Hilda Murrell, Anti-Nuclear Activist, Abducted & Murdered 31 years ago

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anti-nuclear activists, assassination, cost of nuclear, dangers of nuclear, democracy, Gerard Morgan Grenville, Hilda Murrell, nuclear energy, nuclear power, nuclear state, nuclear waste, Rob Green, UK

“Hilda Murrell (3 February 1906 – 23? March 1984) was a British rose grower, naturalist, diarist and campaigner against nuclear power and nuclear weapons. She was abducted and found murdered five miles from her home in Shropshire,…” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilda_Murrell

In the UK House of Commons, 1984:
“There is also the evidence of my friend, Mr. Gerard Morgan Grenville, whom I have known for nearly 40 years. Mrs. Morgan Grenville tells me how Hilda Murrell rang them up in a great state at the end of February, and how she fetched her husband. Mr. Morgan Grenville, with whom I have had a good deal to do and who is a deeply serious man, says that her parting words on the telephone were: “If they don’t get me first, I want the world to know that one old woman has seen through their lies“. One is reminded of Scudder, the diarist in John Buchan’s “The Thirty-Nine Steps”. Mr. Morgan Grenville had never heard Miss Murrell speak in that way before. Why should an old lady be prompted to say that? There has been speculation that her death was connected with a paper that she had written on the problems of nuclear waste and reactor choice, which she hoped would be read at the Sizewell B inquiry. Arthur Osman, writing in The Observer on 2 December, began his article: Silkwood parallels in English woman’s death … Was anti-nuclear power campaigner Hilda Murrell murdered because she was becoming too much of a nuisance to the industry?” “House of Commons Sitting, Miss Hilda Murrell (Murder) HC Deb 19 December 1984 vol 70 cc458-72 458 3.51 am, Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow)” © Parliamentary Copyright, OPL: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1984/dec/19/miss-hilda-murrell-murder [1]

Book Review of:
“A Thorn in Their Side – The Hilda Murrell Murder Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 01/27/2012 – 10:49 Reviewed by Nigel Chamberlain, January 2012

This book could have been a crime novel except the plot was too complicated for a fictional writer to dream up and, unlike most crime novels, the murder is not solved nor are the real perpetrators apprehended. But it comes very close. The sheer scale of the research, compilation and cross referencing of facts, observations and opinions and their interpretation through the eyes of a loyal, retired serviceman and law abiding subject of the British Crown, lead one to the inevitable and chilling conclusion that seeming police incompetence was a cover for state security intervention, liquidation and fabrication.

But what former Royal Navy Commander Rob Green is suggesting, nay affirming, his aunt Hilda Murrell was subjected to couldn’t happen in this country, could it? Well, anybody who was involved in anti-nuclear activities during the 1980s was placed under Police Special Branch surveillance in their own localities. Those asking the more penetrating questions and those encouraging others to join them in actively opposing the nuclear state were subject to more intensive forms of intimidation – and worse – at the hands of MI5 and their sub-contractors. The ‘civil’ nuclear power industry also had a surveillance arm.

Hilda Murrell was one of those anti-nuclear activists whose research and writing was deemed dangerous enough by the security state to warrant their full attention and to prevent her ideas from spreading and challenging those who held power. Although it is hard to comprehend in our post-Cold War environment and less ideological times, those who held power decided that those who fundamentally challenged it, could legitimately be harassed, have their human rights suspended and be marginalised – all in the name of defending freedom and democracy.

The irony is that those who were campaigning for the abolition of nuclear weapons and the prevention of the expansion of the nuclear power industry were trying to achieve it by almost entirely democratic means. Their path to this objective was blocked by official secrecy, non-accountability, compliant politicians and judiciary and the apparatus of state security. And, as Rob Green came to realise, the state here in the UK, just as in the communist countries, would, ultimately, defend itself.

Contrary to received wisdom, endlessly inferred by enquiring police officers and lazy journalists, Commander Rob Green did not leave the Royal Navy a disaffected or disillusioned 38 year-old. He wasn’t infected with Hilda’s anti-nuclear virus, nor had he passed on any sensitive military secrets to her about the sinking of the Belgrano, an act of unprovoked aggression which effectively committed Argentina and Britain to waging war over what they called Los Ilas Malvinas and we called The Falkland Islands, thirty years ago this year.

