Clive Ponting
{{Short description|British civil servant and historian (1946–2020)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2020}}
{{Use British English|date=May 2012}}
{{Infobox person
| honorific_prefix =
| name = Clive Ponting
| image =
| caption =
| birth_name = Clive Sheridan Ponting
| birth_date = {{birth date|1946|4|13|df=y}}
| birth_place = Bristol, England, UK
| death_date = {{death date and age|2020|7|28|1946|4|13|df=y}}
| death_place = Kelso, Scotland, UK
| nationality = British
| occupation = Civil servant
| known_for = The General Belgrano papers
| notable_works = The Right to Know: The Inside Story of the Belgrano Affair
| criminal_charge = Section 2 Official Secrets Act 1911 (not guilty)BBC, On this day, 16 February 1985, Falklands' row civil servant resigns
| criminal_penalty =
| criminal_status =
| spouse = {{ubl|{{marriage|Katherine Hannan|1969|end = divorced}}|{{marriage|Sally Fletcher|1973|end = divorced}}|{{marriage|Laura Young|1997|end = divorced}}|{{marriage|Diane Johnson||March 2020|end = died}}}}
}}
Clive Sheridan Ponting (13 April 1946 – 28 July 2020)Richard Norton-Taylor, "The Ponting Affair", Cecil Woolf, London, 1985, p. 14.{{cite news|url=https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/clive-ponting-obituary-6d6lq5nzv|title=Clive Ponting obituary|website=The Times|date=1 August 2020|access-date=5 August 2020}} was a senior British civil servant and historian. In 1984, he leaked classified documents about the sinking of the ARA General Belgrano in the Falklands War in 1982, which showed that government statements about the sinking were untrue. He was prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act, but argued that his actions were in the public interest, and was acquitted.{{Cite web|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/16/newsid_2545000/2545907.stm|title=1985: Falklands' row civil servant resigns|date=16 February 1985|work=BBC News}} At the time of his resignation from the civil service in 1985, he was a Grade 5 (assistant secretary), earning £23,000 per year (£70,214 in 2020).
He later wrote a number of books on British and world history. These included a Green History of the World (1991), which was revised as A New Green History of the World in 2007, and a biography of Winston Churchill (1994) and 1940: Myth and Reality (1990).
Early life
Ponting was born in Bristol, the only child of Charles Ponting, who is thought to have worked in sales, and his wife, Winifred (née Wadham). He was educated at Bristol Grammar School and the University of Reading. He joined the civil service in 1970.{{cite ODNB|title = Ponting, Clive Sheridan (1946–2020), civil servant and historian|last = Norton-Taylor|first = Richard|authorlink = Richard Norton-Taylor|doi = 10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.90000381689|year = 2024}}
Bureaucratic career
=''General Belgrano'' papers=
While a senior civil servant at the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence (MoD), Ponting sent two documents, subsequently nicknamed "the crown jewels",{{cite web|url=https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1985/mar/20/official-secrets-legislation#column_613 |title=Official Secrets Legislation |last=Elton |first=Rodney |date=20 March 1985|work=Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) |pages=HL Deb vol 461 c613 |no-pp=y|quote=the highly classified chronology prepared by Mr. Ponting now known as 'the crown jewels' |accessdate=1 December 2017}}{{cite web|url=https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1985/apr/03/the-tribunal#column_1242 |title=The Tribunal |last=Kaufman |first=Gerald |date=3 April 1985 |work=Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) |pages=HC Deb vol 76 c1242 |no-pp=y|quote=those fabulous Belgrano 'crown jewels', which we were told were matters of the greatest secrecy|accessdate=1 December 2017}}{{cite web|url=https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1985/jun/13/defence-estimates-1985#S6CV0080P0_19850613_HOC_296 |title=Defence Estimates 1985 |last=Dalyell |first=Tam |date=13 June 1985|work=Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) |pages=HC Deb vol 80 c1057 |no-pp=y|quote=Ponting ... compiled the 'crown jewels' |accessdate=1 December 2017}} to Labour MP Tam Dalyell in July 1984 concerning the sinking of the Argentine navy warship General Belgrano, a key incident in the 1982 Falklands War. After Ponting admitted revealing the information, the Ministry of Defence suspended him without pay.