
D-Notice
Moyra Grant


How free are the press and broadcasting media in Britain? The externa=
l
constraints are quite well known - though their range and scope may not
be. For example, the broadcasting laws allow the Home Secretary complete
control over all broadcasting content , which - without reference to
Parliament - has enabled the Home Office since 1988 to ban direct
reporting of Irish activists, including members of legal political parties
such as Sinn Fein. Other legislative constraints include the Official
Secrets Act, Prevention of Terrorism Act, Police and Criminal Evidence
Act, Contempt of Court Act, and laws relating to obscenity, libel, race
relations, sedition, incitement to disaffection and treason - amongst
others. To these can be added the many instances of direct Government
censorship - notably during the Falklands and Gulf conflicts - and the
informal but sometimes intense pressures of advertisers and distributors.
The most insidious form of political control on the media, however, is not
external constraint but self-censorship. I am not referring here to any
readiness by the media to check their own sometimes discreditable
behaviour, intrusions into privacy, missta tements of fact or
unwillingness to present diverse views and to foster democratic debate.
That (in the case of newspapers) is supposedly the job of the Press
Complaints Commission, which replaced the Press Council in 1990 as a
voluntary self-regulating b ody. The likes of Fergie and David Mellor
might be forgiven for regarding it as a watchdog without teeth. The most
institutionalised method of self-censorship is the D Notice system (short
for Defence Notices). They are a unique peacetime arrangement of voluntary
suppression of certain categories of information on the advice - not
orders - of the Government . The system was established in 1912 and
continues to this day. The justification for the system, as stated in the
official guidelines, is as follows: Hostile intelligence services draw o=
n
information from a variety of sources both overt and covert, and by
piecing it together can build up a composite picture of a sub ject. The
dissemination of sensitive information can make their task easier and put
national security at risk. It can also be of value to terrorist groups who
lack the resources to obtain it through their own efforts. For these
reasons there are dangers i nherent even in the publication of information
covered by D Notices which has already appeared elsewhere. It is strongly
requested that there should be no elaboration, nor confirmation or denial,
of the accuracy of items published elsewhere, without refer ence to the [D
Notice] Secretary. There are currently eight general D Notices (which,
incidentally, used to be secret information themselves, but were made
public in 1982):  No.1:Defence plans, operational capability, state of
readiness and training No.2:Defence equipment No.3:Nuclear weapons and
equipment No.4:Radio and radar transmissions No.5:Cyphers and
comm-unications No.6: British security and intelligence services No.7:War
precautions and civil defence No.8:Photography etc. of defence
establishments and installations

There is no direct relationship between the D Notice system and the
Official Secrets Act; the latter has legal force, the former does not. As
the official guidelines say, The D Notice system is entirely voluntary
and has no legal authority; the final res ponsibility for the decision
whether or not to publish lies solely with the editor or publisher
concerned. However, the guidelines also state pointedly that the D Notic=
e
system is a useful reminder of the legal sanctions which may be brought to
bear if a n editor or producer oversteps the mark. Moreover, pressure to
comply can be overwhelming. When in the early 1980s Granada TV made a
documentary about the Official Secrets Act, the D Notice Committee asked
them to exclude the address of the Governments C ommunications
Headquarters (GCHQ) at Cheltenham. Granada objected, because the address
was in Whitakers Almanac and other registers and was therefore pub=
lic
knowledge. However, the IBA - the body which then allocated broadcasting
franchises and monitor ed commercial programmes - intervened and ordered
Granada to cut the reference out of the programme. (The Governments
subsequent ban on trade union membership at GCHQ and the resulting
publicity, strikes and court cases, ironically, ensured that the exis
tence and location of GCHQ rapidly became household knowledge.) The
Notices are issued and amended on the authority of the Defence Press and
Broadcasting committee (DPBC), which is made up of officials from relevant
government departments (e.g. Defence, Foreign and Home Offices) together
with representatives of the pr ess and broadcasting organisations. It is
chaired by a senior MoD civil servant. The D Notices are sent out to
national and provincial newspaper editors, radio and TV companies, and to
some publishers of books and periodicals. When editors know that certa in
information falls under a particular D Notice they simply exclude it; when
they are uncertain, they may seek advice. The Secretary of the D Notice
Committee, Rear Admiral Higgins, receives on average one phone call a week
from editors seeking guidance on potentially sensitive material; he gives
positive advice not to publish about a dozen times a year. More often=
,
editors err on the side of caution and omit dubious information without
consulting anyone. On a whim, I telephoned Whitehall in search of
information about the D Notice system. I was put through almost at once to
Bill Higgins himself. When I told him that I was a Politics teacher he
replied jocularly, Well, Im sure I can safely assume that no ne of yo=
ur
students are anarchist subversives. I thought of the two who had been
arrested just the previous week for staging a sit-down demo in the middle
of Oxford Street, and maintained a discreet silence. He was, incidentally,
very open and informativ e. A day later the post brought a list of the D
Notices currently in force, together with an explanatory handout. There is
an annual review of the D Notices, which took place in October and made
some minor adjustments in the light of John Majors professed commitment
to more open government: for example, they incorporated the public
acknowledgement of MI5 and MI6, th e names of their chiefs and location of
their headquarters. A discussion group of media representatives (chaired
by Guardian editor Peter Preston) was held just prior to that review, to
ponder the whole existence of the D Notice system. There were isolated
calls for the system to be abolished and replaced by separ ate lists of
sensitive items and areas to be issued by each government department.
However, it was generally felt that this would be, at least, a recipe for
chaos and, at worst, would result in more rather than less secrecy. The D
Notice system therefor e lives on, but is of declining importance - likely
to wither on the vine, as Higgins put it - in comparison to the whole
panoply of Britains secret state. For civil libertarians, the main
targets of attack must still be the Official Secrets Act on t he one hand
and, on the other, those editors and producers who supinely collude in the
withholding of information from the public even when national security=

is clearly not threatened. As Ernest Bevin once said in a Cabinet debate
on media censorship, " Why bother to muzzle sheep?"




