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Labour infiltrating meetings |
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The Sunday Times
David Cracknell and Andrew Porter
THE Tories claimed yesterday that Labour was running a covert dirty tricks campaign known as Operation Blackwatch to undermine them in the run-up to the general election.
Liam Fox, the party co-chairman, and other senior officials said they believed that Labour was infiltrating right-wing Conservative groups and taping meetings to bring down their MPs.
The allegations came after the resignation last week of Howard Flight, a Tory deputy chairman and envoy to the City, who was taped at a private meeting of a Thatcherite group suggesting that the party was hiding the true extent of its spending "cuts".
A Labour spokesman last night repeatedly refused to deny that the Labour party taped meetings, simply saying: "This is getting away from the substance of what was said, which is the real story." John Reid, the health secretary, said that "to the best of his knowledge" nobody from Labour had been involved in taping Flight.
The Tory claims of a concerted dirty tricks operation ? which one official claimed that, if true, would have echoes of the Watergate buggings in America ? came after a series of indiscreet comments have been leaked in recent months.
Fox, Oliver Letwin, the shadow chancellor, Gerald Howarth, a defence spokesman, and John Redwood, the deregulation spokesman, have also seen their comments at private meetings leaked. Fox said yesterday: "There seems to be a pattern and given the way new Labour operates that would be no surprise."
Referring to the alleged Operation Blackwatch, he added: "The party that has so little regard for convention and truth will stop at nothing to stay in office. There is a growing sense that there is nothing they won't do or say to save their skins and that new Labour is rotten to the core."
A senior Tory official said it was believed that Labour activists might have joined Tory groups some time ago and then acted as sleepers so that they could gain access to private lectures and meetings. "They are targeting ideological private groupings like the Conservative Way Forward and Conservative Future. We believe that people may have joined these groups, maybe for a couple of years, and it is now paying dividends."
The official added: "If they are prepared to tape things, they are probably prepared to go through rubbish bins. Where is the dividing line between this sort of thing and Richard Nixon taping things?" |
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