First published in l9g9 bvGerald Duckworth & Co. ka.

The Old piano Factorv43 Gloucester Crescenr, Lond'on NWI

O r989 by WJ. West

All rights reserved. No part of this publicationmay be reproduced, ,to..d i,,, u ..r.i.'uut ,fr;;;, ".transmitted. in.any form or by any means, it..ironi.,mecnanrcat, photocopying, recording or orherh.ise,

wrrnout the prror permission of the publisher.

Contents

PrefaceList of platesIntroduction

Appendix l. 'The Conflict in China'by Roger HollisAppendix 2. Oonternporary DocumentsEources ancl Rcf'erencesBlbliogruphylndex

rsBN 0 7t5622862

British Library Cataloguing in publication Data.

W11, WJ. (WiltiamJohn), ts42_The truth about tiollis: an investigation.l. Anti-British espionage. Hollis, R;;;;-L Ticle327.1,2,0924

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Part One: The Real WorldWest Country BornChina DaysThe Missing Two Years

Part Two: The World of Spies

The Communist Left and MI5The Revolution That Never WasOur Soviet Comrades: The Projection of Russia in BritainRadio and the Administration of Total WarArmy Morale, Guy Burgess and the BBCClaud Cockburn and the Algiers AffairThe Roots of the Cold War in 1943Prelude to Defection

Part Three: The Wilderness of MirrorsThe Frontiers ofJournalismThe Cases For and AgainstThe Real Roger Hollis?

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In memory of my fatherRichard William West of Cirencester

(18e0_1959)

Preface

In the course of writing this book I have examined a large number ofMI5 documents, and information contained in them has beenincorporated into the text. In view of the new legislation dealing withOfficial Secrets, however, and the position of MI5, I must make itabsolutely clear that these documents have been drawn entirely fromthe thousands of MI5 papers that have been made available forpublic examination in the Public Record Office at Kew, the NationalArchives of the United States of America in Washington, the FBIarchives in Washington and the Canadian National Archives inOttawa. In Britain the Departments of State that have released themost significant documents from MI5 used in this book are theHome Office and the Foreign Office. As far as I am alvare, I havenever spoken to any member of MI5, or to any former member ofMI5, or to any person who is bound by a lifelong duty ofconfidentiality.

The recent legislation amending the Official Secrets Act seems tohave been introduced as a result of the Splcatcher affair in Australia.ln Spycatcher Peter Wright made many comments on technicaloperational matters which could only have been known to MI5employees. Unless MI5's archives are fully opened, it rvill never bepossible to make any kind of sensible comment on such matters. Ihave made no attempt to deal with them here. On the other hand,lmportant and revealing facts have been discovered in the MI5papers which have been released in Britain in the normal way and inCanada and America under Freedom of Information legislation. Inlny case the manifold errors contained in Spycatcher and other booksbated on fallible human memory over half a century seem to suggestthat contemporary documents from MI5's extensive output of paperlr€ more reliable as a pr(mary source. It is interesting also that theprelent-day internal MI5 files appear to have been rveeded in someway befbrc they were made available to the Fluency Committeelnvettigating Hollis, otherwise the new evidence revealed here mustrur€ly hnve become known to thcnr,

Sitrr:e tlre Russiarr Revoltrtiorr prlitit's arrrl political tlrought h:rve

vin Preface

gradually assumed a central place among those factors other thanage-old considerations of realpolitik that have either caused wars orseemed likely to cause wars. The main confrontations of thetwentieth century have been ideological, and remain so to this day. Itcan hardly come as a surprise that anyone attempting to studymodern British history and the conflicts in which Britain has beeninvolved will find himself looking at political life in Britain and theinfluence of often obscure political movements. This applies equallyto MI5 which extended its interest in the keeping of military secretsto cover political matters as the influence of ideology increased. Butwhereas technical and other matters concerned with military secretscan be kept secret political matters cannot. As soon as the widerspread of ideological conflict reached MI5 and affected its interests,its role was bound to become to that extent political. Its handling ofsuch political matters was bound eventually to become part of thepolitical history of the country. And, like all other branches ofpolitical history, it could not be kept secret. By the most profounderror this simple truth has been overlooked.

MI5's involvement in domestic British politics came to the foreduring the time that Roger Hollis was with it, and reached its peakwhen he was Director-General. It is not surprising, therefore, thatRoger Hollis has become a historical figure, although the publicationof books such as Chapman Pincher's Too Secret Too Long may havebrought him onto the political stage a little prematurely. Had MI5'sactivities been confined to technical matters of the classic kind, Holliswould probably never have been known to the public at all. Even thelegislation on MI5 going through Parliament as this book goes topress would have been unnecessary.

It is part of my theme that those who thought that the file on Hollishad been closed, and that the events in Australia would finally'lay torest' doubts about Hollis, have made a serious error of judgment.The error concerns both the facts of Hollis's life which, as we shallsee here for the first time, shorv him to have been a political animalwith left allegiances for much of his life, and also the underlyingreilson lttr his emergence into the limelight. I hope this book willptrrvidc some of the essential background for an understanding ofolte ol'the rnost unusual men in modern British political history.

Itt u lxxrk rut'lt as tlris, r'clyirrgorr oliginal research in publicarchivesIlrlltrt' llttttr tlre ret'ollet'tiorrs ol' tlrosc involve<l who arc nowlilt'lritltletr lo rlruk evelt on nlitlt(.t's ol' r'clrl ltistorit::rl sigrrilir:ant:t:

Preface lx

under threat of imprisonment, a particular debt of gratitude is owedto the staff of the archives in which the work was done . In particularI would like to thank the staff at the American National Archives inWashington and at the FBI archives, also in Washington - theequivalent of MI5's archives, whose very whereabouts is a state secretin England - and at the Canadian National Archives in Ottawa whose24-hour access system was particularly helpful to a transatlanticvisitor on a tight schedule.

In England I am grateful for the unfailing assistance of the staff atthe Public Record Office at Kew whose computer-controlledkey-board document-calling system has made a researcher's taskstraightforward. I must also thank the staff at the BBC WrittenArchive Centre at Caversham, Reading, possibly one of the richestand most extensive sources for modern British history outside thePublic Record Office itself; the staff at the Orwell Archive atUniversity College London; and the Librarians at Exeter UniversityLibrary and the Devon and Exeter Institution. I pay special thanks toNicholas Spurrier for obtaining important political pamphlets not tobe found in the great national collections.

I am grateful for interviews and help from Lord Mayhew, LordSheffield and Lord Houghton;from Rupert Allason MP (the author'Nigel West') andJohn Hannam MP;and from Christopher Andrew,Mrs I.D. Benzie-Morley, John Bulloch, the late Douglas Cleverdon,

John Green, Harry Chapman Pincher, and not least staff of theBritish American Tobacco Company who were in China before thewar, and also in England later. The book benefits from a number ofquotations both from public sources, for which I am grateful toHMSO and the BBC, and books, for which I thank the authors andpublishers whose names appear more fully in the bibliography.Finally and most important, I owe an inestimable debt to ColinHaycraft, my editor and publisher, without whose lasting encourage-lilGnt this book could not have been written.

ln view of the great difficulty now attached to the writing ofllodern British history and the legal implications that can be foundln cven the most serious matters of current affairs this century, it is

prhaps more than usually necessary to state that all the opinions inlhb book are my own and that I alone am responsible for thetErcarch and verification of the facts disclosed here.

