The Defence of the Realm (182 page)

Read The Defence of the Realm Online

Authors: Christopher Andrew

76
 Beckett,
Enemy Within
,
p. 104
.

77
 Security Service Archives.

78
 Lilleker,
Against the Cold War
,
p. 86
.

79
 Aldrich,
Hidden Hand
,
pp. 456
–
7
.

80
 Douglas Hyde believed that Platts-Mills, Hutchinson and Solley were ‘crypto-Communists' at the time of the 1945 election, but that Hutchinson left the CPGB soon afterwards. Zilliacus, however, he rated only as a fellow-traveller. Hyde also identified Stephen Swingler, Harold Lever and Geoffrey Bing as ‘crypto-Communists' in 1945. All had subsequently left the Party, though Hyde thought Bing had rejoined. Security Service Archives. ‘ “I Believed” by Douglas Hyde', n.d. [
c
. Feb. 1951], Security Service Archives.

81
 Lilleker,
Against the Cold War
,
p. 89
.

82
 The fifteen Lost Sheep, in the order in which Morgan Phillips placed them on the list, were: J. Mack, S. Silverman, B. Stross, W. Warbey, G. Bing, S. Swingler, G. Wigg, H. Austin, G. Cooper, H. Davies, I. Mikardo, J. Silverman, C. G. P. Smith, W. Vernon and R. Chamberlain. Morgan Phillips, ‘Lost Sheep' file, n.d., General Secretary's papers, Labour Party Archive, National Museum of Labour History, Manchester.

83
 Security Service Archives.

84
 Guy Liddell diary, 27 May 1949, Security Service Archives.

85
 Lilleker,
Against the Cold War
,
p. 100
. Zilliacus lost his seat in the 1950 election but returned to the Commons in 1957.

86
 Security Service Archives.

87
 Chapman Pincher, ‘A Communist Spy in the Labour Machine',
Daily Express
, 28 June 1968.

88
 The handwritten list, on House of Commons notepaper, read as follows:

CP:–

Possible

W. Owen

Zilliacus

Warbey

V. Yates

Leo Abse

A. Lewis

F. Allaun

S. O. Davies

J. Silverman

B. Stross

J. Baird

Emrys Hughes

J. Mendelson

W. Griffiths

T. Driberg

S. Silverman

R. Parker

E. Fernyhough

S. Swingler

J. Rankin

 

H. Davies

 

L. Plummer

 

R. Kell[e]y

 

T. Swain

 

J. Hart

 

The fact that a seventeenth name has been crossed out suggests that, as indicated by the inaccurate pencilled total on the document, the CP list may originally have contained more names. The list is filed in Security Service Archives.

89
 See below,
pp. 542
–
3
.

90
 Security Service Archives. The Service believed that the twenty-five MPs on Gordon Walker's list posed little threat and had limited influence. ‘The ten MPs who appear to be of most significance' were:

Harold Davies (Leek): believed never to have been CP member but ‘in contact with leading members of the Party'.

S. O. Davies (Merthyr Tydfil): there was ‘evidence from LASCAR to show that if not of the Party, he is at least very close to it indeed'.

Richard Kelley (Don Valley): believed to have been a CPGB member 1932–55. There was some evidence that he left ‘on purely tactical grounds' but ‘The CPGB have, and quite rightly, a low opinion of his intelligence.'

Julius Silverman (Aston): ‘He has, for a long time, had extremely close relations with the Soviet Embassy, and may well be considered a useful source of Parliamentary information, if nothing more.'

Stephen Swingler (Newcastle-under-Lyne): believed to have joined the CPGB c. 1934, left in 1940 and rejoined in 1945. ‘According to Douglas Hyde, he was a crypto-Communist when he was first elected to Parliament in 1945, but there is sufficient evidence to suggest that he finally left about 1951. He has, nevertheless, continued to associate with extreme left-wing and Communist-dominated concerns . . .'

