asked: “You didn’t get an Aston Martin when you started?
“No, unfortunately,” Chloe admitted. “Annoying.”
Turns out quite a lot of the agents are indeed Bond fans. “But it’s a caricature,” one admitted. “The trouble is it tends to attract a certain type of person and what we want to do is really highlight that there are lots and lots of different people at MI6 … who do a wide range of roles and they all have a place in the organisation.”
In short, Q and Moneypenny are just as important as 007, whatever 007 thinks.
James Bond didn’t personally get involved in the Miners’ Strike, although it’s possible a few real-life agents did. Mark Watson’s Strike Boy, stripped across the week on Radio 4 (and continuing this coming week) was more interested in community than conspiracy, however. Watson, the son of a miner, was 11 when the strike began in 1984 and 40 years later he was keen to work out what really happened. That meant talking to striking miners, miners who continued to work and even Michael Heseltine.
On Wednesday he was introduced to Bruce, a flying picket from Yorkshire. “Mark’s the son of a striking Nottingham miner,” the programme’s producer told Bruce. “Not many of them,” Bruce replied. Resentment still rides high all these years later.
Bruce was one of the most compelling witnesses Watson spoke to. On Thursday’s programme he talked about his time as a flying picket and what that entailed.
“We ambushed a bus full of scabs at Pye Hill Colliery, Nottinghamshire,” he said at one point. Which meant? Throwing bricks at the bus’s window, it seems.
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“I really, really had no time for them,” Bruce said of those miners who crossed the picket line. You could still hear the anger and passion in his voice.
Some 40 years on the strike is over, but that doesn’t mean it’s past.
Listen Out For:
Composer of the Week, Radio 3, midday, Monday to Friday No Bach or Beethoven this week, it’s Italian film composer Ennio Morricone who is in the spotlight all week. His work with Sergio Leone is highlighted on Tuesday and his contribution to the Italian Giallo genre is the subject of Wednesday’s show.
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