MI5, the Cold War, and the Rule of Law (1945–64) embarks on its analysis from the legal perspective (questions of authority, power and accountability) and the tradition of civil liberties. The material examined in the book includes security files at The National Archives which were hitherto unavailable to scholars coming from this tradition. What this book ultimately suggests is that even thoroughly criticized reading of the classical concept of the rule of law (Dicey) theoretically provides more protection for the civil liberties as compared to the system in which MI5 operated.

In the context of the ‘defence of the realm’, MI5's primary functions were countering attempts at espionage, sabotage and subversion. The authors present the picture in which we see the service dedicating a vast amount of its resources to countersubversion activities against legal working-class and left-wing organizations. Initially, the oversight of MI5 was in the hands of the prime minister, as regulated by the Attlee directive (1948–51), released to The National Archives only in 2009. In 1952, oversight was shifted to the Home Secretary (the Maxwell Fyfe directive, drafted with the participation of MI5 and publicized in 1963), who was not inclined to carry out scrutiny. This led to the situation in which Roger Hollis, then MI5 director general, felt comfortable to state in evidence to a judge-led inquiry in 1961 that the service to some extent enjoys ‘glorious independence’.

In that situation, MI5 set the focus on countersubversion activities against several groupings: the Communist Party (CP), the peace movement, trade unions and NCCL, but also others, such as the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, the British Soviet Friendship Society and so on. It seems clear to the authors that at this stage the role of MI5 was much more about dealing with dissidents and essentially engaging in class war than about engaging with counterespionage. The authors demonstrate that even after espionage scandals, such as the Profumo affair (see Chapter 14), which significantly contributed to the demise of the Conservative government in 1963, MI5's focus remained the same.

The book analyses the means that MI5 used for surveillance of its targets (see Chapter 5). What comes to fore is the enormous amount of information that MI5 collected and the issue of the extent to which it was shared. According to the authors, the amount of the information collected vastly surpasses what could be labeled relevant for the purported activities of MI5. One of the uses of this amassed, and often very private, information was the discrimination of the members of left-wing groups. On this basis, they were excluded from the civil service (see Chapter 9) and from private-sector positions (see Chapter 11). Discrimination extended to trade union officials who were members or associates of the CP.

It is important to note that it was the Attlee government that laid the foundations of the excuses for such MI5 activities. It was in 1948 that the decision was taken to prohibit CP members from holding certain state positions, while private-sector companies with government contracts were barred from employing communists, and the unions with communists in their leadership were discriminated against too. All this led to vast vetting activities with the goal of identifying and purging CP members. This was taking place over a long span of time, while MI5 itself assessed that there was no real revolutionary threat from the CP or other actors whom MI5 controlled and harassed at that time.

The book goes into detail in describing different surveillance techniques employed by MI5 (even of MPs and lawyers). It mainly relied on (1) volunteers reporting to them seemingly suspicious fellow citizens, (2) monitoring by Special Branch, (3) infiltration and the use of informers, (4) keeping an eye on and following targets, (5) interrogation and questioning of targets (it should be noted that MI5, given that it is not formally the police, did not have such rights under the law), (6) interception of communications, (7) the use of secret microphones and (8) foreign security and intelligence services.

The authors inform us at length about the so-called special facilities (SF) (see Chapter 8), telephone and electronic eavesdropping, the use of microphones and so on as surveillance techniques employed by MI5. The reader is also acquainted with the role the Post Office had in helping these (illegal) surveillance activities. Only in 1989 did the Security Service Act declare that ‘no entry or interference with property or with wireless telegraphy shall be unlawful if it is authorized by a warrant issued by Secretary of State’ (p. 228). Thereby it was implied and acknowledged that MI5 had been involved in unlawful employment of SF techniques for decades. The book convincingly shows how both judges and lawyers, through their activities, had also been complicit in these mass breaches of civil rights during the whole period under examination. It seems that the rule of law was never anything more than a capitalist ideological tool during the Cold War, while the image of significant difference from the ‘totalitarian’ systems, in terms of civil liberties, grows increasingly pale.

The authors are aware that what they have managed to analyse, in terms of primary sources, is only the tip of the iceberg, as it is clear that the documents released to the wider public are carefully selected in order to paint the best possible picture of the institutions involved. Still, this study manages to introduce us to the continuity of unlawful MI5 conduct. It shows us that to get what was needed, MI5 was breaking the law and had the legal system's help to eventually get away with that. This continuity raises the question whether unlawful conduct of this type of organization is in fact their intended modus operandi, as well as the question of the latent function of the state itself.