Thread by @anthonydaly01

Part 2: The PINCHER/HAVERS document
I was keen to find out the content of the documents the Met had copied from Pincher’s “rather fat” Havers folder in February 1987. In April 2019, I submitted an FOI request to the Met as follows:

“On 17 December 1986 the Serious Crime Squad of the Met instituted inquiries into an allegation that Lord Rothschild and the journalist Chapman Pincher were Soviet spies. Two senior officers from Scotland Yard were allocated the case.

Pincher’s interrogation began on 12 February 1987. Pincher gave the detectives a folder marked “Havers” (Sir Michael Havers Attorney General). The police photocopied some of the documents and returned the file.

The case was closed by April 1987 with no charges brought. I am doing research into this matter and would like to receive a copy of the documents that the Met copied from the Havers folder.”

The Met subsequently invoked no fewer than five separate exemptions and issued the following statement:

The Metropolitan Police Service can neither confirm nor deny whether it holds the information that you requested as the duty in Section 1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act) does not apply by virtue of the following exemptions:

Section 23(5) - Information supplied by, or concerning, certain security bodies
Section 24(2) - National Security
Section 30(3) - Criminal Investigations
Section 31(3) - Law Enforcement
Section 40(5) - Personal Information

I requested an internal review of the Met’s FOI decision and the review subsequently upheld the original decision.

However, I now have in my possession a two-page document dated as being filed on11/03/1987 ( the month after the Met took possession of the Havers folder). The name C Pincher is hand-written on the document.

Other hand written comments have been redacted. The document appears to have originated from the Central Criminal Court during the Guildford Four and Playland trials of 1975. The contents of the documents are explosive and reveal:

• Police concerns about Sir Michael Havers speaking to the DPP about the Playland trial
• concerns over suspicions that Sir Michael may have been associating with a Northern Irish rent boy

• concerns that Sir Michael's behaviour could endanger both the Guildford Four trial (which he was prosecuting at that time) and the Playland trial which was running concurrently

• concerns about this information becoming public
• corruption within the criminal justice system (the trial judge hearing the Playland case is offering to have a quiet word with Sir Michael)

• corruption in the Met and DPP's office (Sir Michael is apparently perverting the course of justice and no action is being taken)

• that the rent boy in question had been under surveillance - the authorities knew who he was meeting and what they were doing, yet chose to do nothing about this criminal activity (homosexual sex with anyone under the age of 21 was a crime in 1975)

• the Prime Minister Harold Wilson, the Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, and Margaret Thatcher Leader of the Opposition were made aware of the Havers allegations

The PINCHER/HAVERS document is stamped: CO. FILE REF 000196. This might suggest a copy was held by the Cabinet Office at some stage. There are a number of initials on the document including R.A. Robert Armstrong was the Cabinet Secretary in 1987.

I have reason to believe that the document was written by a Mr I. H. Smith, who was Courts Administrator at the Central Criminal Court in 1975. He had written an earlier internal memo to Mr R. H. Pickering, expressing concerns about Sir Michael’s interest in the Playland trial.

The PINCHER/HAVERS document presents a scenario where prominent businessmen in finance, bookselling, publishing, academia and politics were having sex with a Northern Irish rent boy during an IRA terror campaign in Britain. Were clients being set up to be blackmailed?

The archive of the late Chapman Pincher’s papers is held by King’s College London. I was keen to find out if the original copies of the document were present in the archive. My copy was forwarded to the Archives Collection Manager, who kindly agreed to search for the originals.

The AC manager reported back that the Pincher archive consists of 26 boxes, each containing a number of files. The files have been allocated numbers for classification purposes. Box 3 File 3 was originally entitled “Havers.”

Original copies of the PINCHER/HAVERS document in question could not be found. The manager reported: “I note however, that the file is anything but “rather fat”, so I wonder if Pincher’s papers may have had a fair amount of reorganisation before they ever came here.”

In archival terms, “reorganisation” can cover a multitude of sins, including removal.

In conclusion, the Met will neither confirm nor deny that they hold the PINCHER/HAVERS document. A number of original documents appear to have been removed from the “rather fat” Havers folder, before Pincher’s papers were sent to King College London. Big news story here? Nah...

To view the PINCHER/HAVERS document save as a picture, then open and enlarge.

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