Image accompanying The Times article, A Scottish writer who backs independence? MI5 is watching you (picture credit, The Times)

Surveillance of Writers in Scotland

On Saturday, 25 January, The Times published an article by senior news reporter Marc Horne, regarding the release of security service files that have recently been opened and placed in the UK National Archives at Kew. These documents disclosed that MI5 and the police monitored James Findlay (JF) Hendry, the poet, editor and writer for decades over […]

January 27, 2025

On Saturday, 25 January, The Times published an article by senior news reporter Marc Horne, regarding the release of security service files that have recently been opened and placed in the UK National Archives at Kew. These documents disclosed that MI5 and the police monitored James Findlay (JF) Hendry, the poet, editor and writer for decades over his suspected links to radical left-wing causes and the “Scottish Nationalist Movement”.

As set forth in our landmark report prepared with the University of Strathclyde, Scottish Chilling, Scottish PEN members remain concerned to this day that they might be monitored by the authorities over their political views. Indeed, as Scottish PEN member Professor Gerard Carruthers, the Francis Hutcheson Professor of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow, observes in the Times article, it would be naïve in the extreme not to assume that writers advocating for freedom of expression and campaigning for peace – principles to which all members of the PEN International movement subscribe – would be subject to security service observation.

Scottish PEN President Ricky Monahan Brown was quoted in the article: 

Given the stance of today’s UK and Scottish Governments regarding political speech, we must assume that today’s advocates for change are also subject to such monitoring. Indeed, at the time of the 88thPEN International Congress in 2022, Scottish PEN had to reflect that the UK was an outlier in European terms in having two writers imprisoned in Scottish and United Kingdom prisons.

If our governments understand the importance of literature and freedom of expression to Scotland’s culture, and to its reputation at home and around the world, they must assure the Scottish public that its writers are not subject to continuing security service monitoring.

TAGS: freedom of expression Scottish PEN surveillance Writers at Risk