Eleteril 198{f

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Plates

(between pages 86 and 87)

l. Sir Roger Hollis, Director-General of MI5 (National PortraitGallery).

2. D,N. Pritt at the People's Convention (The Revolution thatNever Was) (BBC Hulton Picture Library).'fhe Manifesto of the People's Convention (private collection).Beatrix Lehmann and J.B.S. Haldane on the platform of thePeople's Convention (BBC Hulton Picture Library).

5. A general view of delegates at the Convention (BBC HultonPicture Library).

6. Pamphlet by 'Frank Pitcairn', pseudonym of Claud Cockburn(private collection).A Sor.'iet radio communication centre (Hutchinson).Wartime Realpolitik Anthony Eden in discussion with IvanMaisky (Popperfoto).

9. Lord Inverchapel, Archibald Clark Kerr, wartime BritishAmbassador to Moscow.A meeting of the Executive Committee of the Communist Partyof Great Britain (Popperfoto).Tom Driberg and Guy Burgess in Moscow (Popperfoto).Guy Burgess in Moscow shortly before his death (Popperfoto).

Introduction

Veterans of the espionage world who were following the Spycatcher

trial in Australia - the British Government's last-ditch attempt to stoppublication of a book by one of their own retired MI5 officers,alleging that the Director-General of MI5, Sir Roger Hollis, hadhimself been a Communist sympathiser - must often have reflectedon the astonishing speed with which the scandal had developed. Onlyten years before there had been a sensation when allegationspublished in Andrew Boyle's The Clirnate of Treason had resulted in

' the unmasking of Sir Anthony Blunt. It showed that Blunt hadcarried on as a courtier, as Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, formore than a decade after MI5 had extracted a confession from himthat he had been a Soviet agent. The press, who had been followingthe story for more than a quarter of a century since the exposure ofthe atom spies and the defection of Burgess and Maclean, alwayscxpected that their belief in a high-level 'cover-up' would one day beproved true. Boyle's book and Blunt's disgrace might well have beenthe end of the story, a last brilliant exposition of treachery in highplaces that would finally lay to rest the spy story of the century. But itwas not to be. Boyle had only a single mention of Sir Roger Hollis -less than a line in the entire book - referring to him as the 'enigmatic'$ristant to the then Director-General of MI5. A decade later and this

' hconic aside would be multiplied into a new spy book industry, withrgmifications that led as far as the equity court in Australia whereBritain's top civil servant was pilloried by a youthful counsel with arobustly antipodean lack of reverence for so eminent a figure. Whathrd driven the great spy story on from the Blunt exposure? How hadMrs Thatcher's normally tough Government fallen into the trap ofrllowing the head of the British Civil Service, Sir Robert Armstrong,!o be publicly humiliated, a humiliation which touched the entireBritish pcople as it was broadcast around the world, while the bookItrelf' sold in millions of copies? Finally, what was the truth aboutHollis?

It is cleal' now, as wc shall see, that the explanation for theSpytntrfur rlebitcle is :rt root political, 'fhe political reality of what

Introduction

happened in Australia is obvious. No government would wish toscore an own-goal in such a public arena. Clearly there were politicalforces at work which the Government failed to see, and it will besuggested that it was these same forces that had created both theoriginal failure of the security services to catch the 'moles' in Britishpublic life and the book Spycatcher, with its predecessors, ChapmanPincher's Their Trade is Treachery and Too Secret Too lorzg. WhereasBoyle and others before him who had pioneered the frontiers ofespionage research were driven by the best instincts of investigativejournalism, Chapman Pincher and Peter Wright, the author ofSNrycatcher, were propelled by a profound belief in the justness oftheir charges against Hollis as coming from within the securityservices themselves. Disgruntled civil servants, frequently angry attheir diminishing pensions after a life of long service, had oftenappeared in Fleet Street with a story to tell. But these men weredifferent. They were able to reveal something at least as startling asthe first hint in 1968 that the head of MI6's anti-Soviet sectionhimself, Kim Philby, had been a Soviet agent; they showed soconvincingly that it had to be listened to, that not only was Hollissuspected of being a spy by his colleagues but a special committee,known as the Fluency Committee, was set up with members fromMI5 and M16 to investigate the matter of a soviet spy within MI5.Further, although this committee failed to_ pro_v9 Hollis's guilt, a laterenquiry was so convinced of the case against him that he was calledback from retirement to a formal interrogation.

The MI5 officer in charge of the overall investigation was PeterWright, and he was the one most deeply angry when Hollis clearedhimself. Wright was profoundly convinced not only of Hollis's guiltbut of the dangers that might exist through a network of agents stillsurviving within MI5 and other organisations who had beenprotected by him. It is an irony that if the information given later inthis book had been available to Wright he would probably have beenable to obtain a thorough and detailed account of crucial aspects ofmodern political history in Britain with the help of the personperhaps most qualified to give it, whether or not an admission ofguilt ac;companied the account. As it was, it is a tribute to hisdeterrnination, and to the intuition of publishers and journalists theworld over, thilt thc political reality has slowly emerged from the fogot'clisirrlirrnlilti(,n and lies pcnneating what has justly been called the'wil<let'ttess ot'tnirrols'- thc rnirrors being the evidence of defectors,tlisitrlirt'rttittiotr prrt out b)' llotlr sirlcs ancl false trails laid by manyt'rtttvint'ed ll1' paltill lnclr l:rtcr firuntl to bc urrtruc.

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Introduction 3

his technical expertise. His great triumphs were in the field ofsurveillance - 'bugging', to use the current expression - and incountering Soviet attempts to monitor our secret activities. Thisbackground made him an unsuitable choice for the essenriallypolitical task of interrogating Blunt, for example, which he did forhundreds of hours, and of being the chairman of the FluencyCommittee that investigated Hollis. Blunt once remarked to Wrightthat Wright did not realise what it had been like in the thirties, thetime of Spain and the fight against fascism. Despite Wright's sharpriposte that he knew quite well what the thirties meant, as he hadIived through them as one of a family in which the bread-winner wasunemployed, Bluntls perception was correct. As we shall see, adifficulty which has persisted to this day in undersranding modernBritish politics stems from the rapid decay in the thirties of thenormal democratic processes in the country. From 1931, with thecreation of a National Government when political debate in Europewas rising to fever pitch, there was no real formal opposition at all inthe House of Commons. With Hitler's rise to power and the outbreakof the Spanish Civil War the fiercest political views in Brirain wereeffectively driven underground. Towards the end of the decade theprocess had even begun to affect officers recruited into MI5. Theloyalty of new recruits, once taken for granted, broke down and thepolitical struggles throughout the world, including in Hollis's caseChina, were internalised.

