The Right to Know: The Inside Story of the Belgrano Affair
About this book
RIGHT TO KNOW. While a senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Clive Ponting sent two documents to Labour MP Tam Dalyell in July 1984 concerning the sinking of an Argentine navy warship General Belgrano, a key incident in the Falklands War of 1982. The documents revealed that the General Belgrano had been sighted a day earlier than officially reported, and was steaming away from the Royal Navy task force, and was outside the exclusion zone, when the cruiser was attacked and sunk The Ponting case was seen as a landmark in British legal history, raising serious questions about the validity of the 1911 Official Secrets Act and the public's right to know. Shortly after his resignation on 16 February 1985, The Observer began to serialize Ponting's book The Right to the inside story of the Belgrano affair. The Conservative government reacted by tightening up UK secrets legislation, introducing the Official Secrets Act 1989. Before the trial, a jury could take the view that if an action could be seen to be in the public interest, that might justify the right of the individual to take that action. As a result of the 1989 modification, that defense was removed. After this enactment, it was taken that 'public interest is what the government of the day says it is.' One further fact which influenced Mr Ponting's unexpected acquittal was that he submitted the documents to an MP, who was, in effect, upholding the right of Parliament not to be lied to by the government of the day.