Espionage or spying is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information. A person who commits espionage is called an espionage agent or spy. Any individual or spy ring, in the service of a government, company or independent operation, can commit espionage. The practice is clandestine, as it is by definition unwelcome. In some circumstances, it may be a legal tool of law enforcement and in others, it may be illegal and punishable by law.
The Security Service, also known as MI5, is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency, and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and Defence Intelligence (DI). MI5 is directed by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), and the service is bound by the Security Service Act 1989. The service is directed to protect British parliamentary democracy and economic interests, and counter terrorism and espionage within the United Kingdom (UK).
The miners' strike of 1984–1985 was a major industrial action to shut down the British coal industry in an attempt to prevent colliery closures. It was led by Arthur Scargill of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) against the National Coal Board (NCB), a government agency. Opposition to the strike was led by the Conservative government of the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who wanted to reduce the power of the trade unions.
The Battle of Orgreave was a violent confrontation on 18 June 1984 between pickets and officers of the South Yorkshire Police (SYP) and other police forces at a British Steel Corporation (BSC) coking plant at Orgreave, in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. It was a pivotal event in the 1984–1985 UK miners' strike, and one of the most violent clashes in British industrial history. Journalist Alastair Stewart has characterised it as "a defining and ghastly moment" that "changed, forever, the conduct of industrial relations and how this country functions as an economy and as a democracy". Historian Tristram Hunt has described the confrontation as "almost medieval in its choreography ... at various stages a siege, a battle, a chase, a rout and, finally, a brutal example of legalised state violence". Most media reports at the time depicted it as "an act of self-defence by police who had come under attack". Despite the police evidence subsequently being deemed unreliable in court, there still exists a body of opinion that the police at Orgreave "were upholding the law in the face of intimidation from thousands of strikers".
Alasdair David Gordon Milne was a British television producer and executive. He had a long career at the BBC, where he was eventually promoted to Director-General, and was described by The Independent as "one of the most original and talented programme-makers to emerge during television's formative years".
Martin Dillon is an Irish author, journalist, and broadcaster. He has won international acclaim for his investigative reporting and non-fiction works on The Troubles, including his bestselling trilogy, The Shankill Butchers, The Dirty War and God and the Gun, about the Northern Ireland conflict. The historian and scholar, Dr. Conor Cruise O'Brien, described him as "our Virgil to that Inferno". The Irish Times hailed him as "one of the most creative writers of our time".
Roger Windsor was chief executive of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) between 1983 and 1989, including during the 1984 miners' strike. He later moved to France and then to Herefordshire.
John Hendy, Baron Hendy, is an English barrister and politician acknowledged as one of the country's leading experts in UK labour law.
Andrew Philip Drummond-Murray, commonly known as Andrew Murray, is a British trade union and Labour Party official and activist. Murray was seconded from Unite the Union to Labour headquarters for the 2017 United Kingdom general election, subsequently becoming an adviser to Jeremy Corbyn from 2018 to 2020.
Peter Taylor, is a British journalist and documentary-maker. He is best known for his coverage of the political and armed conflict in Northern Ireland, widely known as the Troubles, and for his investigation of Al Qaeda and Islamist extremism in the wake of 9/11. He also covers the issue of smoking and health and the politics of tobacco for which he was awarded the WHO Gold Medal for Services to Public Health. He has written books and researched, written and presented television documentaries over a period of more than forty years. In 2014, Taylor was awarded both a Royal Television Society lifetime achievement award and a BAFTA special award.
The Green Book is a training and induction manual issued by the Irish Republican Army to new volunteers. It was used by the post-Irish Civil War Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Cumann na mBan,, along with later incarnations such as the Provisional IRA (PIRA). It includes a statement of military objectives, tactics and conditions for military victory against the British government. This military victory was to be achieved as part of "the ongoing liberation of Ireland from foreign occupiers". The Green Book has acted as a manual of conduct and induction to the organisation since at least the 1950s.
Mark Lee Urban is a British journalist, historian, and broadcaster, and is currently the Diplomatic Editor and occasional presenter for BBC Two's Newsnight.
Seumas Milne is a British journalist and political aide. He was appointed as the Labour Party's Executive Director of Strategy and Communications in October 2015, under Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, initially on leave from The Guardian. He left that newspaper in January 2017, in order to work for the party full-time. He later left his role upon Corbyn's departure as Leader in April 2020.
Tony Geraghty is a British-Irish writer and journalist. He served in the Parachute Regiment, and was awarded the Joint Service Commendation Medal for his work as a military liaison officer with U.S. forces during the Gulf War. He has been a journalist for The Boston Globe and was the Sunday Times Defence Correspondent in the 1970s.
A Darker Domain is a 2008 psychological thriller novel by Scottish crime writer Val McDermid. Reviewers often noted the fast paced style of the novel as it flashes back and forth between two plot lines, a contemporary crime in 2007 and the investigation of a cold case from 1984. The novel is set during the UK miners strike of 1984–1985 in Fife. Her accounts of the strike are particularly pointed, exploring the effects of the strikes on the emotions of the people involved and their community. McDermid was raised in Fife, and one reviewer credits her accurate review of the strikes to her experiences earlier in her life. The reviews of the book were generally good, many of the reviewers comparing the book to her previous novels. The New York Times named the book one of the "Notable Crime Books of 2009."
Francis Beckett is an English author, journalist, biographer, and contemporary historian. He has written biographies of Aneurin Bevan, Clement Attlee, Harold Macmillan, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. He has also written on education for the New Statesman, The Guardian and The Independent and is the editor of Third Age Matters, the national magazine published by the University of the Third Age. Beckett has been described as "an Old Labour romantic" by Guardian associate editor Michael White.
Mark Howard Stephens CBE is an English solicitor specialising in media law, intellectual property rights and human rights with the firm Howard Kennedy LLP. He is known for representing James Hewitt when allegations of his affair with Diana, Princess of Wales first emerged. In 2010, he represented Julian Assange, the founder of the whistleblower website, WikiLeaks, defending him against extradition to Sweden.
The Hallam Tower was a hotel located in Broomhill area of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England.
Arthur Scargill is a British trade unionist who was President of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1982 to 2002. He is best known for leading the 1984–1985 miners' strike, a major event in the history of the British labour movement.
George Bolton is a Scottish former trade unionist and communist activist.
