[UK PM] Edward Heath ordered MI5 to watch school revolutionaries

The Times ^ | 4/13/2009 | David Brown

[bruinbirdman]

With their long hair, loose ties and flared trousers, the Pupil Power radicals wanted to overthrow the oppression of the cane and the conformity of school uniforms.

Special Branch and the Government saw them as pawns in a communist plot to undermine the nation between double maths and PE.

Confidential police and Whitehall papers released under the Freedom of Information Act show the official concern at the rise of subversive pupil groups in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Thousands of boys and girls were recruited to the movement, leading to classroom strikes and violent protests. The Schools’ Action Union and the National Union of School Students appeared to threaten the British way of life, demanding an end to corporal punishment, the introduction of free dinners and, for the over-16s, contraception.

Having seen left-wing students bring down the French Government, the Prime Minister, Edward Heath, was taking no risks and ordered MI5 to monitor the revolutionaries, who included boys from Eton and Harrow,

Documents released by the Home Office show that Mr Heath also asked the Education Secretary, Margaret Thatcher, to report. An official replying on her behalf warned there was “significant, but rather ill-defined and inarticulate, discontent” among children. “Some boys and girls are already beginning to develop political attitudes in an immature way, and are affected by the example of militancy set by older students and by adults, including their own teachers,” he added.

Investigations by Scotland Yard’s Special Branch, then at the height of its battle with the IRA, revealed that the National Union of School Students’ campaign was backed by the Young Communist League, the Trotskyist Young Socialists and the Young Liberals. Officials were shaken enough to consider restricting entrance to sixth forms.

In May 1972 the Government and Scotland Yard were braced for a protest

[nathanbedford]

Special Branch and the Government saw them as pawns in a communist plot to undermine the nation between double maths and PE. (emphasis in original)

Were there not in fact Communists involved in the student unrest? Were they plotting? Why the need to caricature the government's concern with the phrase "between double maths and P. E."?

The thing about McCarthyism is that McCarthy was right, there really were communists in the State Department.

[Slings and Arrows]

IOW, he did his job?

[MrBambaLaMamba]

and the communist media finds this shocking.