A Peculiar British Fruit

The Sandbaggers is a first-rate vintage British spy series that gives a layered inside view into where, how, and by whom decisions were taken to commit clandestine operators abroad in the later Cold War. A much later French parallel to the show might be Éric Rochant’s excellent The Bureau.

The Sandbaggers are a fictional Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) “special section” of several highly-trained ex-military men and women deployed abroad on sensitive missions. Each episode centers on a main incident in which the biggest fights take place first in administrative back channels of Whitehall among government ministries and their agencies. The Soviet KGB, Philbyphobia, and the UK’s “Special Relationship” with its US “Cousins” are natural ingredients.

Sandbagger chief Neil Burnside (Roy Marsden) exercises the "Special [UK-US] Relationship" with CIA case officer Jeff Ross (Bob Sherman) in the “The Sandbaggers” (1978-80).

Roy Marsden stars as Neil Burnside, a former Sandbagger and director of operations under SIS C[ontrol] (Richard Vernon, whom the Beatles memorably teased in A Hard Day’s Night). C is a career diplomat without a professional intelligence background; his deputy is Matthew Peele (Jerome Willis). Burnside’s former father-in-law Sir Geoffrey Wellingham (Alan MacNaughtan) is permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office (the civil service agency head under a politically-appointed foreign minister). Burnside’s Sandbagger One is Willie Caine (Ray Lonnen), a former sergeant in the Parachute Regiment, a working-class James Bond wannabe; one notable early Sandbagger Two is Laura Dickens (Diane Keen), a Bond-averse linguist and skilled operator. Burnside's long-suffering office secretary Diane Lawler (Elizabeth Bennett) may be of all the best informed. And Central Intelligence Agency case officer Jeff Ross (Bob Sherman) and Burnside help each other keep things real.

Ravens wings and writing desks: How are British senior civil servants like oranges?

In contrast to the sweet, easy-to-peel fruit, the British mandarin* is a hard-shelled senior civil servant cultivated in the public schools and Oxbridge for ministry hothouses at Whitehall. This makes for a cozy climate, though these mandarins are anything but potted plants: More senior officials lurk in this series’s shadows than femmes ou hommes fatals or kay-gay-beasties. Although bowlerized Whitehall men in pinstripes portrayed in this series since have been augmented by persons of other colors, sexes, styles of apparel, and national origins, John Le Carré among others encourage the belief that their roles, personalities, and language remain much the same. 

 

Sandbagger operations typically involve overseas incidents or official indiscretions which seldom make headlines, deftly disarmed by discreet discovery and handling. The operations are fictional though were topical at the time and MI6 evidently did not have a Sandbagger section. But the series drives home the authentic point that the chief considerations in ministerial squabbling over use of highly capable but demonstrably expendable government employees center on the ruling political party’s best interests, budgetary considerations, and the country’s economic advantage, e.g., flogging British weapons systems abroad. The operational challenges of a particular mission and mortal danger to the secret operators are afterthoughts at best.

Although the work of Sandbaggers such as Laura Dickens (Diane Keen) involves down time at the office, in the field it can demand life-or-death decisions at civil service rates.

C: “Small consolation to the prime minister if he’s faced with an international incident.”

Burnside: “So that’s it?”

C: “Yes, Neil, that’s always it.”

Current US viewers may find episode 12, “It Can’t Happen Here,” of interest. The recent assassination of a liberal US senator chairing a committee on race prompts in-house discussion on suspected FBI involvement in the John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations. Two Sandbaggers are seconded briefly to the US Secret Service as security for the senator’s successor. In the aftermath, British intelligence officials must consider options for handling a British cabinet minister believed to be a KGB agent but politically untouchable.

MP accessed the series on DVD via a public library. Do not be put off by the “Dr. Who” interiors: British television at the time videotaped interiors and shot on location with 16mm handheld cameras. This series is well-made and well-acted; the dialogue moves quickly and is inlaid with details such that the episodes keep well and are worth seeing more than one time.

The Sandbaggers 1978-1980 U.K. (twenty 50-minute episodes) Yorkshire Television/BFS Entertainment. Created by Ian Mackintosh; produced by Michael Ferguson and David Cunliffe.

“The Sandbaggers”: High intrigue and derring-do in the pre-digital world.

*Mandarin comes from Sanskrit via colonial Portuguese for “counselor”. It refers to both Chinese imperial officials (guān) and the language of officialdom (官話, guānhuà) in the Beijing region, the longtime Chinese imperial center. The British apparently claimed the Portuguese word for their own imperial officials late in the 16th century.