Clive Ponting

Clive Ponting (born 1947) is a British writer, former academic and former senior civil servant. He is the author of a number of revisionist books on British and world history. However, he is perhaps best known for leaking documents about the Belgrano affair of the Falklands War.

General Belgrano
While a senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Clive Ponting sent two documents to Labour MP Tam Dalyell in July 1984 concerning the sinking of an Argentine navy warship General Belgrano, a key incident in the Falklands War of 1982. The documents revealed that the General Belgrano had been sighted a day earlier than officially reported, and was steaming away from the Royal Navy taskforce, and was outside the exclusion zone, when the cruiser was attacked and sunk.

Official Secrets Act
Ponting admitted revealing the information and was charged with a criminal offence under Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act of 1911. His defence was that the matter was in the public interest and its disclosure to a Member of Parliament was protected by Parliamentary Privilege.

Although Ponting fully expected to be imprisoned – and had brought his toothbrush and shaving kit along to the court on 11 February 1985 – he was acquitted by the jury. The acquittal came despite the judge's direction to the jury that "the public interest is what the government of the day says it is". He resigned from the civil service on 16 February 1985.

Right to know
The Ponting case was seen as a landmark in British legal history, raising serious questions about the validity of the 1911 Official Secrets Act and the public's "right to know". Shortly after his resignation on 16 February 1985, The Observer began to serialize Ponting's book The Right to Know: the inside story of the Belgrano affair. The Conservative government reacted by tightening up UK secrets legislation, 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, that might justify the right of the individual to take that action.

As a result of the 1989 modification, that defence was removed. After this enactment, it was taken that '"public interest" is what the government of the day says it is.' One further fact which influenced Mr Ponting's unexpected acquittal was that he submitted the documents to an MP, who was, in effect, upholding the right of Parliament not to be lied to by the government of the day.

Academic
Ponting was educated at Bristol Grammar School.

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.

About the case

 * Norton-Taylor, Richard. The Ponting Affair. Cecil Woolf, 1985. ISBN 0-900821-73-6

By Clive Ponting

 * 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
 * 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
 * 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 Penguin's description of the book