British Court Rules Papers Can Print Summaries of Banned Book

LONDON — A British appeals court on Friday ruled that three London newspapers could publish summaries of a retired British secret agent’s memoirs but not excerpts of the banned book.

The three judges, overturning a lower court’s ruling on Wednesday, however, barred the Guardian, the Observer and the Sunday Times from printing actual passages of former counterintelligence agent Peter Wright’s book, “Spycatcher.”

The appeals court said it was modifying the ban because Wright’s allegations about MI5 misconduct were legitimate news.

The ruling followed an appeal by Atty. Gen. Patrick Mayhew against the lower court’s decision to lift injunctions imposed on the newspapers after the former MI5 official’s memoirs were first published last year.

Wright’s book, already on sale in the United States, alleged that the internal security service conspired to topple the Labor government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson in the 1970s because they feared he might be a Soviet agent.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said in a television interview Friday that the government banned the book as a matter of principle, convinced that former secret agents should maintain a vow of confidentiality. The appeals court decision effectively prevented the Sunday Times from continuing its serialization of “Spycatcher,” begun two weeks ago.