Manchester's failed bid for 2000 Olympics had John Major's support

Manchester’s daring bid for the 2000 Olympics was enthusiastically supported by John Major but behind the scenes ministers and officials were less convinced, National Archives files reveal.

The prime minister wrote to all 79 members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) individually, praising the city’s facilities and commitment in the run-up to the announcement of the winner in Monaco on 23 September 1993.

“Manchester is very much a city on the move, preparing with great enthusiasm for the 21st century,” he said.

But the Sports Council sent Downing Street a briefing questioning the role of the Italian sports official, Primo Nebiolo, “in securing the proposed move of the IAAF [International Association of Athletics Federations] away from Britain to Monte Carlo” and suggested it was connected with promises for “the delivery of votes to Sydney and Beijing in return for support within the IAAF”.

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The author asked No 10 that the document be “destroyed after it has been read”. The report itself does not appear in the files. Alex Allan, Major’s principal private secretary, told the prime minister: “A disturbing read but all too plausible. I don’t know, incidentally, why more was not done here to persuade the IAAF to stay. You were never, for example, approached.”

In late August, Michael Portillo, then at the Treasury, sent a note complaining that no one had told him the government was going to underwrite the potential £2.5bn bill for the Games. “If this leaks,” a No 10 official wrote on the letter, “it’s dynamite for our chances.”

Sydney’s ultimate victory meant defeat for Manchester. It was heart-breaking, Major wrote in a consolatory note to Bob Scott, the chairman of Manchester’s Olympic bid committee.

Others were less generous. Damian Green, who then worked in the prime minister’s policy unit and subsequently rose to be the de facto deputy prime minister under Theresa May, wrote to Major: “The reason for Manchester’s failure which DoE/DNH [Department of Environment/Department of National Heritage] play down is the obvious one: that no one in their right mind would spend three weeks in Manchester rather than Sydney. It is hard to imagine Manchester ever being successful.”

Top secret government bunker exposed

Anti-nuclear demonstrators threatened to expose the official “cover story” concealing the emergency location of central government in wartime.

The true purpose of a vast underground complex, codenamed “Turnstile”, hidden deep below RAF Corsham in Wiltshire was restricted to only a few “indoctrinated officers” in the 1960s.

Misleading denials, covert monitoring operations and restricted access were used to foil protesters and deflect media interest in the subterranean command centre and other security projects.

The alarm was first raised in March 1967 over a planned “unilateralist” demonstration around Corsham organised by the anti-war group Committee of 100, which advocated unilateral nuclear disarmament.

The significance of the site and any protests should be “played down”, the official instructions state. “Unless the situation developed very abnormally, troops should not be called in.”

It continued: “The cover story for Turnstile (which is treated as top secret) is that: the installation has been developed to provide regional organisations in wartime with standby facilities for the maintenance of emergency services and public utilities. It also houses a number of post office centres for internal and overseas communications in war.”

Referring press inquiries immediately to the “D Notice committee” – which liaises between the media and Ministry of Defence over highly sensitive security issues – “might well lead to undesirable suspicions and deductions”, the document added.

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After inquiring about the demonstration and speaking to the D Notice committee secretary, the People newspaper did not run a story. However, both the CND magazine Sanity and the Sheffield Telegraph did.

Special Branch investigated with a view to prosecuting under, presumably, the Official Secrets Act. The file says that if the director of public prosecutions recommended to the attorney general that legal action be taken then officials would have to “indoctrinate both [law officers] … and give them the damage assessment”.

A separate top secret file on the Official Committee on Subversion at Home recorded in January 1969 MI5’s view that anti-apartheid was “tending to replace Vietnam as the current protest slogan”. Plans for demonstrations coordinated by Peter Hain, opposing the South African cricket tour, were being followed.

The switch in focus was welcomed by intelligence officials. “If students really took up these cudgels, it would provide a praiseworthy (and in political terms, relatively harmless) outlet for their frustrated idealism. One would like to think that students were idealistic about racialism, but I doubt if they are.”

As well as MI5, whose officers are named in the documents, the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department also participated in subversion committee meetings. The IRD was founded in the late 1940s to combat Soviet propaganda.

One issue examined by the committee was “subversive influence in television in the UK”. An earlier investigation in 1962 was said to have concluded that independent television programmes were “unduly slanted towards communism”.

Granada TV’s World in Action was checked out. “The conclusion is that there is no evidence of a conspiracy,” the committee was told, “interest by CPGB [Communist party of Great Britain] has diminished; communists are less influential than Trotskyists, who, however, are too disunited to be able to execute a joint plan.”