Rob Green learned, through many years of hard graft and intelligence gathering, that the country that he was unquestioningly loyal to, even prepared to go on a suicide mission to deliver an air-launched nuclear bomb to defend, was rotten at the core and protected by an unscrupulous and corrupt bureaucracy which, if challenged, could react viciously.

Hilda Murrell paid the ultimate price for her quiet and carefully constructed convictions. Only her ideas were a threat. But, of course, that is exactly what those who held power feared the most. Rob Green came to share his beloved aunt’s ideas and has subsequently spent many years doing his very best to help spread those ideas and, at the same time, expose the workings of the nuclear state and bring the perpetrators of her death and their paymasters to account, even if they are now deceased. He has risked prosecution under the Official Secrets Act in so doing.

He deserves our individual and collective support in his endeavour to re-open the coroner’s inquest. Perhaps some in the Fourth Estate can make a contribution too, if they can get past their own gatekeepers, external as well as internal.

But, then again, Rob Green could just have his head full of conspiracy theories and have drawn unsubstantiated conclusions from a series of random observations while the West Mercia Police Force could have been exhaustive in their enquiries and, somewhat belatedly, bang on in convincing the judicial system to convict a then 16 year-old truant from a local foster home and petty criminal for abduction and murder.

Read the book, visit the Hilda Murrell website, then make your own judgement. http://www.hildamurrell.org
Author: Rob Green, Publisher: Rata Books
Year published: 2011
ISBN: 978-0-473-19685-1“http://www.natowatch.org/node/611 http://www.natowatch.org/legal http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ [The book is available at Amazon, Ibooks, etc. Additional info is found at the Hilda Murrell web site.]

Kew National Archive library is supposed to have documents released under the 30 year rule on Hilda Murrell. If they were released, it appears that no one has gone to look at them, however. Out of fear? Why didn’t the National Archives scan them? The National Archives scanned and made available for free online silly things released under the 30 year rule. Why not something this important? Do they wish to monitor who goes to see the documents? Considering that Margaret Thatcher is now dead this is all strange indeed.

[1] Mr. Tam Dalyell, MP, with proclaimed friends in the nuclear industry, goes on to elaborate the belief that her nuclear concerns had nothing to do with her murder, and that it has something to do with the Belgrano Affair. However, he strangely states that “The West Mercia police say that they forced an entry into Miss Murrell’s house at 6 am on Saturday 24 March. Yet several credible witnesses say that they saw men in police uniform at the house on Friday night. How could that be? Were two police forces involved? At what time were the West Mercia police joined, if at all, by the Suffolk police responsible for Sizewell security? More particularly, why was the special branch involved at that stage? Why was it necessary to force an entry into Miss 460 Murrell’s house or to claim to have done so when I am told that the back door was unlocked? The curtains had been drawn and the light left on since the Wednesday of Miss Murrell’s death. “House of Commons Sitting, Miss Hilda Murrell (Murder) HC Deb 19 December 1984 vol 70 cc458-72 458 3.51 am, Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow)” © Parliamentary Copyright http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1984/dec/19/miss-hilda-murrell-murder

Why would Sizewell security be on the opposite side of England? The abduction was in Shropshire. Her major critique was of building the Sizewell B Nuclear Reactor, when there was no solution for the nuclear waste. And, apparently, concerns regarding the fuel-rod materials. The Sizewell A Nuclear Power Station was already in existence.

Her critique is just as relevant today as then. There is still no solution for the waste. Worse, 31 years on there is even more nuclear waste, and they want to build new reactors! In fact, the UK is trying to take away the right of local communities to refuse the nuclear waste. In the US, Harry Reid is trying to have a law passed saying that people can refuse the nuclear waste, suggesting that currently they don’t have a choice. Do YOU want nuclear waste in your backyard? If not you better help shut down the nuclear industry, because “newsflash”: No one else wants the nuclear waste either. Unfortunately, the existing nuclear waste will still have to go someplace, but there will be fewer places targeted.

[Note that emphasis was added throughout.]