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Whistleblowers should not be persecuted

Jasper Gerard

WHISTLEBLOWERS CAN only blow their whistles briefly, for they are swiftly taken away — to jail. So here, I shall attempt to blow for them and not merely a whistle, but a trumpet. David Keogh had been a civil servant for 25 years, but on Saturday morning, rather than eating porridge with his family, he is doing "porridge" — serving a prison sentence — with criminals. This did not appear on the charge sheet, but his offence was to pose questions about Britain's identity, and its relationship with America. And this is a crime for which the British establishment will display no mercy.

Mr. Keogh was convicted last week of leaking a memo about a conversation between Tony Blair and George W Bush. Justice Aikens accused Mr. Keogh of "a gross breach of trust," which you might think a tad rich under the circumstances. Further, the judge imposed such a draconian gag on newspapers that I cannot report all the answers Mr. Keogh gave in his defence. His lordship even bans me from debating the "damage" disclosure might bring and he does not specify whether he means damage to national security or simply to the political security of Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair. He even stops the media repeating revelations they have already made; yet any damage such stories could do has, presumably, been done.

So Justice Aikens hardly makes it easy for me to blow Mr. Keogh's trumpet. But to me, whistleblowers are usually heroes, rarely villains. They are motivated by the noblest ideals, not base calculations. Governments of all hues are guilty of mendacity and muddle. Without whistleblowers, we would be kept in the dark, which is where Ministers want us. Labour recognised all this in Opposition, championing the great whistleblowers of the Thatcher years, Tisdall, Ponting, and Wallace.

Justice Aikens attacks Mr. Keogh because he "decided on his own" to leak the memo. But who else could he consult? Civil Service rules instruct mandarins with a troubled conscience to consult their superior, but civil servants who have followed these rules tell me they have been met with gin and flannel: "Come, come, dear boy, don't make a fuss. These are matters for Ministers, not for us."

Can we rely on Ministers to defend our national interest? European trade commissioner, and Mr. Blair's closest political ally, Peter Mandelson, made a monstrous blunder on TV last week, which has gone unremarked. As arguably the most brilliantly Machiavellian brain of his generation, he realised the gravity of his mistake instantly, for he carried on blustering as if his mortgage depended on it. He said it would have been wrong for Britain not to join in with the Iraq war — because America had already decided to go ahead.

Even the Queen has been drawn into this transatlantic conspiracy. The brilliance of her reign has been its blandness. But last week in America, she went way beyond the convention of sucking up to one's host and came dangerously close to saying something interesting: she said the defining lesson of her life as a monarch was that Britain should act in consort with America. It exposed the default position of our establishment, which Gordon Brown, if his premiership is to fly, will have to challenge.

Valiantly, Mr. Keogh tried to show us how choppy Atlantic waters can be. He should be toasted with champagne. To our shame, he is doing porridge. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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