BRITAIN is in a financial crisis. The coalition Government announces cuts to the military as public spending is slashed.

The parallel with today is uncanny – but 80 years ago the response wasn't limited to mutterings about strikes by trades unions.

Instead there was anger by men in uniform.

And there was action – mutiny.

Plymouth sailors were at the centre of one of the most notorious episodes in Royal Navy history.

The Invergordon Mutiny lasted two short days in September 1931 and there were no ships sunk, no shots fired, not a single person hurt.

But the rebellion led to panic on the London Stock Exchange, a run on the Pound and a radical and permanent change in the UK's monetary system.

There was a fear that this could be the start of the kind of social and political earthquake that created the Soviet Union – the 1917 Russian communist revolution had roots in a naval rebellion.

The incident was so far-reaching and the subject so sensitive that, decades later, there were questions raised in the House of Commons when a Plymouth journalist followed up the story.

The main people involved in the Invergordon Mutiny are long dead. The voice of one of them lives on, though, thanks to the meticulous work of former BBC South West man Joe Pengelly.

He was the journalist who found himself in a political storm and the subject of close attention by MI5 when he interviewed and then befriended one of the Invergordon rebels, Len Wincott.

Ex-able seaman Wincott's voice sounds deep, steady and full of resolve as he explains why he led the revolt that shook Britain.

"Before the strike there was no thought in my mind of going against discipline and authority," says Wincott.

"I was a very good sailor, I was a very well disciplined young man and I liked the Navy very much.

"In fact I decided that the Navy would be my career but I have always in my life had a desire to move against any form of injustice."

Hearing the voice you understand how a simple lowly sailor could have the determination to take on the hierarchy of the Royal Navy and why others like him were prepared to break the most basic rule of military discipline and defy officers' orders. On the tape recording – made by Joe – Wincott's voice is coloured by controlled anger. His arguments carry an infectious power that helped inspire up to 1,000 others to follow him.

The injustice Wincott refers to was a savage cut in wages.

The Government in September 1931 cut Royal Navy spending by ten per cent and that translated into the same figure being lopped off pay. All public sector workers faced the that percentage loss in earnings.

But in the Royal Navy, in reality the lower decks fared far worse than the officers. Many ordinary sailors faced a 25-per-cent cut in already meagre wages.

Before 1931, his navy records show that Wincott, 24 at the time, was a model sailor. The pay cut changed him overnight.

There was little sign of the trouble to come when some of the most powerful ships of the Atlantic fleet left Devonport on September 7.

Wincott was on the heavy cruiser HMS Norfolk, which sailed with battleship Rodney, cruiser Adventure and the flagship, battlecruiser Hood.

As the ships arrived at Invergordon, on the Cromarty Firth in Scotland on September 11, the sailors read front-page newspaper reports about the impending cuts.

By the time the Admiralty announced the cuts and tried to explain the reasons for them, there was agitation across several ships, including the Rodney, and on the Norfolk, where Wincott organised protest meetings.

There was similar disruption on several other ships with the men carrying out only routine duties that permitted life on board to go on, but refusing to let the vessels sail for manoeuvres and ignoring officers' orders.

Wincott told Joe later how there was 'no animosity' towards officers, and certainly no violence or destruction – as was claimed later in some reports.

As Wincott led the Norfolk mutiny, the officers found they had to go through him to try to bring the crew round.

He dictated a manifesto of the rebels' demands – which was written out by a Plymouth sailor, able seaman George Hill.

"Wincott said that naval wives would be driven to prostitution to feed their families," said Joe. "But George toned it down, writing that wives would have to turn to domestic service to keep the wolf from the door.

"George was more careful, more cautious than Wincott. He played both sides."

The manifesto had a flowery, flowing archaic style which led some observers to observe later that Wincott, with his basic education, could not have written the document. Therefore it was claimed that others led the rebellion, possibly from outside the Navy.

But Wincott insisted later that the manifesto was all his own work. "The words came pouring out," he said.

Meanwhile, the acting commander of the fleet, Rear-Admiral Wilfred Tomkinson – another Devonport based man – was trying to assess the situation, figure out how to restore order and keep the Admiralty informed.

He told his superiors that he could not get the fleet to sea and that the wages cut appeared to be the issue.

And to the ships he signalled that he was aware of hardship among crews and their families and commanding officers were to report typical cases.

But as the mutiny hardened – complete with a piano being brought on the deck and rousing singing of socialist anthem the Red Flag – Tomkinson was powerless. Even some Royal Marines, charged with helping keep order on board if ever there were trouble, refused orders.

After two days of mutiny, Tomkinson put the men's case to the Admiralty, warning the top brass that the rebellions would worse unless concessions were made.

