A Christmas partY for the moles"Deep below London lies a hidden maze of government tunnels, part of a ,1950snetwork established to protect the government. These tunnels may easily be entered fromthe public highway. We therefore chose this unusual spot for our Christmas Party forMoles, bringing cakes and gi~ts, decorations and Christmas trees to the very entranceof the home of the Nuclear Button. The government may not care for our sense of'humour. They should be deeply grateful that we brought only Christmas stockings, andthat our easily-accomplished weekend visit was not a trip by terrorists with a sinisterseasonal sackful of gelignite and incendiaries. Such an act would have surpassed GuyFawkes in cutting off a large portion of Britain's communications and defence capacityfor months to come.

In happier spirit, DUNCAN CAMPBELL invites readers to the Moles' ChristmasParty. All photographs by Chris Davies.

WHO ARE THE MOLES that feed the New. Statesman with its unending packages of secretdocuments and other bureaucratic detritus?This question, at once deeply troubling theMI5, the CIA and the KGB, will here, for thefirst time be answered. The underground spiesin government ranks - the NS Mole Force -are in secret contact with our reporters at mid-night rendezvous deep below our own offices.From run-down Bethnal Green, in the East

End of London, to the plush western pasturesof Maida Vale, from Euston Station in thenorth to Waterloo in the south, runs a networkof secret government tunnels, built in the 1950sand 60s to protect the machinery and communi-cations of government from A-Bombs andother mindless violence. Over 30 shafts and adozen lifts connect these catacombs with thesurface - most of them emerging unobtrusi-vely in government buildings or telephoneexchanges.

Inplausibly disguised as a touring cyclist, Ihave often visited these tunnels. An access shaftemerges, usefully, on a traffic island in a publichighway - Bethnal Green Road, El. On thisfestive occasion, my travelling kit includes notjust a bicycle but a Christmas tree, decorations,and gifts for the new stars in the Good MoleGuide.A manhole cover, gently raised, gives access

to one of the Post Office's thousands of sub-surface cable chambers. But this one is differ-ent. .A stout grey-painted waterproof door leads

through the side of this chamber. Open it, andyou are standing on the top platform of a shaftone hundred feet deep. Climb down the rungladders, and you stand poised at the entrance tothe 'secret network. A long ribbon of lights andcables extends into the distance, as you lookinto Tunnel L (St Paul's to Bethnal Green). Nobustling commuters or noisy trains here, just apleasantly warm and enveloping silence.

' ... a long ribbon of cables and lights extendsinto the distance ... '

The tunnels have an eerie feel to them, as anybomb shelter might. There is no-one aboutafter 5pm, and the Patrolmen who daily pacethese subterranean corridors concentrate onchecking their structure and not on keepingwatch for journalistic infiltrators. There areover 12 miles of tunnel (I kid you not), so abicycle does indeed make light of otherwiseheavy footwork as one travels into and aroundcentral London on this uniquely quiet andhighly exclusive subway. Alternatively, withhealth in mind, one may gently jog throughthese pleasant underground corridors, the onlypollution-free running track to be found in (orunder) central London ..(At this point, I wouldstake public claim to the world record for the I!mile distance run one hundred feet belowground: 10.8 minutes, St Pauls to Covent Gar-den, Tunnel M.)

Riding down Tunnel L, one passes side shaftsand alleys en route to the first interchange,directly below Postal Headquarters close to StPaul's Cathedral. Here, tunnels shoot off in alldirections: .three rise to join the ordinary Lon-don underground Central Line, and the PostOffice's own underground mail railway. Tun-nel Rand Tunnel A grandly circuit round StPaul's Cathedral - they lead to an under-ground complex with six shafts below the PostOffice's Citadel telephone exchange. Citadel'sworkings, and shaft, are hidden behind sevenfoot thick concrete walls., But Tunnel B leads on to greater things, on toHolborn, home of New Statesman, and the seatof government. I ride through dense jungles ofcable, and past noisy ventilator fans. The airbecomes hot and fetid. We are nearing White-hall. .

