Open Secret: the autobiography of the former director-general of MI5 Stella Rimington Hutchinson, 296pp, £18.99 ISBN 0091793602

The importance of this book lies in its publication, not in what it has to say. Even after the cold war ended and the government formally admitted what most of us knew all along, that we had a security service, MI5, which under the guise of protecting national security kept an eye on us all, no one dreamed that the head of such an organisation would ever dare write an autobiography.

So let me say early on that Stella Rimington deserves our thanks for resisting the bullying of the Cabinet Office and many of her colleagues and associates in Whitehall, and pushing on to publication. This is a blow struck for a more open society in what has been hitherto one of the most secret of the western democracies. With luck, it could well result in the death of the Official Secrets Act, especially its heavy-handed suppression of former spies who want to write about their days in the service.

However, any reader interested in knowing how MI5 really operates is bound to be disappointed with this book. First, the manuscript has been gutted to placate Rimington's critics, who did not want her to write anything at all. Second, Rimington herself has drunk too deeply from the secrecy cup and tells us frankly in her preface that anyone hoping to read about specific operations, details of sources of information, human or technical, or about the precise way in which intelligence is gathered and assessed need not bother to read on: "There are no such revelations here."

So what we have is the story of a pleasant woman from a modest, middle-class background who gains a modest degree, marries her long-time boyfriend and becomes a diplomat. When he is posted to India, she is recruited to secret work in Delhi almost by accident - she is so bored that she jumps at the chance to help the High Commission's MI5 officer with his typing. Back in Britain, again bored, she applies to MI5 for a job, gets it and then fights her way up the ranks to become the service's first director general who is not a man.

Rimington's early life and India period occupy the first third of the book, leaving readers to wonder when they are ever going to get to the James Bond stuff. But, in fact, I found the India period the most interesting. It provides a shrewdly observed portrait of the behaviour of British civil servants abroad with the sun going down on the empire but not quite set - the complaints about Indian servants, the climate, the bureaucracy, the parties, the amateur dramatics, the gossip, the longing for "home".

So is there nothing useful at all in this book for one seeking enlightenment about MI5? Rimington writes in a cool, detached manner about her life in the shadows, but she is human and, in at least two places, her attitudes and prejudices break through. Just as the dissident MI5 officer David Shayler has claimed, alcohol plays a major role in the working life of many an MI5 officer. Rimington writes: "I remember one gentleman, who was supposed to be running agents against the Russian intelligence residency in London. He would arrive at the office about ten and about eleven would go out for 'breakfast'. He would return at 12 noon smelling strongly of whisky to get ready to go out to 'meet an agent' for lunch. If he returned at all it would be at about 4pm for a quiet snooze before getting ready to go home."

In one section of MI5 where Rimington worked, she admits getting caught up in drinking sessions with two officers who had been in the Colonial Service. "It was routine for them to return from lunch about four in the afternoon and then we all settled down to afternoon tea laced with whisky . . . I used to go home to my baby daughter some evenings rather the worse for wear if the whisky tea had been too well laced. I suppose there was some plan in what we were doing and some strategic direction somewhere, but I certainly did not know what it was."

Later, again confirming some of Shayler's criticisms of MI5, Rimington hints at how bitter the turf wars must have been as MI5 and the Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police struggled to dominate intelligence gathering in Northern Ireland. "Frankly, in my opinion, neither the intelligence-gathering techniques nor the assessment skills of the police were in those days, up to scratch."

As we now know, MI5 won and took on the lead role in Northern Ireland. As a result, Rimington "acquired a reputation as a ruthless and wily manipulator of Whitehall, of which I was rather proud, though I don't think it was very accurate".

Rimington ends with the hope that her former colleagues will not blame her for what she has done in going public. "They will be getting on with the job they have to do and not spending too much time worrying about this book."

One could say the same about the readers.

Phillip Knightley's most recent book is Australia: a biography of a nation (Jonathan Cape, £20)

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website