LONDON: Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron has asked the cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, to conduct an urgent investigation into a decision by the government of Margaret Thatcher to send an SAS officer to Delhi in 1984 to advise the Indian government on the expulsion of militants from the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
The prime minister’s spokesman said that the investigation would examine two issues: The British action in 1984 and the decision to release such a sensitive government papers. Heywood will want to examine why the papers were not marked sensitive and held back when papers from 1984 were released under the annual 30-year-rule.
The prime minister intervened after the recent explosive release of papers from 1984 which showed that the then foreign secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, responded “favourably” to a request from Delhi for help in drawing up plans to launch a military operation to remove militants from the Golden Temple. Cameron’s spokesman said that Heywood would conduct his enquiry as quickly as possible.
Downing Street acted after Stop Deportations published a letter, dated February 23, 1984, from Howe’s private secretary, Brian Fall, to Hugh Taylor, his counterpart under the home secretary of the time, Leon Brittan. It warned about “the possibility of repercussions among the Sikh community in this country” over a possible military operation to remove from the Golden Temple Sikh militants, who had seized it several years earlier.
Fall wrote that India had sought British advice over a plan to remove the militants from the complex. “The foreign secretary decided to respond favourably to the Indian request and, with the prime minister’s agreement, an SAD officer has visited India and drawn up a plan which has been approved by Mrs Gandhi,” he wrote. “The foreign secretary believes that the Indian government may put the plan into operation shortly.” The reference to SAD is understood to be a typographical error for SAS, which is referred to later in the letter.
Fall wrote that Britain’s involvement in advising the Indian authorities should be kept secret to avoid inflaming tensions within the Indian community in Britain. He wrote: “We have impressed upon the Indians the need for security; and knowledge of the SAS officer’s visit and of his plan has been tightly held in India and in London. The foreign secretary would be grateful if the contents of this letter could be very strictly limited to those who need to consider the possible domestic implications.”
The other letter released is from Robin Butler, Thatcher’s private secretary, who later became the cabinet secretary. On February 6, 1984 he wrote to Fall saying Thatcher was content for Howe to allow India to receive help, and that Brittan expected to be warned if India looked likely to go ahead with a raid. Butler wrote on 6 February 1984: “The prime minister is content that the foreign secretary should proceed as he proposes.”
According to the Stop Deportations blog, three other letters in the sequence between Butler and Fall were not released, nor was any other file from after March that year. The decision is likely to inflict severe damage on the government’s relations with the Sikh community. Cameron reached out to Sikhs last year when he visited the Golden Temple last year and the nearby Jallianwala Bagh where he wrote of the “deeply shameful” Amritsar massacre of 1919 when at least 379 innocent Indians died after British troops opened fire.
The head of the Sikh Council UK, Gurmel Singh said he was “shocked and disappointed” at the idea the government of Margaret Thatcher may have been involved. The Labour MP Tom Watson, whose West Bromwich constituency is home to many Sikhs, has demanded that the Foreign Office release further papers about any British role.
The Guardian