{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/11314284/Margaret-Thatcher-warned-officials-not-to-be-too-harsh-on-Belgrano-whistleblower.html|newspaper= The Daily Telegraph|title=Margaret Thatcher warned officials not to be too harsh on Belgrano whistleblower|date=30 December 2014|access-date=17 December 2017|first1=Edward |last1=Malnick}} On 17 August 1984, he was charged with a criminal offence under Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911. The Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, had his pay reinstated once she had been briefed on what had happened. Ponting's defence at the trial was that the matter and its disclosure to a Member of Parliament were in the public interest.{{cite news |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13430012 |work=BBC News |title=Clive Ponting case: Where is the investigators' report? |first=Martin |last=Rosenbaun |date=18 March 2011}} It was the first case under the Official Secrets Act that involved giving information to Parliament. Although Ponting expected to be imprisoned, he was acquitted by the jury. The acquittal came despite the judge's direction to the jury, and hence by definition a "perverse verdict". The judge, Sir Anthony McCowan, "had indicated that the jury should convict him",{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/216868.stm|title=Troubled history of Official Secrets Act|publisher=BBC|date=18 November 1998|accessdate=8 June 2015|quote=It was hailed as a victory for the jury system. The judge had indicated that the jury should convict him.}} and had ruled that "the public interest is what the government of the day says it is".{{Cite news |title=Clodagh Hartley, chequebooks … and a Clive Ponting moment |last=Preston |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Preston|newspaper=The Observer |date=30 November 2014 |url= https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/30/clodagh-hartley-chequebooks-clive-ponting-sun-whitehall-editor}}
In 1985, Ponting came across the one file about Operation Cauldron—1952 secret biological warfare trials that had led to a trawler being accidentally doused with plague bacteria off the Hebrides—that had not been destroyed, and confidentially told The Observer newspaper about it,{{cite web |url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/06/clive-ponting-obituary |title=Clive Ponting obituary |newspaper=The Guardian |author=David Leigh |date= 6 August 2020}} leading to a story that July headlined "British germ bomb sprayed trawler".{{Cite web|url=https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2020/08/06/pontingcrop.jpg|title=British germ bomb sprayed trawler|newspaper=The Observer|author1=David Leigh|author2=Paul Lashmar|date=July 1985}}
Ponting resigned from the civil service on 16 February 1985. In May 1987, he made an extended appearance on the first ever edition of Channel 4's After Dark discussion programme, alongside among others Colin Wallace, T. E. Utley and Peter Hain.
=Charges under the Official Secrets Act=
Shortly after his resignation, The Observer began to serialise Ponting's book The Right to Know: The Inside Story of the Belgrano Affair. The Conservative government reacted by amending the secrets legislation and by 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, the right of the individual to take that action might be justified. As a result of the 1989 modification, that defence was removed. After the enactment, it was taken that {{"'}}public interest' is what the government of the day says it is".
The events of Ponting's charge and trial were dramatised by Richard Monks on BBC Radio Four in May 2022.{{Cite web |title=BBC Radio 4 - Drama, Belgrano. Part 2 |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0016xjr |access-date=2023-01-23 |website=BBC |language=en-GB}}
Academic career
Following his resignation from the Civil Service, Ponting served as a reader in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Wales, Swansea, until his retirement in 2004. He was one of the pioneers of Big History.{{cite book|last1=Brown|first1=Cynthia Stokes|title=Big History: From the Big Bang to the Present|date=2012|publisher=The New Press|isbn=978-1595588456|page=xiii|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-zLiq2H8obMC&q=%22big+history%22+%22clive+ponting%22&pg=PR13}}
