Clockwork Orange (plot)

Clockwork Orange is the name of the secret British security services project which was alleged to have involved a right-wing smear campaign against British politicians in the 1970s.

The project was undertaken by members of the British intelligence services and the British Army press office in Northern Ireland, whose job also included routine public relations work and placing disinformation stories in the press, as part of a psychological warfare operation against paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland.

One of the project's members, Colin Wallace, who was the press officer at the Army Headquarters in Northern Ireland, also claims that in 1973, after MI5 became the primary intelligence service in Northern Ireland, the project began giving briefings to foreign journalists against politicians. These briefings included distributing forged documents in an attempt to show that the victims were communists, or Irish Republican sympathisers or were taking bribes.

Politicians alleged to have been smeared in this manner include Harold Wilson, Ian Paisley (Democratic Unionist Party), Merlyn Rees, Tony Benn and Edward Heath (Conservative).

Airey Neave, the British Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) was alleged to have been involved with 'Clockwork Orange', and to have briefed Wallace on a number of occasions.

Other than Wallace's testimony, the primary evidence for the existence of this plot consisted of a series of handwritten notes taken by Wallace in meetings with other members of the plot. Journalists investigating Wallace's story had these notes analysed by a forensic scientist, and the results were found to be consistent with the notes having been taken contemporaneously.

In the House of Commons, on the 31 January 1990, junior defence minister Archie Hamilton, admitted the existence of a project called 'Clockwork Orange', although he claimed that there was no evidence that this project involved a smear campaign against politicians.