I'm taking a journey back down memory lane during the 1980s how many of us remember The GCHQ trade union campaign began after the decision by the Conservative government in January 1984 to ban unions at the GCHQ (Government Communications Head Quarters) intelligence gathering centre in Cheltenham.
The foreign secretary announced to a shocked House of Commons that independent unions would be banned from GCHQ. The TUC, CCSU, the leaders of all opposition parties, and MPs from all parties erupted in indignant anger at this declaration.
In the short period between the announcement and the implementation of the ban on 1 March 1984, the entire labour movement joined forces to oppose the ban.
Now in we have ConDEm Coalation Government in 2010 who wants to sell of The government's secret listening post GCHQ could sell its technical expertise to the private sector under plans being considered by the government.Security minister Dame Pauline Neville Jones said ministers were "thinking about" ways in which GCHQ could supply services to private firms.
"It's a live issue," she told the Commons science committee.
Scientists and cyber-security experts are employed at GCHQ, in Cheltenham, to monitor e-mail and phone traffic.
Their work has always been considered top secret, but committee chairman, Labour MP Andrew Miller, asked whether the government was considering the "radical" step of the commercialisation of products, working in partnership with the the private sector.
"You are taking me on to ground, chairman, that we are thinking about," she told the MPs, adding that there were "many ways Cheltenham could supply a service to the private sector".
But she said the government was still considering how that might be funded and what the relationship between private firms and this branch of the security services might be and she could not comment further at this stage.
The top secret Defence Evaluation and Research Agency was privatised by the previous government, and floated on the stock exchange in 2006 as Qinetiq.
Although the cutting edge cyber-security and computer research carried out at GCHQ could potentially generate cash for the government any moves to involve the private sector would have to be handled carefully due to the highly sensitive nature of the signals intelligence material it handles.
