THE decision to open secret Government files on Arthur Donaldson, a
founder of the Scottish National Party, who was interned during the war,
was condemned yesterday by SNP vice-president Gordon Wilson.
Documents which disclose that MI5 was behind covert action against
Scottish nationalist organisations during the last war were made public
this week.
It has also emerged, in further close examination of the files by The
Herald, that Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid came under the scrutiny of
MI5 and that letters written by him were intercepted and kept on
intelligence files.
The file on the 1941 operation -- which became a cause celebre --
contains a confidential Crown Office report which claims Mr Donaldson
had used the home-rule movement as a cloak for subversive activities.
Raids on his home and those of his associates were made, according to
the documents, because of ''grave'' suspicions attached to Mr Donaldson
against whom it claimed there was ''a considerable body of evidence
demonstrating highly subversive activities over a long period.''
Mr Wilson said it was ''completely disgraceful'' for the Scottish
Office to release the records when Mr Donaldson, a former chairman of
the party who died last year aged 91, was unable to repudiate the slurs.
Mr Wilson said: ''Arthur Donaldson always maintained he did not know
why they had picked him up. He pressed for the release of these files
for many years. He would have been first into the courts to sue to
defend his reputation.''
The Donaldson files disclose that the operation was instigated by the
intelligence services, run in Scotland by MI5 Major P. Perfect, assisted
by Richard Brooman-White, who went on to become Tory MP for Rutherglen
and an Under Secretary at the Scottish Office.
The file claims raids on houses all over Scotland uncovered evidence
of links with the Nazis. A letter to a Nazi agent, Dr Von Teffenar, was
found at the home of R. E. Muirhead, a senior figure in the movement.
The Secretary of State for Scotland claims in a letter on the file to
have ordered Mr Donaldson's release five weeks after his internment.
A hand-written note on the file by a civil servant, states:
''Donaldson was released from interim detention because MI5 would not
allow essential witnesses to give evidence before the Advisory Committee
which might have led to disclosure of their identity.''
This appears to give credence to the belief that MI5 had infiltrated
the ranks of the home-rule movement.
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