The inability of many later commentators, including Wright, tocome to terms with English realpolitih ar rhar rime, and with rhecorollary of an internalised political consciousness in manysupposedly apolitical Government bodies, such as MI5, can be seenin the phrase 'Stalin's Englishmen'which was used to describe them,combined with a general abuse of them all - Blunt, Burgess,Maclean, Cairncross, Philby and many others - as spies and traitors.Shrewder commentators have remarked that it was unusual forSoviet intelligence to recruit or run spies who knew each other, andindeed one of the strongest arguments in favour of Philby afterBurgess had defected was that they had shared a house together, anunthinkable thing for any Soviet agent-runner to agree to. In factthese men were never spies in the conventional sense of the term.They were political activists in a country which had actually seen rhebirth of the Communist idea in the thought of the exiled Karl Marx.Marry of them saw themselves in that light, if not as potential leadersof a shadr:w revolutionary assernbly should a Soviet Britain actually€merge, Not the least disinformation about Guy Burgess pur out bythe authoritics in the flurry n{ier }ris defection was rhar he had

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Introduction

concealed his Marxist beliefs, and that he was thought of by hiscolleagues in the BBC and the Foreign Office as a typical democratwith left-wing leanings. In fact Burgess was an open Marxist-Leninist. He made this quite clear in the countless Inemoranda andposition papers that he prepared, especially in his later years in theForeign Office on the China question. The fact would have beenobvious to anyone who looked through the relevant Foreign OfficepaPers.

A central figure in the narrative that follows is Claud Cockburn. Inthe various interrogations of Hollis it rvas put to him that he had notdivr.rlged in his file his earlier friendship rvith Cockburn, althoughnormally obliged to do so, and that he kept Cockburn's file in his ownsafe throughout the war. Hollis dissembled, saying that before thewar it rvas not an inviolable rule to make such declarations and he wassurell' not the first to'pass'on such a technicality. Had Wright andthe others been in possession of all the facts about Cockburn, whichare exposed at length for the first time in this book, they wouldalmost certainly have broken dorvn Hollis's extreme reserve. Thepolitical events in Britain in which Cockburn was intimately involvedrvere of major importance. They did not stop at the real possibility ofrevolution in Britain at the time of the Nazi-Soviet pact. The factswere not widely reported in the national press at the time, butenough was known for any competent historian to establish the factsof MI5's position. Had Blunt and Hollis and the others beenconfronted by a competent historian, or at least bv someone with adetailed knowledge of modern politics, the facts r'vould surely haveemerged. Horvever, again, it is a tribute to Wright and others, such as

Chapman Pincher, that their determination and conviction wereenough to ensure that light would, in the end, be shed on these darkplaces in our recent history.

I began research for this book unrvittingly rvhile rvorking at theBBC's Written Archives Centre tracing unknown rvork by GeorgeOrwell and other authors. These had been lost to public sight fornearly half a centurl' through the exigencies of wartime filingsystems at the BBC. The discovery of the Onvell material involvednry cxarnining the BBC's records in a painstaking search throughevery da1''s output during the rvar to establish rvho had producedclch progranlrne. While tracing Orrvell programmes and scripts Ilrccittne ac<praitttcrl rvith the other main BBC producers. Foremostnnlong thcsc rvas (iu1'Rurgcss, At first I did not realise that this wasthe nurrrc (lrr1'llrrrgcss rvlro latcr rvorked in the Foreign Office andelel'et'tetl lo Rttssia, lirr tlrc pirrtrrt'c rvhich appcarcd of'hinr rvas so atorlelr witlt tlurt rrnullll'tlt'arvrr, ['ll lirrrrr lrcirrg l slipshorl idle alcoholic

Introduction 5

who carried his problems rvith him wherever he went, Burgess wasclearly one of the most hard-working and reliable producers theBBC had, and exercised considerable power through the unusualwartime tasks that were given him. Much new information about hiscareer in the BBC before the war and about the highly secret JointBroadcasting Committee he also worked for was presented in mybook Truth Betrayed: Radio and Politics between the Wars (1987). In PartTwo of the present book further full information about his wartimeand post-rvar duties will be given. These discoveries threw light alsoon the world of Philby and others. For example, it has alrvays beensaid that Aileen Philby had nothing to do with Burgess, that shedisliked him and knew little or nothing of his warrime connecrionwith her husband. Yet here was clear evidence that she had workedfor Burgess at the BBC, preparing programmes about her lvork oncommunitl kitchens in London during the Blitz. In fact she rvas partof Burgess's circle, as were many others, and there was nothing at all'conspiratorial'in their meetings either at work or socially.

The background reading for Truth Betrayed naturally embraced allthe books that mentioned Burgess and his circle. Besides the worksalready noted by Andrer,v Boyle and Chapman Pincher, theyincluded works by Nigel West (alias Rupert Allason, MP: no relationto the present writer) on MI5 and MI6, and by John Fisher andPhilip Knightley. There had also begun to appear books with anacademic background such as those by Christopher Andrerv andAnthony Glees. The Spycalcher tial proved a watershed for thesepublications, since they were all placed before the court in Australiaand examined in detail. A most interesting book by one of theleading counsel in the trial, Malcolm Turnbull, served as a finalpostscript. After reading all that had been published I realised thatfrom the days of the Fluency Committee there had been noknowledge of material contained either in the BBC's Archives or inpapers in the Foreign Office and elsewhere which in the course oftime, with the operation of the thirty-year rule, have now beentransferred to the Public Record Office at Kerv. It was thisunderstanding which led me to further detailed research and to thewriting of the book here published.

Trying to find the truth about a person, the writing of biography,il one of the most difficult of literary tasks. In Roger Hollis's case it isimmense, if'not in fact irnpossible. Not only was much of his life livedin shaclow, but it was an irnplied part of it that he rvould remainononyrnous, nnd that the very cxistcnce of the departrnent of rvhichhe was hcad would stay secret, its archives llevel' to bc rclcascd cvcrrto ittt olliciitl ltistot'iiur, lt rnrrst lrc rlrrite r:lctl thcle firrc tlr:rt tlris lxxrk

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is not intended as a biography. Only the first part of it takes a

biographical form. Subtitled 'The Real World', it deals with his life,with a glance at his forebears, up to the time hejoined the service laterknown as MI5. This is followed by a second part, 'The World ofSpies', in which he is seen through the mirror of the lives of agentsand Communist Party members who would have formed the subjectof his official duties. Sometimes we find his name actually mentionedin a document. He then steps through the looking-glass as a realperson again. But mostly we are dealing with matters which would infact have occupied him on a day-to-day basis, even examining theactual file on the suppression of the Dai\ Worher that Hollis wouldhave seen, In the third and final part, 'The Wilderness of Mirrors',the cases for and against Hollis put by Anthony Glees and ChapmanPincher (in preference to Spycatcher which in many instances is less

reliable factually) are examined in the light of the plethora of booksand articles, defectors' allegations and political commentaries thatwere presented in that watershed trial in Australia.

There can be no final analysis of the Hollis case until the records ofthe secret bodies involved are released. At present, though MI5 is tobe placed on a statutory footing for the first time, there appear to beno plans for its papers to go to the Public Record Office, or even tobe made available in a vetted form, as happens at the BBC Archivesor the FBI Archives in Washington. Glasnost is unlikely to extend as

far as an uncurtaining of the windows in the KGB Archives. Perhapsthis is for the best, and it may be true, as Eliot said, that mankindcannot take too much reality.- But perhaps the process of glasnosl is anecho of the process which led the British Government to a court ofequity in one of her former colonies and of which this book, anattempt to establish the truth about Hollis and the political world hebecame involved in, is also a part. A joint history of MI5 and the KGBcentred on the world of Spycatcher will have to wait for an abidingworld peace, the hope for which is, as yet, hardly a glimmer on a spysatellite's monitor.

