THERE is an old joke on the left that every socialist newspaper is guaranteed at least two subscriptions. Both from the security services. They need two copies because they need each side of the page for their scrapbook.

Looking through the very large file of papers I got under freedom of information on the 1977 Grunwick strike shows the Home Office and Special Branch were avid readers of the Morning Star. 

We now know the Home Office relied heavily on undercover officers who spent years infiltrating left-wing groups. 

But the government also more simply read this newspaper in a back-handed compliment to the accuracy of the Morning Star and its influence in the trade union and activist circles that were freaking out the government.

The 1976-8 Grunwick strike was big news: a largely Asian workforce in a north London factory went on strike supporting a sacked colleague. 

Grunwick processed photographs, which was big business back then. We didn’t have camera phones, so we sent the undeveloped film from our cameras in the post to firms like Grunwick, which sent developed pictures back. You saw your holiday photos about a week after you got home.

Grunwick “strikers in saris” led by Jayaben Desai were supported by thousands of trade unionists at mass rallies and pickets. The dispute was a key part of the tumultuous social unrest of the 1970s. 

The strike happened under a Labour government, with Jim Callaghan as prime minister and Merlyn Rees as home secretary. 

Labour backbenchers supported the strike, joining picket lines and complaining about police attacking pickets. 

Labour’s leadership on the one hand tried — ineffectually — to force the Grunwick bosses to compromise and recognise the workers’ union, but on the other were very scared of the militancy of the strikers and their supporters. 

The final defeat of the strikers in 1978 helped usher in Mrs Thatcher’s electoral victory.

The Home Office files repeatedly turn to the Morning Star. Strike-breakers were bussed through the picket lines. 

Labour MPs said the pickets should be allowed to speak to the strike-breakers, to make their case peacefully. Rees seemed to back this — a June 1977 note to a senior official says: “You may wish to see the attached report in yesterday’s Morning Star.”

The article, headlined “Rees promise ignored on stopping bus,” says: “Despite the fine words of Home Secretary Merlyn Rees, the Grunwick strikebreakers’ bus yesterday drove straight through the picket lines without stopping. On Monday Mr Rees told pickets they had the right to stop the bus and communicate with those inside. But police pushed the official pickets away, despite the relative calm at the firm’s Chapter Road gates.”

The article went on: “As the bus drove through the gates, Brent Trades Council secretary Jack Dromey shouted: ‘Are we going to be allowed to speak to people on the bus’?”

The Home Office note says that the Morning Star was right, Rees made an empty promise: “You asked me to follow up the Home Secretary’s suggestion that it might be presentationally advantageous while the picketing is comparatively peaceful for the police to stop the coaches entering Grunwick to give the pickets the opportunity to hear for themselves that the people in the coach did not wish to be spoken to.”

However, “Commander Maybanks tells me that the police discuss with the driver and occupants of the coach whether they wish to be spoken to by the pickets before the coach starts its journey. The answer is invariably no,” and “Commander Maybanks … points out that there is nothing in law to require people to stop and listen to pickets and the police have a duty to enforce the law impartially. 

“This could be compromised if they stop people in order to listen to arguments which the police know they do not want to hear.”

This is just one example of the Morning Star being the Home Office source of choice. 

Ministers and officials pored over Star articles, saying, for example, “TUC told: Make Grunwick another Saltley” (there was a  victorious miners’ mass picket in Saltley in a 1972 strike); “Local Labour MP Reg Freeson talks with pickets”; “Leader of Grunwick Strike is arrested”; “Women to go in force to factory: A day off for Grunwick” — it’s a kind of upside down Morning Star readers’ group, where everything we see as good news they see as bad news.

Other newspapers caused stirs. A June 1977 Guardian article, “How Grunwick welcomes police friendship,” outlined close links between the Met and the firm. 

Scotland Yard’s photographic branch used Grunwick. One former detective inspector, Norman Wollett, is “now working” at Grunwick as the “security manager.” 

Wollett came across Grunwick when investigating a “complaint of petty sabotage” which “arose out of the first attempt by a few workers to join a union” and “shortly afterwards he retired from the police and joined the company.”  

Also “there have been reports, denied by the company, that a former chief inspector was recently taken on the pay roll as a personnel manager.”

The article led to embarrassed memos to ministers. One says: “The police have told me that although they did use Grunwick for their own photographic processing, they stopped using them in November — the reason given to me is not to disassociate themselves from the industrial dispute, but because their work was of poor quality! 

“One cannot dispute that it looks bad if police officers go straight from dealing with Grunwick and pickets to employment by Grunwick on retirement: the employment of ex-inspector Wollett in 1972 was well before the recent troubles. 

“It is still not clear whether ex-chief inspector Johnson has or has not been employed by Grunwick: the Yard tell me that they could solve the problem as regards most former officers simply by asking them, but Johnson had a reputation in the force for being a ‘tart’ customer and they doubt whether his response to such an enquiry would be particularly informative! 

“This supplementary information is for the Home Secretary only and I have not included it in the formal note.”

Which is a very long-winded way of saying the Guardian was right, and what they had exposed was wrong.

Follow Solomon Hughes on Twitter @SolHughesWriter.