Clive Ponting
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Clive Ponting is a British writer and academic.
Formerly a civil servant, Clive Ponting achieved notoriety in 1984, when he admitted having leaked information to Labour MP, Tam Dalyell, about the sinking of the General Belgrano, a key incident in the Falklands War of 1982. He was charged under Section Two of the 1911 Official Secrets Act, and was confidently expected to go to prison. His defence rested on two issues: that the matter was in the public interest, and that disclosure to a Member of Parliament was privileged. On February 11, 1985, he was acquitted by a jury, despite the judge's direction that "the public interest is what the government of the day says it is". The case was a milestone in British legal history and led to the removal of the public interest defence from the 1989 Official Secrets Act.
Ponting served as a Reader in the Department of politics and International Relations at the University of Wales, Swansea until his retirement in 2004. He has written numerous books on political history, including A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations, a biography of Winston Churchill Armageddon: The Second World War, The Pimlico History of the Twentieth Century, and an account of the Crimean War.