Part One

The Real World

I

West Country Born

Roger Hollis was born on 2 December 1905 at Wells in Somerser, aplace with which he was associated to the end of his life, becoming aGovernor of Wells Cathedral School after he retired. At the time hisfather, the Rev. George Hollis, was Vice-Principal of WellsTheological College, having arrived rhere as chaplain in 1895. InlB98 George Hollis married Mary Margarer Church, daughter ofC.M. Church, a canon of Wells. They had four sons, of whom Rogerwas the third. Roger's eldest brother, Arthur, became Bishop inMadras. The next, Christopher, who was converted to Catholicism atOxford, became the well-known author, publisher and ConservativeMP for Devizes. He left various accounts of life in the Hollis home atWells, notably in his two volumes of autobiography. Not surprisinglythe atmosphere was ecclesiastical. 'My family connections wereentirely clerical... I grew up not merely as a clergyman's son, but in acleric-inhabited society, a sort of Trollopean world.' It was a worldthat must have seemed even more Trollopean to his younger brotherRoger.

Early in Roger's life, in 1909, there was a sharp break in thefamily's untroubled existence within the calm ambience of WellsCathedral when his father was appoinred curate of the parish ofArmley in Leeds. The contrast between the two worlds was great,and Christopher remarked on the austerity of life for a vicar in alarge poor parish with four young children to bring up on a sripendof f400 a year. Nor were the harsher realities of Edwardian tifeabsent from the parish, for it contained the Leeds hanging gaol,which the vicar had to attend.

The transfcrrmation from Wells to Leeds may have been a shock,but it was rnercifully brief. In l9l3 the family moved ro their nextparish, at Hcadingly, where H<lllis senior was vicar through the waryears, In l{)l9 he returned to Wells Theological College as Principal,bccrrtnirrg llishop of 'launton, with his residence in Wells, where he

10 Part One: The RealWorld

remained until his death in 1944.The brief stay in Leeds left its mark on the Hollis children, who

began their educational career at Leeds Grammar School. The eldest

soi, Arthur, went from there to university, while Christopher moved

in t91l to Summerfields preparatory school before going to Eton'Roger seems to have begun there, but to have stayed only briefly,pro-ceeding to Clifton College in Bristol. The general impact ofLeeds ott the children can be seen from the memory recounted byChristopher nearly half a century later. And there were echoes in the

industrial life around them of struggles of earlier generations ofHollises. Although the family lived in an entirely clerical world, bothRoger's paternaf and maternal forebears had established the familyforiuneithrough business. His paternal grandfather, Henry WilliamHollis, had been managing director of the Weardale Iron and Coal

Company, and aJustice of the Peace; his maternal great-grandfatherwas john Dearman Church, a Lisbon merchant of Cork Quakerrto.( whose son, C.M. Church, was born in Lisbon and spent muchof his early life on the continent before ending up at Wells.

That the tone of family life in the Hollis household in wells was

ecclesiastical rather than in any degree political is clear fromChristopher's unequivocal statement: 'There was no deep interest inpurty politics in my family, and no member of it on either side who,

io fir as I am aware, had ever dreamed of playing any part inpolitics. But all my father's family had, I fancy, always been mildlyconservative - though he himself after the war was to become mildlyliberal and to second the nomination of the Liberal candidate atWells in 1923.' For a clergyman to second the nomination of a

Liberal candidate before the war would have been indicative ofstrong political conciousness, particularly in a place such as Wells;butby 1925 the Labour party had come to the fore as the'left'oppositionand the Rev. GeorgeHollis's action would have indicated only a slightdeparture. The possible origin of this drift towards liberalism can be

found in his wife's early interest in politics, derived from hergreat-uncle R.W. Church, the famous Dean of St. Paul's and intimatefriend of Gladstone.

The shift of political consensus in an unpolitical family is always

dif ficult to follow. Indeed the art of politics in Britain is to chart such

changes and act on them. christopher was aware of this when he

wrotJ his autobiography. He had to explain how he had become

activety interestcd in political questions. A fortiori the same question^

f'ar:en thore who suspect Rr.rger Hollis of being that most profound ofnll politlcal lnimali, a dedicated secret agent of a foLelfn power.(lhiittopher Holli* annlyses only his maternal family's political

1. West Country Born 11

history but makes a convincing case for a slow move from one view ofpolitical personalities to another. His grandfather, the canon ofWells, had changed to Conservatism largely because he felt thatGladstone had betrayed General Gordon. This trend continuedwhen a younger brother of the family, after whom Christopher wasnamed, volunteered for service in the Boer War and was killed. Thestrong Liberal line at the time was close to that of the 'pro-Boers', anda family who had experienced such a loss would certainly have beenconfirmed in a move towards Conservative views. Further, in laterlife Roger's mother used to recall with amusement how stronglypro-Liberal she had been. Christopher quotes her once asremembering saying when she visited a friend's house and wasshocked to find in the hall a portrait of Disraeli: 'I can't imagine howyou can bear to sleep in a house that contains that man's picture.'What brought the family back to Liberalism after the war is not clear,but, at the very least, it is obvious that the family was not a politicalhot-bed;there was no grounding here for an acute political mind of afar-left bent.

Roger and his elder brothers went through their school careerswithout difficulty. Clifton, which Roger attended, no doubt gave hima more interesting view of the world than his elder brothers hadgained. The college's excellent name had been established underPercival, its first head, along the lines of Rugby where Percival hadbegun his career. But it soon acquired a character of its own. Thiswas largely because it had been created for the children of citizens ofBristol, a long-established merchant city, and took day boys as well as

boarders. The school was situated on the downs which throughoutthe nineteenth century had been a meeting place similar to HydePark in London. During Roger's time fringe-left demonstrationsabounded, including some by followers of Conrad Noel, Vicar ofThaxted, who had strong Communist sympathies and whose symbolwas a cross with a hammer and sickle on it. Right-wing and left-winggroups frequently clashed. Clifton boys probably would never havebecome involved in these conflicts. But they would have known aboutthem and about the political life in the city. Among old boys of thecollege were the Laski brothers. One of them, Harold, became aleading figure in the Labour movement. The other, Neville, whomwe shall meet later as a near neighbour of Roger's in Oxford, becameajudge.