Frank Allaun (Salford East): believed to have been a CPGB member 1936–44, after which he was variously assessed as a Titoist or Trotskyist and was still believed to have ‘Trotskyist sympathies'. There were ‘repeated reports that Allaun has been doing undercover work for the CPGB, though LASCAR reports that Peter Zinkin, the Daily Worker parliamentary correspondent, has no very high opinion of his integrity and considers that he usually follows a safe line, even though on the left'.

John Baird (Wolverhampton): ‘The CPGB's assessment of him as a Trotskyist is probably correct.'

John Mendelson (Penistone): despite LASCAR evidence that he was a Party member in the 1940s, the CPGB ‘appears to think that he may have been working for the Foreign Office, the Security Service or the Police'. It was probably wrong on all counts. In 1956 he was described by Harry Pollitt as a ‘fishy' sort of character. He later came under some suspicion of espionage and an HOW was obtained in 1962 – apparently as a result of his meetings with a suspected Russian intelligence officer. In 1960 he had had meetings with a Czechoslovak intelligence officer. Though only part of Mendelson's file survives, no evidence of espionage appears to have been obtained.

Thomas Swain (North East Derbyshire): there were F4 reports alleging donations by him to the East Midlands district of the CPGB and the
Daily Worker
fighting fund. ‘He is also known to have passed Minutes of the Executive Committee of the NUM to the Party.'

Sir Leslie Plummer (Deptford): two LASCAR reports in January 1961 ‘suggest that the Party thinks well of his activities'.

91
 Security Service Archives.

92
 Security Service Archives.

93
 Chapman Pincher, ‘Labour Made Loyalty Probe',
Daily Express
, 15 Feb. 1967.

94
 
Daily Mail
, 15 Feb. 1967.

95
 Security Service Archives.

96
 Security Service Archives.

97
 Security Service Archives.

98
 Chapman Pincher, ‘A Communist Spy in the Labour Machine',
Daily Express
, 28 June 1968. Pincher's article did not identify Bax by name.

99
 Security Service Archives.

100
 Security Service Archives.

101
 Security Service Archives. Wilson became secretary for overseas trade at the Board of Trade in March 1947 before his appointment as president and cabinet minister in October.

102
 Security Service Archives.

103
 Security Service Archives.

104
 Hennessy,
Never Again
,
p. 417
.

105
 In April 1952 Bernard Buckman, a CPGB member who had been to a Moscow trade
conference, boasted that he had ‘five MPs whom he has got together and is educating in progressive theory. The Party are very pleased with him for the work he has done. There is Harold Wilson, Sidney Silverman, Geoffrey Bing and so on.' The claim that Wilson's involvement in trade with the Soviet Union owed anything of significance to Bernard Buckman's influence is deeply improbable. Security Service Archives.

106
 Richard West, ‘Comments on the Week's News: Moscow',
New Statesman
, 14 June 1963.

107
 ‘Harold Wilson Sees Molotov',
Daily Worker
, 22 May 1953.

108
 Security Service Archives.

109
 Security Service Archives. A minute on 3 July 1954 noted ‘continued contact' between Wilson and Skripov, who had been ‘identified almost with certainty as an Intelligence Officer'; Security Service Archives. Wilson's last recorded contact with Skripov was in February 1956; Security Service Archives. Skripov was later expelled from Australia. Security Service Archives.

110
 Security Service Archives. Belokhvostikov was stationed as counsellor at the Soviet London embassy from June 1952 to November 1955; Security Service Archives.

111
 He made this claim at his first meeting as Prime Minister with the DG, Sir Roger Hollis, in November 1964. Security Service Archives.

112
 Andrew and Mitrokhin,
Mitrokhin Archive
,
p. 528
.

113
 Security Service Archives.

114
 
Daily Mirror
, 18 Jan. 1956.

115
 
Sunday Dispatch
, 20 June 1956.