THE MOLES' CHRISTMAS PARTY is to beheld at the entrance to the nastiest bit of governmerit of all. This is the Chamber Of MassDestruction With The Nuclear Button In It. Itwould naturally have been more exhilarating tohave par tied around The Button, but this pre-cise bit of the tunnels is undoubtedly guardedby blood-thirsty SAS men with huge, slaveringAlsatians. Reliable sources speak of at least aregimental Great Dane. We made do with thedoorstep of the awful place.

Tunnel G (Holborn to Whitehall) took thisreporter, with an entourage of festive moles, tothe doorstep. We rode beneath trendy CoventGarden, past the side alley where the electriccars are parked. A few are lined up, their bat-teries on charge. The proper denizens of thistunnel network, readers may note, ride ingreater style. Beside them are long, narrowtrailers fOL hauling underground cables -umbilical cords of Government and Capital,not to mention the Post Office.

We pass more side turnings - Tunnel Mleads off to Fleet Street (clearly a Mole Motor-way this one) and Tunnel P meanders off underLeicester Square to finish up below the PostOffice Tower. Finally Tunnel S heads leftacross the Thames to Waterloo, and the bizarre

roadsign, such as are to be found at every inter-section, warns ominously that we are now trav-elling down a Dead End. There "is 'No Exit'from Whitehall. Do we have no hope, if pinneddown by the SAS? Three hundred yards on andwe halt at the start of the Whitehall Bunkers.The main tunnel is 20 feet wide, and leadsthrough double doors to the first of the Bunk-ers, a Post Office lair called Q-Whitehall. Q isPost Office jargon for hush-hush; rightly so, asthis nest of wiring is the first part of the tunneldeep below Whitehall.

Down the Q-Whitehall tunnel, narrowereight feet wide tunnels lead off to the bowels ofthe great Departments of State. There's one forthe Ministry of Defence, one for the Admiralty,one for the Old War Office, one to No 10, oneto the Treasury. At the end of each side tunnel aworn spiral staircase and mini-lift reaches upinto the corridors of power. The air is fusty. It isbeing piped in, along great metal ducts, fromthe new offices of nice Mr Heseltine's Depart-ment of the Environment. Perhaps they've cutout the filters. ..The whole of Whitehall, virtually, is inter-

linked through this central tunnel, which dog-legs around the Houses of Parliament (needlessto say, these are not connected) finishing up inthe gigantic underground complex below theDoE. This area, like the original small tunnelnetwork, was first constructed as a World War

2 'citadel' to resist 1,OOOlbbombs and V-Weap-ons. The tunnels and the DoE citadel were enor-mously extended during the 1950s as an A-Bomb shelter. The greater power of H-bombshas made them vulnerable and so the majorgovernment bunkers are now outside London.But there's still one of these metaphysical

buttons, in the Ministry of Defence OperationsCentre. (Straight down to Parliament Squareand it's the third tunnel on your left, sir.)Another shaft leads to the Cabinet Office, withits famed COBRA Cabinet Office BriefingArea, HQ of Mr Whitelaw and his heroes of theIranian Embassy Siege. Close by COBRA is theone piece of Whitehall bunkery which may bevisited by the ordinary tourist - WinstonChurchill's WW2 underground headquartersopposite St James's Park.Also opposite St James's is the Institute of

Contemporary Arts, which tunnel enthusiastsbelieve to conceal a small but significant part ofthis sytem, A ventilator fan, linked to theAdmiralty'S bit of the Whitehall bunkers hasbeen tucked into the fabric of the ICA - besideNew Statesman 19/26 December 1980

the Gents, to be precise. The fan may be heardand observed by taking a discrete footing on theleA's sanitary ware. The odours then detected.may well be naval.

BACK TO TRAFALGAR SQUARE for theunderground mole party. We have gathered atthe start of Q-Whitehall. At this point we areabout 40 yards south of Nelson's Column and ahundred feet below it. Festivities ensue, as thecover depicts. A twelvemonth of uncoveringbureaucratic skulduggery is celebrated, and theMole Force is inspired with further Principleand greater Moral Courage, the better to com-bat Fear and Loathing instilled by the notoriousCivil Service Estacode and the no-longer-quite-so-dreaded Official Secrets Act.