The Hollis brothers all arrived at Oxford as promisingundergraduates despite their different backgrounds. Arthur went toTrinity as a scholar, interrupting his life there with a period in theArrny fi'orn l9ltl to l9l9 ancl going on to take a Second in Classical

t2 Part One: The RealWorld 1. West Country Born 13

Monday in December 1924 Roger Hollis was swept up in one ofWaugh's and Cockburn's sagas: 'I had a dinner party of Claud,Elmley, Terence, Roger Hollis and a poor drunk called IVfacgregor. Iarrived quite blind after a great number of cocktails at the Georgewith Claud. Eventually ... Claud, Roger Hollis and I went off on apub-crawl which after sundry indecorous adventures ended up at theHypocrites where another blind was going on.' Unfortunately forRoger, Waugh's drinking sprees were not confined to Oxford, andthere is a lurid account of one much closer to home. On a Tuesday inApril 1926 Waugh turned up at Wells. His diary graphically conveysthe results: 'Rather an amusing afternoon at Wells. Roger Hollis andI lunched at the Swan and drank champagne and brandy mixed.After a time we were turned out. There was a market at FarrintonGurney. It was odd that we were not killed going there. After a timethe man in that pub refused us drinks. I said I was Hobhouse ofCastle Cary and that I would have him out of the pub in a month andhe believed me and gave us heaps more drink.'

The effect of all this on Hollis's family when news of it reachedthem, as it must have done immediatel|, may be imagined. It hasbeen said that Hollis actually left home ai about this tim6, saying thathe could not live with the religious atmosphere there. This candidrecollection of Evelyn Waugh's suggests that there may well havebeen another side to the break. However, it is not unheard of for ayounger son of an eminently respectable family to go off the rails atuniversity. Such happenings are commonplace, and the spirit of thetime exaggerated the tendency for unconventional behaviour afterthe trauma of the most terrible war in history. But it is not the kind ofbehaviour that is associated with political revolt, particularly not withrevolt based on complex socio-economic theories of the sortespoused by Marx and Lenin.

Indeed, in a world where Belloc and Chesterton were venerated,the course followed by Waugh and Christopher Hollis, the path toRome, would have been seen as a more likely result of such lapses, iftheir moral being was once engaged. Any political consciousnesswould more likely be of a right-wing, or overtly fascist, colouringthan the opposite. As a direct example, Christopher was receivedinto the Catholic Church while still at Oxford by Monsignor A.S.Barnes. Barnes's cousin, whom Barnes had also received into thechurch, was .fames Strachey Barnes, one of the foremost Englishfascists, a personal friend of Mussolini who chose to remain in Italythroughout the war. This of course was later, and there was neverany hint of'f ascism in Christopher Hollis's circle; but equally it wouldbc the last placc to krok for any kind of Communist tendency. Yet it is

Moderations in 1920 but a First in Greats in 1922. He returned to

Oxford in 1926 to become for five years Chaplain and Lecturer inTheology at Hertford, Evelyn waugh's old college. christopher wentas a Biackenbury scholar from Eton to Balliol, where he had a

successful career, though with a social rather than an academic slant.

He roured the world with the Oxford Union Debating Society, goingfrom America to New Zealand and Australia and stopping off on the

way back in Burma, where he looked up his -old Eton friend EricBlair, later the famous writer George Orwell but then a ratherunconventional officer in the Indian Imperial Police'

Christopher's circle at the time is important for an understandingof the Oxiord that Roger found when he came up, because it was to

this group rather than to any friends of his eldest brother that he

seem"s to have turned. A central figure was Christopher's lifelongfriend Evelyn Waugh, who was also to convert later to Catholicism.Waugh's diary, published in 1976, provides an invaluable key.to the

geneiation *hiitt has been extensively chronicled both in literaryiremoirs and in fiction. Harold Acton was prominent. His position is

described admirably by Michael Davie in the introduction to his

edition of Waugh's'diaries: 'Harold Acton had been brought up insplendour atL; Pietra, a villa overlookin_g Florence, and seemed to

his Oxford contemporaries, by reason of his international interests

and connections, to be years ahead of any other undergraduate inthe University., one of Acton's main passions,, of considerableinterest in view of Roger Hollis's life after Oxford, was China' Heobtained Chinese food when that was difficult and unusual, and even

saw artractions in Chinese clothing. His interest led him, finally, to go

to China, where he lived until the outbreak of war.China featured in the background of a number of people at

oxford ar the time, notably waugh's cousin claud cockburn.Cockburn had been born in Peking, where his father, universallyknown as 'Chinese Harry', had been a secretary at the BritishLegation. It is clear from waugh's diary that claud cockburn,Chiistopher Hollis, Roger Hollis and Evelyn Waugh were constant

drinking companions during Roger's time at Oxford.Rogei Holfis went up ro-Worcester College from Clifton with a

Classiial exhibition, bui took what was then the somewhat unusualcourse of reading English rather than Greats. He plunged into the

so(ial whirl in wliich Christopher flourished and joined the circle ofhir brother's lriends. There are two classic accounts in Waugh's diaryof'their. drinkirrg sessions, These were of a kind that g,enerations ofunclet.grutluutes tnust have known, though few wouldfind.record ofIt lrr eiiariet publinhecl within the lif'etime <tf those involved. One

T4 Part One: The RealWorld 1. West Country Born 15

person's chances in later life. As Christopher Hollis remarked: 'I donot think I exaggerate when I say that the greater number ofundergraduates who have won intellectual success in after-life -Evelyn Waugh, Alan Pryce-Jones, John Betjeman, Tony Bushell andothers - all went down without degrees.' Roger Hollis was in goodcompany.

The explanation for the apparent contradiction between academicfailure and later worldly success among so many was to be found, ofcourse, in the fact that besides drinking and socialising Waugh andhis friends were actively involved in literary activities and were also,many of them, from literary or publishing families. The literarysalons in London and the intellectual magazines, unlike today's, werea genuine forum for intellectual thought and evolution, and they hadtheir echo in Oxford. Harold Acton started a university magazine,Oxford Broorn; Graham Greene edited Oxford Outlook; Waugh wrotefor the more established lsis and Cherwell; Christopher Hollis himselfedited Chenttell when it had a new owner and a brief access of funds;and there were many others in the same line. It was a naturalprogression for Waugh and the rest to go on to London and write,and their views on life were so powerful that they acquired con-siderable influence.

The more serious overtones to the thinking of Evelyn Waugh,Christopher Hollis and the others can be seen in the circumstance oftheir conversion to Roman Catholicism, which in some ways was anecho of the resolution of the spiritual crisis of the Oxford Movementa century before. The absence of a specifically political dimension,the focus on literary and aesthetic concerns, no doubt accounts forthe perhaps backward-looking response: only ten years later theslump and the emergence of German National Socialism underAdolf Hitler produced among a Cambridge generation a politicalresponse that looked consciously to the future. That the politicalresponse in the Cambridge movement still had a spiritual or moralbasis and can also be seen as an echo of the conflicts of thenineteenth-century Oxford Movement despite the change indirection from right to left is shown by the fact that so many of theleaders, from Anthony Blunt downwards, were children ofclergymen, or from particularly orthodox religious households.While their dedication to Communism could be seen at one level as

the complete antithesis of the religious beliefs implicit in theirbackground, it often also showed a deep-seated and fervently heldbelief in certain moral values which they felt to be lacking in theChurch as they saw it in their own surroundings. While Hollis wouldno clorrbt havc firund the opinions o1' such people congenial in

in this phase of Roger Hollis's life that we should seek the most

obvious^ roots of "