He suggested that the worse parts of the cuts to the junior ranks be reversed. The men were informed that they would have to wait for a decision – which Tomkinson learned from the Admiralty would be taken by the cabinet.

Tomkinson's approach defused the situation. On the night of September 16, the Admiralty instructed that all ships should return to their home ports and the men at last obeyed their officers. The rebellious Plymouth ships returned peacefully to Devonport.

Tomkinson's recommendations on the pay cuts were accepted by the Cabinet.

The Rear-Admiral, though, carried the can. He was blamed for failing to punish the rebels as soon as the protests started.

Feelings were running high. During the mutiny, one Labour MP had argued that the rebel ships should be shelled and the mutineers executed.

The Invergordon Mutiny caused a panic on the London Stock Exchange and a run on the pound, amid fears that this was a red revolution. A quarter of the currency's value against the US dollar was wiped out.

That financial crisis brought Britain's economic troubles to a head, forcing the pound off the gold standard.The historic link backing paper money in circulation with reserves of gold in the Bank of England ended on September 20, 1931.

Back in Devonport, 36 mutineers were taken from the ships.

They were supposedly being given special training – instead they faced 'vicious' exercises, Wincott recalled.

So Wincott led a further protest to a senior commander and the regime eased.

But then Wincott and others regarded as leading trouble makers were told their services were no longer required in the Navy. They got their remaining pay, money for a civilian suit and a railway ticket to their chosen destination.

"I think England would have been turned upside down if there'd been an open court martial," he later told Joe.

George Hill, who had been careful to remain in the middle, stayed in the Navy and later became a policeman in Plymouth.

Rear-Admiral Tomkinson was placed on half pay following mutiny 1932 and retired 1935, although he rejoined the Navy to serve in World War Two.

Wincott became a communist and a feted anti-war protestor. He defected to the Soviet Union – the communist 'empire' dominated by Russia – in 1934.

He served in the Red Army, allied with Britain against Germany in World War Two, and was caught up in one of the most vicious episodes of the conflict, the 900-day siege of Leningrad.

Before the war Wincott was a hero in the Soviet union, a symbol of the British working class against their 'oppressors'. He even enjoyed roles in films, playing Britons.

But in 1946 he was accused of being a British spy and after a show trial he was sent to a labour camp.

During his 11-year spell in the brutal work prisons he met and married Lena, a fellow inmate.

He was released, rehabilitated and living in Moscow when Joe entered the saga in 1973.

By now, the Soviet Union was Britain's enemy. This was the height of the Cold War, the stand-off between the 'free' West and the communist East.

When word leaked out that Joe was going to Moscow to interview the Invergordon mutineer his BBC bosses faced pressure and there were questions raised in Parliament as to why licence payers' money was being used to give publicity to a 'traitor'.

In fact Joe was heading to Moscow more as an historian than a reporter and he was travelling on his own time. Joe always regarded himself as a historian first – he graduated from Jesus College, Oxford – and journalist second, specialising in the oral record. His achievements including lecturing to the Library of Congress in Washington DC.

"Not a penny of the licence fee went on that trip," says Joe, now 87.

Moscow was a family holiday for Joe and his wife. "I always used to drag Barbara to somewhere where I could also do a story."

On arrival in the Russian capital Joe first had to find Wincott.

"I phoned the British embassy on the off chance and they said, 'Oh, yes Len's a friend. We always have him round for drinks on the Queen's birthday'."

Joe set up the meeting and Wincott talked freely. But at the end of their conversation he demanded that he have the tape to listen over before releasing the record three months later.

The two became friends and Lena and Len visited Joe and Barbara twice at their Thorn Park, Mannamead, home in the late 1970s and in 1981.

The ghosts of the Invergordon past still haunted Wincott and those who came into contact with him. "I took him to a Combined Services rugby match, Devonport against Portsmouth," says Joe.

"The top naval officers there spent most of their time watching Len, not the game. These were men with distinguished war records – but here was an ordinary seaman who was more famous than them.

"I know that my phone at home was tapped and my bosses at the BBC were contacted by MI5 to get me to tell Len that if he wished to stay in the UK he could. That was when I really began to quake. It was all done verbally."

Len did return for good in 1983 – the year he died. Lena brought his ashes and she and the urn stayed with Joe and Barbara.

Although Len was not born in Plymouth – he was from Leicester – he regarded the Devon city as his home.

"Len wanted his ashes scattered in Plymouth Sound," says Joe. I approached the Navy to see if they would help and to my surprise they did."

The former mutineer's ashes were kept in the chapel at Devonport Naval Base and a Navy vessel was laid on for the service and scattering at sea.

"There were quite happy to do all that, but they did not want to have a lot of publicity."

That was a fitting end for the bloodless Invergordon Mutiny and its aftermath which was, Joe observes, 'a very British affair'.