I muse on the etymological origins of moletheory. Comrade Lenin, it is understood,started the whole thing off with his loose talkabout 'Red Moles'. The word was resurrectedin Langley, Virginia, as CIA code for a Russianinfiltrator into the West's secret works. Muchpopularised, it was launched into the Britishlanguage a year ago as the style for AnthonyBlunt, a spy for our wartime allies, those Rus-sians. It has now lost all its pejorative connota-tions, courtesy of British Steel and its 'mole'.Mole is now British for 'Whistleblower', anexcellent innovation. A toast to that. Moles are,now and henceforth, in the Public Interest. A

toast to the Public Interest.I have abandoned the cunning disguise as a

passing cycle tourist, and dressed formally forthis occasion. The senior ranks of the MoleForce demand it. Christmas tree and decora-tions are set out with gifts and consumables formany moles. Santa and Rudolph, ably playedby distinguished poet Roger Woddis, join thehappy scene. At the end of the celebration, wepose for the week's cover photograph. There-after, the moles disperse through the tunnels,our last lingerings undisturbed by Patrolmen,SAS guards, slavering Great Danes, or itinerantPost Office cable-laying persons.

I pedal off slowly on the trusty tunnelcruiser,away from the Dead End of Whitehall, andmust now choose a route out. Back at the NewStatesman offices, the Editor and other gener-alissimos of our journalistic enterprise are wait-ing urgently to sample the coming year's scoopharvest provided by the Mole Force.A right turn into Tunnel M offers the pros-

pect of a jaunt a hundred feet below DruryLane. A little sign indicates that Fleet Street's

own shafts to the surface, Shafts NA and NB,might be suitable ways out. But no mole hasever spoken of these mysteries, and preciselywhere these underground accesses go. ShaftNA might emerge in the Daily Telegraph. Or -God Forbid! - Daily Express. Is ChapmanPincher a denizen of these shadowy passagesalso? I enquire, but the normal enthusiasticbabble of the moles lapses into silence.At the far end of Tunnel G, there is another

interchange. We venture into Tunnel C, abombproof highway to Euston. But a giantilluminated red sign warns Danger. This tunnel,a notice explains, is unventilated and has no airin it. Continuing this trip might perhaps pro-vide a happy ending to the tale for the PostOffice. Turning back, one climbs a steep stair-case to the catacombs below our own Holbornoffice, catacombs which include an entire long-distance telephone exchange.Close at hand, shafts GA and BC, complete

with lift, now emerge' in Holborn TelephoneExchange, and the entrance to this building is amere 30 yards from our Great Turnstile offices.This geographical good fortune has alreadybeen communicated to other staff, and plansare .in hand for commandeering the place as aPeople's Nuclear Shelter (with especial refer-ence to journalists) should the Worst happen,or be thought likely. Until then, our handyHolborn shafts provide convenient access to

The lift in shaft BC emerges just a fewr stepsfrom the door of the NS off High Holborn ..

and from the mole holes a hundred feet below.This article, no doubt, will result in the tun-

nels and the shafts of this extraordinay networkbeing knee-deep in persons from MI5, MI6, theSpecial Branch, the Post Office, and HealthInspectors. They will find no moles; a new ren-.dezvous has been arranged. They will, ofcourse, be disturbed by the Big Question. Whowas the Great Festive Mole who, last Christ-mas, instructed me to lift the manhole cover onthe traffic island between Bethnal Green Roadand Sclater Street El, and thus opened up thisunderground world. Does he or she even exist?My lips should remain sealed but the position ofthis handy hole may be discovered from publicsources.To MI5 and the Special Branch, a Happy

Christmas and a trying and unstable New Yearfor '81. -

Readers who wish maps of this underground networkfor themselves may obtain them from the New States-man, by sending a stamped addressed envelope and a[J donation to the National Council for Civil Liber-ties Appeal to: 10Great Turnstile, London WCl.