-lif.lottg commitment to Communism, if the

experience of the cambridge communists is any.gulde, was there

u.ry Co-rnunist movemeni at all to be found in Oxford in the

twenties, and was Roger Hollis in any way connected-with it? From

evidence which has r-ecently come to light in Australia the answer

would appear to be yes.Communism in dxford was never as strong as at the other ancient

seat of learning, but it did exist. During the first war Rajani Palme

Dutt, rhrough6ut his life one of the foremost members of the

communist "Party of Great Britain, had been expelled. from the

University for his political activities. In the early twenties a small

gnoup of bommunist Party members were recruited. They were fourin number and the leader was a Rhodes scholar from Australia,

P.R. Stephensen. when MI5, who discovered the-group at the time,

,.port.d the matter to the College authorities, there was a serious

diicussion as to whether Stephensen should be sent down' It was the

correspondence on this which came to light in the AustralianArchives, as a result, ironically, of the intense interest in such matters

caused by the Spycatcher trial. The MI5 document there referred to

four members; [*o of the others were close friends of Roger Hollis's.

one, a famous author, is still alive; the other was claud cockburn.The author concerned had candidly remarked that he joined inorder to get a free ticket to Moscow for a holiday; cockburn'sinvolvemeit was far more serious, and his career as a Communistagent was to dog his friend Roger Hollis for the rest of his life, as we

sfiail see. The o-ther Oxford Communist whom Hollis knew at this

time was Tom Driberg, recruited into the Party while still at Lancingwhere he was " coite-porary, and fellow sacristan, of Evelyn

Waugh. Maxwell Knight, whom we shall meet again, had arrangedthis {uite extraordiniry coup, urging Driberg to. join the BrightonCommunist party, from whbnce he

-moved to the Oxford branch

when he *.t t .rp. It was no doubt the information he gave to Knightthat establishedihat Cockburn was a member of the Party, and also,

no doubt, that Hollis was nor, despite his close friendship withCockburn.

Roger Hollis came down from oxford in his second year withouttakin! a degree. Today this would inrylf failure. No great career

woul; bc 6p.tt in any top-grade Government or commercial

organiration, let alone the chinie of becoming the Director-Generalol'"perhapr the most pr€stigious Government department of all.

Amlng rfie Waugh $et in rhJl920s, however, going down.without a

tlegree"war atnrort the thing to do, an<l it did not noticeably affect a

l6 Part One: The RealWorld

middle life, as we shall see, this was not a Path he followed at Oxfordwhere he was simply in reaction against his family. Rather he seems

to have formed foi himself an ambition which had within it echoes ofmany if not all of the interests of those about him: he would combinea journey to China with the journalistic activities of his friend ClaudCbckburn by going there and working on a magazine. Throrrg! a

family connection he even found a newspaper in Hong Kong thatwas willing to give him a start. This was one step ahead of theambitions bf tne average Oxford litt6rateur who had gone downwithout a degree, and it suggests that Roger, unlike Christopher, haddecided not to look backwards, go over to Rome and seek a literary,a-political life but to take his future into his own hands.

There seems 'little doubt that Cockburn's influence was strong

here. Cockburn had become involved in journalistic work at Oxford,but it had been journalism of a political rather than a literary kind.His father, 'Chinese Harry', had come out of retirement on his

return from China and obtained a quasi-diplomatic position inBudapest. This was the world that Cockburn thrived in' Waughdescribed him in his autobiography on their first meeting: 'I met a

tall spectacled young man with the air of Budapest rather thanBerkhamsted [Cockburn's school] ... Claud was already captivated by

the absurdities of Central European Affairs.' His interests andforceful personality seem to have had a considerable hold over RogerHollis, and whe.r the three of them went out on their great alcoholicadventures through Oxford it seems to have been Cockburn's view ofthe world, with its political'middle European'aspects, coupled withstories of China and the opportunities it afforded that swayed him,rather than Evelyn Waugh's.

In sober moments, few though they may have been, Cockburn mayhave explained why he had joined the Communist Party. Waugh'sreferenCe to Cockburn's having already been 'captivated'by CentralEuropean affairs could well be a coded reference to his knowledgethat Cockburn had joined the Party, and in later years Waughhabitually referred to Cockburn as his 'Communist cousin'.Speculation on the question when so few people are involved is

pbrhaps unnecessary, and too redolent of the kind of thinking thathas surrounded the Cambridge Communists; but, as we shallcliscover when we examine Cockburn's later activities and the close

pnrt played by Roger Hollis in them when he was with MI5, a close

pe rnortalconnectittn, with political overtones, was established.

2

China Days

Hollis's decision to go to China was not taken lightly and he persistedin his aim against family opposition. Their most effective ploy was torefuse finance for the journey. This would have been sufficient todeter most people of his background. The 1920s may have seen thefinal flourishing of the globe-trotting days of the sons of Empire, butto go abroad, especially to somewhere as remote as China, withoutthe backing of an institution of some kind - whether the diplomaticservice, a large company, or even for the religious, a missionarysociety - was a difficult undertaking. Once he arrived, withoutbacking or a place, Hollis's social position would be as ambiguous as itwould be today, unless he had ample private means, like his friendHarold Acton. Clearly he did not.

Undeterred, Hollis took a job with a bank in the city and set aboutsaving the money he needed. In a year he had the funds requiredand his family had obtained for him his introduction to thenewspaper in Hong Kong. It was not the career they would havewanted for him, perhaps, but it was what he was intent on doing.And there was always the possibility that he would follow in thefootsteps of another famous Old Cliftonian, Sir Francis Younghus-band, the journalist and explorer who had first travelled the inlandroute from China to India. This model for Hollis's ambition might,in fact, seem more convincing than the immediate example of ClaudCockburn, were it not for the fact that Hollis was so clearly in entirerevolt against his background. Hollis no doubt drew consolationfrom the thought that when he set out for China his fellow studentsat Oxford would just have graduated and would be looking forsimilar positions in the London world, with less chance of success andnarrower horizons. He had the satisfaction of being one step aheadand fulfilling an ambition which he had formed at Oxford throughhis own eflirrts. The fact that Cockburn had followed an exactlysirrrilar course, gcttinlf into.journalism in Germany, and eventually

f. -.,,--.--,J---..

t7

18 Part One: The Real World

on to The Times, suggests again the origin of his plan. Those who havesuspected Hollis of being a Soviet agent seem to have been unawareof Cockburn's membership of the Communist Party at Oxford. Ifthey had been, the exactly similar path followed by Cockburn andHollis would have suggested irresistibly to them that both were actingunder instruction - implausibly in Hollis's case.

