MoD Main Building - North Entrance on Horse Guards Avenue
Newly declassified documents show that a surveillance operation was mounted in 1953 against the fledgling Welsh Republican Movement.MI5 feared that a group of 'extreme' Welsh republicans planned to set up its own version of the IRA in the 1950s to win independence.
The organisation, which gained support from across Wales, renounced "the decaying and discredited aristocratic and imperialist civilisation of which the English Empire is one of the best examples".
Papers released last week at the National Archive in Kew disclosed that the finding of explosives in the homes of two militants prompted fears of a terrorist campaign against economic targets.
The authorities also suspected that the movement was behind an earlier attack on a Welsh pipeline carrying water to Birmingham.
MI5 paid particular attention to Clifford Bere, an ex-serviceman who founded the group in 1949 and worked as a solicitor's clerk in Glamorgan.
Security services believed that the would-be Welsh terrorists were in close contact with their Scottish counterparts and communist groups in Britain.
One security officer wrote: "Recent information we have received indicates certain militant members in Scotland and Wales are believed to be in possession of firearms and explosives, which they intend to be using in the future with a view to attracting attention to the demand for home rule in Scotland and Wales."
Interest in the militant Welsh group appears to have declined in the absence of any activity although it enjoyed a brief revival in the late 1960s. Mr Bere died at the age of 82 in 1997.