116
 Pimlott,
Wilson
,
p. 199
.

117
 Andrew and Mitrokhin,
Mitrokhin Archive
,
p. 528
.

118
 Ziegler,
Wilson
,
p. 94
.

119
 Andrew and Mitrokhin,
Mitrokhin Archive
,
p. 528
. Allegations that Wilson was ever a KGB agent derive not from credible evidence but from unfounded conspiracy theories, some of them elaborated by the KGB defector Anatoli Golitsyn, who may have known of the existence of Wilson's ‘agent development file' and claimed after his defection in December 1961 that Wilson was a Soviet mole. When Gaitskell died suddenly in 1963, Golitsyn developed the bizarrely improbable theory that he had been poisoned by the KGB to enable Wilson to succeed him as Labour leader. Sadly, a minority of British and American intelligence officers with a penchant for conspiracy theory – among them James Angleton of the CIA and Peter Wright of MI5 – were seduced by Golitsyn's fantasies. Andrew and Mitrokhin,
Mitrokhin Archive
,
pp. 528
–
9
. Wise,
Molehunt
,
pp. 97
–
9
. Mangold,
Cold Warrior
,
pp. 95
–
7
.

120
 Security Service Archives.

121
 
Daily Worker
, 21 Jan. 1963.

122
 Andrew and Mitrokhin,
Mitrokhin Archive
,
p. 529
.

Chapter 6: The Hunt for the ‘Magnificent Five'

1
 See below,
p. 423
.

2
 See above,
pp. 183
–
4
.

3
 See above,
pp. 272
–
3
,
280
. Lyubimov, ‘Martyr to Dogma',
pp. 278
–
9
.

4
 Andrew and Mitrokhin,
Mitrokhin Archive
,
pp. 202
–
3
.

5
 Security Service Archives.

6
 Security Service Archives.

7
 Security Service Archives.

8
 Cecil,
Divided Life
, chs 6, 7. On Alger Hiss, see Andrew and Mitrokhin,
Mitrokhin Archive
,
pp. 137
–
41
,
176
–
7
,
187
,
189
; Haynes, Klehr and Vassiliev,
Spies
, ch. 1.

9
 Andrew and Mitrokhin,
Mitrokhin Archive
,
p. 204
.

10
 Rees,
Chapter of Accidents
,
p. 7
.

11
 Security Service Archives.

12
 Security Service Archives.

13
 Hill was a solicitor who had become the Service's legal adviser in 1946.

14
 Guy Liddell diary, 23 Jan., 16 Feb. 1950, Security Service Archives.

15
 Andrew and Mitrokhin,
Mitrokhin Archive
,
pp. 204
–
6
.

16
 See above,
pp. 345
–
6
,
349
.

17
 Guy Liddell diary, 11 Sept. 1950, Security Service Archives.

18
 Philby,
My Silent War
,
pp. 152
–
4
. Cecil,
Divided Life
,
p. 118
. Andrew and Mitrokhin,
Mitrokhin Archive
,
pp. 206
–
7
.

19
 This is acknowledged by Maclean's controller, Yuri Modin; Modin,
My Five Cambridge Friends
,
p. 199
.

20
 Philby,
My Silent War
,
p. 156
. The later KGB claim that the escapades which led to Burgess's recall were pre-planned is deeply implausible and not corroborated by, among other sources, Mitrokhin's notes from KGB files; the escapades were much in line with similar, unpremeditated ‘scrapes' by Burgess over the previous few years.

21
 Andrew and Mitrokhin,
Mitrokhin Archive
,
p. 207
.

22
 Modin,
My Five Cambridge Friends
,
pp. 199
–
204
. Costello and Tsarev,
Deadly Illusions
,
pp. 338
–
9
.

23
 Aldrich,
Hidden Hand
,
p. 436
.

24
 Security Service Archives.

25
 Security Service Archives.

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