In the popular accounts of Hollis's time in China and his reasonsfor going, all written as a result of the leaked knowledge of theFluency Committee enquiry, there has been only one serious attemptto describe the China that Hollis would have found when he gotthere: Chapman Pincher's Too Secret Too Long.If the various leakedaccounts of Hollis's interrogation by the Committee are accurate hemust have had great difficulty in restraining himself at theignorance, manifested later by Peter Wright in Spycatcher, of his timeat Oxford, the general atmosphere there and the political realities ofthe inter-war period in China. There were many books in print in the1960s which could have served as an introduction to intelligentdiscussion about what was the most complex political situation of all,which finally resulted in victory for the Chinese Communists underMao Tse Tung. Some of them were written by a contemporary ofHollis's at Clifton, C.P. Fitzgerald, who had become so interested inChina that he had spent most of his life there, finally leaving tobecome an academic authority on China in Australia. His collegefriend Harold Acton had even written an amusing satirical novel onChina, Ponies and Peonies,after he returned to England. Any of these,augmented by Hollis's own writing on China, which we shall examinein the next chapter, would have given his interrogators a key to thepolitical reality of what was happening there and to why he becamesuch a devoted admirer of China and such a passionate opponent ofJapan. What is even more puzzling is that they do not appear to haveconsulted Foreign Office documents clearly listed in the ForeignOffice's excellent indexes. These indexes contain many references tothe firm for which Hollis worked when he was in China and, in lateryears, to position papers on the country by Guy Burgess, some of themost important of which we shall look at later. Burgess in fact hadbeen interested in China all his life, and it is astonishing that noconnection was made with Hollis's own interest at the time of hisinterrogation,

Harold Actott has remarked that his reasons for going to Chinawere largely connected with the beauty of Chinese art and that hecouldn't believe thlt ltoger Hollis was interested in that. Indeed the(lhirrl ratirisccl l)y A(:ton itt his novel is not thc China to which Hollistuttucltetl hinrrell'l but it is wortlt looking at bricfly bccause, fbr

2. China Days 19

countless visitors at the tirne, it was the only visible face of expatriateChina. It was the world of The Last Emperor, when treasures from thepalaces of the deposed Manchu dynasty were pouring onto themarket and the wealthy spent their time looking for costly jade,antique robes and jewelry, and the more knowledgeable sought outfragile porcelain from early dynasties. The main stopping place foranyone coming to Peking for the first time was the Grand Hotel dePeking which included an antique shop on the third floor, run by anAmerican, Helen Burton, which was a mecca for serious collectors.The magnificent jewel-encrusted visitors' book has survived andprovides a vivid picture, with photographs and illustrations as well assignatures, of her world. Occasional British visitors - Bernard Shawand his wife, Osbert Sitwell - rub shoulders with innumerableAmericans, from the Vanderbilts downwards. Her own circleincluded the etcher Thomas Sandforth who had a studio in Peking,the mystery writer Vincent Starrett, the film-star Anna May Wong,and many other painters and sculptors. It is difficult not to seespecific parallels between Acton's satire and the world of HelenBurton - a world which, despite her acquaintance with Edgar Snow,had nothing whatever to do with politics.

Hollis arrived in Hong Kong in l92B and started work as ajournalist. However, he soon found more stable employment. Thismay be seen to parallel moves by all the successful'moles'to disguisetheir political allegiances by going into overtly 'right-wing' or highlyconventional prestigious occupations. Thus Philby and Cockburnboth went on to The Tirnes, and Burgess joined the Anglo-Germanfellowship before going to the BBC. In Hollis's case, however, therewere undoubtedly more prosaic reasons. He was very short of funds,having underestimated the cost of his trip; he could easily haveslipped into the bohemian expatriate world which Acton satirised -looking either towards the aesthete's paradise that Acton wascreating for himself, or to the more worldly, and often lucrative,circle of private dealers in antiques, with occasional journalism tokeep the wolf from the door if all else failed. Many lived just this life,but Hollis, with the memory of his lapses in Oxford an immediatecaution, determined to climb back onto the rails. He landed afull-time job with the British American Tobacco Company, who werein business in China on a large scale, both in their own name andunder the Chinese title The Chi Tung Tobacco Company. Holliswould first have heard of BAT at Oxford where they regularlyrecruited graduate staff. Graham Greene, a friend of Cockburn's atthe time, had actually taken up an offer of a post in China with BATafie r an intcrview with a IIAT director, Archibald Rose, although he

2l20 Part The RealWorld 2. China Days

were political, involving the Comintern, may have been a reason, inaddition to illness, why Hollis and some of his colleagues left China inmid-1936.

Besides external problems with Russia and Japan there was alwaysthe internal problem of the civil war, or wars. A situation of greatcomplexity was liable to lead to suspension of trading activity, or eventhe kidnapping of employees, r,vho could be held ro ransom. Thecentral conflict was between the Chinese Government and theCommunist Party, lvhich even then was under the leadership of MaoTse Tung. At the end of Hollis's time in China Chiang Kai Shekmade an agreement with the Communists in his struggle against theJapanese, and this made things even more difficult for BAT, whichhad for long been conscious of the dangers of Bolshevism. As early as1930, Archibald Rose had submitted a paper ro the Foreign Officeon behalf of the company entitled The Menace of the Rise and Spread ofCorntnunism during the Ciail War. His foreboding had specialapplication to BAT, particularly in Mukden, as we shall see.

Not all firms took a jaundiced view of Japan's acriviry inManchukuo, or subscribed to the popular, largely left-inspired,opinion that Japan was organising a reign of terror. After theestablishment of Manchukuo there had been an immediatetransformation of the economic situation. Railways expanded attwice the rate they did in China itself. An aurhoriry on Manchuria,F.C. Jones, wrote: '... the Japanese built up in Manchuria anindustrial potential far ahead of anything which existed elsewhere inEastern Asia excluding Japan and the USSR.' As Hollis himself waslater to remark in London: '... capital and capital goods will beneeded in quantities far beyond the capacity of Japan alone, andincreased purchasing power will create a demand for high gradegoods which only foreign manufacturers can supply.' Delegations ofBritish businessmen visited Manchukuo, and many sought a way outof Britain's difficulties in the Far East by re-establishing the goodrelations which had existed with Japan earlier in the century whenshe had been Britain's valued ally. Foremosr among those supportingthese moves was the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, NevilleChamberlain. It was to cause Chamberlain some difficulty at home,as one astute observer has remarked:

(llranrberlaiu argued that a friendly arrangement with Japan could pro-vide tlre solution of commercial difficulties and, in the friendlier atmo-splrere (:l'eated, Britain arrd .fapan ntight arrive at some understandingovet naval nlattels..,'I'his approac:h would have ignored China's nationalfeelirrg nrr<l was likely to have politir:al repercursions at home and abroadu'hi<'lr ( llrirrrrbellirirr <'ltost, to igrrolc or' llcllraps was prepar.ed to risk,

gave it up after ten days. Hollis clearly came from a backgroundEef *orta have recognised and, although he had no degree, he

at least made the.iouiney to China, off his own bat, which was

very thing that put Greene and others like him off..def ,,iur one of the biggest British concerns in China' But the

rurmoil and upheaval of Chinese politics, which had remainedunresolved sinie the overthrow of the last Imperial dynasty, were

such that they had seriously discussed with the British Governmentthe possibility of leaving China altogether. A decision had been taken

^goi.r*t this drastic step a year before Hollis joined and they traded

vEry profitably afterwirds, but the situation 1-lght explain.w.hf thefwere'prepared to take on someone like Hollis on a local basis as

'.ron-.bu..tanted' staff rather than through the usual formalrecruitment systems originating in the United Kingdom'

BAT's diffrculties were many. Foremost among them were

financial difficulties. The currency was unstable and was to remain so

until the brief period following the Leith-Ross mission in 1936. Anadditional complication was that China was on the silver not the goldstandard, and

-American actions in the silver market had caused

china great difficulties; even BAT had found itself involved inlong-ruirning legal battles with the American Government,accJrding to papers in the Foreign Office archives. The next most

serious diffidlti, but more worrying on a day-to-day.basis,-was the

continuing political upheaval. In 1929 here had been bitter clashes innorth Chin; between the Chinese and Sovidt forces, and the Chinese

Eastern Railway, owned and run by Russia, was attacked' Thisrailway ran through Manchuria and connected Vladivostock with the

Trans-Siberian Riilway, on which Hollis was Iater to travel on his

brief visit home to England on his four-yearly leave. In l93l the

Japanese invaded Mairchuria and set up the- puppet state of"Minchukuo

under the deposed Chinese Emperor Pu Yi.