His historical works have attracted attention from other academics, with scholar Paul Addison writing that "Ponting writes well and the clarity with which he summarises the issues calls to mind a model civil servant briefing his minister. He swoops like a hawk on the damning quotation or the telling statistic."{{Cite web|url=http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/book-review-bureaucrat-bites-bulldog-churchill-clive-ponting-sinclair-stevenson-20-pounds-1434569.html|title=BOOK REVIEW / Bureaucrat bites bulldog: 'Churchill' - Clive Ponting|date=8 May 1994|website=The Independent}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/nov/09/book-reviews-churchill|title=Review: Three books about Churchill|first=Richard|last=Gott|newspaper=The Observer |date=9 November 2008|via=www.theguardian.com}}{{Cite journal|url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v12/n12/paul-addison/garbo-co|title=Paul Addison · Garbo & Co · LRB 28 June 1990|first=Paul|last=Addison|date=28 June 1990|journal=London Review of Books|volume=12|issue=12}} C. J. Coventry reviewed Ponting's biography of Churchill, writing that "Ponting shattered the Churchill illusion for his readers leaving them little to piece together, just marble shards on the floor of his looted temple".{{cite journal|title=CJ Coventry, Clive Ponting's Churchill, Before/Now, 1(1) (2019)|url=https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:23811/|doi=10.17613/4dj5-f938|last=Coventry|first=Cameron|journal=Before/Now|year=2019|volume=1|issue=1|pages=78–79}}
Personal life
Retirement
In November 2018, by then a resident of Kelso, Scottish Borders, Ponting gave a speech in which he warned fellow Scottish National Party members that a No-deal Brexit would be used as context in which to disband or constrain the Scottish Parliament.{{Cite web|url=https://www.thenational.scot/news/17221300.clive-ponting-warns-of-brexit-threat-to-scottish-parliament/|title=Clive Ponting warns of Brexit threat to Scottish Parliament|last=Hannan|first=Martin|date=14 November 2018|website=The National}}
Works
- The Right to Know: The Inside Story of the Belgrano Affair (1985), Sphere Books, {{ISBN|0-7221-6944-2}}
- Whitehall - Tragedy and Farce (1986), Hamish Hamilton, {{ISBN|0-241-11835-2}}
- Breach of Promise - Labour in Power, 1964-70 (1989), Hamish Hamilton, {{ISBN|0-241-12683-5}}
- Whitehall: Changing the Old Guard, (1989), London, Unwin Paperbacks, The Fabian Series.
- 1940: Myth and Reality (1990), Hamish Hamilton, {{ISBN|978-0-241-12668-4}}
- A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations (1991), Penguin, {{ISBN|0-14-017660-8}}
- Churchill (1994), Sinclair-Stevenson, {{ISBN|1-85619-270-9}}
- Armageddon - The Second World War (1995), Random House, {{ISBN|0-679-43602-2}}
- Progress and Barbarism: The World in the Twentieth Century (1998), Chatto & Windus, {{ISBN|1-85619-610-0}}; published in the US as The Twentieth Century: A World History (1999), Henry Holt & Co., {{ISBN|978-0-8050-6088-1}}
- World History - A New Perspective (2000), Chatto & Windus, {{ISBN|0-7011-6834-X}}.
- Thirteen Days - Diplomacy and Disaster, the Countdown to the Great War (2003), Pimlico, {{ISBN|0-7126-6826-8}}
- The Crimean War - The Story Behind the Myth (2004), Pimlico, {{ISBN|0-7126-6826-8}}
- Gunpowder - The Story (2005), Chatto & Windus, {{ISBN|0-7011-7752-7}}
- A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations (2007), Penguin, {{ISBN|0-14-303898-2}} [http://booksellers.penguin.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780143038986,00.html Penguin's description of the book] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080821132335/http://booksellers.penguin.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780143038986,00.html |date=21 August 2008 }}
See also
- {{Annotated link |Katharine Gun}} (formerly of GCHQ). Charged with breach of the Official Secrets Act, the case was dropped because the prosecution declined to offer evidence.
- {{anli|Sarah Tisdall}}
- {{anli|Jury nullification}} that occurs when the jury in a criminal trial gives a not guilty verdict, regardless of whether they believe a defendant has broken the law.
Sources
- Norton-Taylor, Richard. The Ponting Affair. Cecil Woolf, 1985. {{ISBN|0-900821-73-6}}
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/16/newsid_2545000/2545907.stm BBC, On this day, 16 February 1985, Falklands' row civil servant resigns]
- [http://ecobooks.com/books/history.htm A Green History of the World]
- [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2020/08/04/clive-ponting-mod-official-leaked-documents-sinking-belgrano Obituary: Telegraph]
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Category:20th-century British historians
Category:21st-century British historians
Category:Academics of Swansea University
Category:Alumni of the University of Reading
Category:British whistleblowers
Category:Civil servants in the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom)
Category:Environmental historians