Chris Ball recalls a former trade union colleague who may have been an infiltrator on behalf of the security services

STUMBLING over an entry on a Conservative Party web forum recently, I recognised the writer immediately as Keith Standring, leader of the chemicals section of the GMB after it absorbed APEX, the white-collar union we both worked for in the 1970s. I was staggered to see that he is now a Conservative Councillor in East Sussex and supporter of such right-wing causes as the Freedom Association and the Bruges Group, but even more startled to see him boasting to have "worked for British Intelligence for over 30 years".

Old colleagues I have spoken to share my surprise. Roy Grantham, former general secretary of APEX, said: "He never told us he was working for the security forces. He implies he was working for them while working for us." Standring told me he had been a Conservative for "as long as I can remember". However, this was news to Grantham and everyone else I spoke to. According to Grantham: "He never referred to any Conservative affiliation."

Despite owning up to his intelligence role on a website, Standring was oddly cagey when I asked him about it. It might "impinge on the Official Secrets Act", he claimed. He could neither confirm nor deny anything. "It is very close to home," he added mysteriously. "Some of the work I was involved in is still security sensitive". When I asked him if it was in any way connected with the union, I got an evasive: "No, not really."

Two possibilities could explain Standring's weird behaviour. One is that he suffers from some kind of delusion which causes him to inhabit a world of fantasy, in which case he probably needs help. The other is that there is a strange truth linking his oddities over the years which, he might assure us, is all part of a plan to protect the country from those who would undermine it.

Standring would definitely have us believe the latter. When I put to him that he had been a member of the Communist Party at one time, he responded: "Of course, but it would be too revealing as to how people work up a legend." Did this mean it was all part of his cover? "You are close to it," he admitted.

Grantham now describes Standring as "a Walter Mitty character", although he concedes he was persuasive. When APEX was in discussions to merge with the GMB, a plan was hatched to put Standring in charge of the new union's APEX section. Grantham fought this off, but any sinister flaws in Standring's personality were presumably not evident to those behind the plot at the time.

One of the oddities in Standring's record is his form in switching both parties and religions. Grantham describes him as "a chameleon" and observes: "When he went to a new religion, he was all for it. And then six months later, he was all for something else." Bob Fazakerley, a former member of APEX in the north-west of England recalls: "He was variously a Communist, Maoist, Catholic, Buddhist or any other affiliation you can think of."

On his retirement from the GMB in 1997, Standring worked for the International Trade Union Solidarity Campaign, a group formed by the Workers' Revolutionary Party. He addressed his circulars with the clarion cry of: "Fellow workers and friends", and urged support for causes such as the march for social justice called by Liverpool dockers. Standring was coy about this aspect of his past, passing it off as, "another way of getting information". In other words, it was "all part of the cover".

These days Standring contributes to reactionary websites with titles such as "Make Socialism History", opining on the "horrendous immigration policies and shambolic procedures of the Labour Government". He calls for "a campaign to scrap the wretched inheritance tax" and describes himself as "a free-market, libertarian Conservative".
So, with his philosophical ideas about as stable as decaying gelignite, just how credible is Standring's weird claim to have been "working up a legend" in the interests of "a cover"? It sounds an implausible explanation for the arrogant behaviour which unhappy members sometimes complained of and his oddities which sometimes left other union officials snorting into their handkerchiefs.

Standring's skills as a negotiator did not always impress. He seemed to like giving offence. Adrian Askew, now general secretary of the communications union Connect, recalls Standring pouring ridicule on a company director over the length of his hair, when they were supposed to be negotiating a deal. "I could see a settlement slipping away", recalls Askew.
Gerry Veart, a former APEX officer, tells how Standring once walked into an engineering company where there had been a strike ballot. "Would you like to make the case?" ventured the management spokesperson cautiously. "I've got a strike ballot in my pocket," said Standring. "I am going to sit in my car. Come and tell me what you have to offer in 10 minutes or I will drive back to Manchester." Unsurprisingly, there was no improved offer.

Standring's eccentricities included an unusual tendency to appear with his hair dyed outrageous colours. When he married a Scandinavian woman he opted for peroxide blond which, to the amusement of delegates at a GMB congress, turned purple when he swam in the hotel pool. Somehow such behaviour doesn't fit the expected profile of the spy, unless it was part of "the cover" to throw us off the scent.
These days, Standring lists clay pigeon shooting among his hobbies. He also claims to be "the internationally-acclaimed healer, teacher writer" of Reiki - a dubious form of spiritual healing and pseudo science. Communing with "the other side" was never quite understood by union negotiators in this sense.

Owen Granfield, a former official of APEX, has no doubts about Standring's claims, however. He recalls a demonstration when Standring asked him to collect the names of people who were carrying placards of various political groups. Granfield refused. "But why did he ask?" he wonders.
If he was a spook, who was Standring spying on and what damage could he have caused if he were passing on information against the labour movement? "Less than zilch" is the estimate of former Amicus leader Roger Lyons. The Grunwick dispute in 1976-77 might have been a situation where secrets could have been stolen but Roy Grantham is doubtful. "He was just a new boy on the block then and wasn't involved."

Nevertheless, a profession which has over centuries embraced characters as colourful as Christopher Marlow, Mata Hari, and Kim Philby could perhaps have found a place for a Keith Standring. Stranger things happen in the world of espionage. And what a cover; what a legend.

Chris Ball is a visiting fellow in the Department of Management at the London School of Economics. He worked for APEX from 1973 -78 and was later a national officer of Amicus