Japan's arrival on the chinese mainland transformed the tradingpiritiorr, and BAT was threatened with the loss of a considerablepart of its trade in Manchukuo to cheaper Japanese produce andjapan'r natural tendency to monopolise her trade wherever she

c"irta. Hollis, in a letter to his family, said: 'As for the Japanese,they'll move us all out of North China unless something is done to

stop them.' Nevertheless BAT carried on trading, even expanding,acriuiring land at Mukden in Manchukuo, where it already had a

laciory, [his tirne to set up a printing works. No doubt this was an

ntternpt at tliversific.ltion, and at reduciq; its dependency on whatw€re ;l'f'ecivety,f apanese kral suppliers, BAT's Mukden operationswe rtl to ,,aur" it'a grent cleat ol' trouble , and these difficulties which

thathadthe

{*&

22 Part One: The RealWorld'

The repercussions referred to took the form in Britain of vigorousprotest at Japan's actions. Students and others were encouraged byCommunist front organisations to walk the streets with placardsurging the public to boycott Japanese goods and so on. The centralpurpose of these moves was to prevent at all costs a powerful Japanappearing on Soviet Russia's far-eastern border, but this was

carefully concealed beneath a cloak of fighting 'fascism', supposedlythe driving intellectual force in Japan, as well as Italy, Germany andlatterly Spain.

It is clear from Hollis's letters to his family published by the maindefender of his reputation, Anthony Glees, that Hollis took astrongly anti-Japanese line. In his later years in China this wouldquite certainly have implied also a pro-Communist line. Howeverannoyed BAT might have been about their difficulties inManchukuo, that would not have been a road they would havetravelled. They had particular reason to be annoyed with theCommunist Party at this time, for reasons alluded to before, whichwe shall look at now more closely.

The particular difficulty experienced by BAT and all other Britishtrading houses in China was that they themselves were the maintarget for Communist infiltration. The Chinese Communist Partyhad realised early on that Chinese working for British companiescould travel widely and freely and were immune to supervision byany local gendarmerie, as the police were called. They could alwaysclaim, if they were stopped for any reason, that they were oncompany business, and they knew that foreign companies in Chinawere protected. The authorities, of whatever complexion - Chinese'

Japanese or Manchurian - were aware of this and kept a carefulwatch for an opportunity to confirm their suspicions. Even theBritish diplomatic service was not immune to this kind ofsupervision; in 1931 an employee at the British consulate at Chefoowas accused of having Communist connections.

Early in 1936 BAT was given a hint that something was amiss whenthe authorities denounced H.V. Tiencken, the head of BAT inManchukuo, as President of the Manchurian Communist Party. Thecharge was dismissed as absurd, particularly as only a few weeksbefore an Irish Presbyterian Misssionary had been accused ofholding the same post. However, in April 1936 the authorities movedagain, ihis time without warning, to arrest fourteen BAT employeeson the grounds of working for the Comintern' These includedBA'I'S principal sales agent in Mukden and his general manager.'t'he Diiectorr of BAT assumed irnmediately, as did the British

2. China Days 2g

authorities, that this was simply brigandry of a kind well known inchina, particularly as a considerable sum of money had also beentaken and the manager had apparently been obliged ro wrire out acheque for $14,000 soon after his arrest. Holiever, when theycomplained formally, the chief of the Mukden gendarmerieimmediately ap-peared and gave full assurances that the iharges weregenuine, that the prisoners would not be ill-treated, as ail t6o oftenhappened, and that all money seized would be returned as soon asthe case was closed. BAT would then be informed of the result of theinvestigations.

Arrests of this kind presented acure difficulties for local Britishdiplomats, as they still do today. while the relatives of those detainedand their employers understandably want immediate action, theyhave to consider the possibility that there may be something in thecharge, that the civil authorities may have acted correctly, and thatany precipitate action could rebound on innocent third parties. TheBritish consul-General in Peking, p.D. Butler, wrore toih. ForeignOffice qyilg the-background to the arrests: 'It is possible, thou[hnot established, that the arrests may be conqected with that oial^ewish photographer named Josephus [sic] who was accused earry inApril of acting as a spy for the former soviet consul-General.Forty-eight hours afterbeing taken into cusrody he died, allegedly byhis own hand.' Another colleague wrote: ,The local Japaneseauthorities appear to be genuinely convinced that muny .i.ploy..tof foreign - particularly British - institutions have been involved incommunistic activities. when the suppression of communism is inquesti^on.the-averageJapanese policeman is not a sane person and Iam afraid that, however much we may protest, ,,tliird degree"methods will still be used.'Yer another minuled: 'Ir is nor difficirlt tobelieve that at least some genuine Soviet espionage does go on', aclassic example of diplomatic understatement.

one of the methods by which the authorities can influence mattersin such cases is to leak a story to the press, and that is what was doneirr this instance. An article appeared in The Times on 9 May lg86under the highly misleading headline ANTI-BRITISH PURGE INMANCHURIA, with the sub-heading EMPLOYEES ARRESTEDAND TORTURED but with no menlion of the Comintern. TheSytho.r 9f ,lg piece was described simply as 'A correspondent inManchukuo' but papers in the Foreign-office files reu.ul that thiswas in fact the author and journalist Peter Fleming (brother of lanFleming' the creator of James Bond). The actual letter confirmingthe arrangement from the man on the spot is preserved. It als6

:

"*'t'

*.f'

24 Prtrt One: The Real Workl

points, incidentall,v, to the sort of rvork Hollis lvas involved in forBAT:

Before these rrerv incidents hacl startecl I had, ou the suggestior-r of' theNen's Departnier-rt [rvhere Gur Btrrgess \\'as later to rvorkl, fut'nished MrPeter Fleining <tf' Tht, Tincs rvith matelial for an article on lhe al't-ests of last

zlutur)"nl. He iras sellt nte for approval the draft clf liis proposed articles. Inr.'ielr of' thcse lre\\' arl-ests it is a nlattel' for consideratiolt n'hether some

nrention of'thern shor,rld ltotbe incluclecl ir-r the article. He rvould of coul-se

h:n'c to olrtain the apprclval of BAT.. .

'fhc acttral article is included in the file establishing the authorshipancl the circntnstances.

It is doubtful rvhether they' rvould also have knorvn of the highlynrisleading headline, rvhich presumably a sub-editor thought rvouldrnake the item more alluring. It is very' probable that the BAT officialrvho rvas in liaison rvith the press on such matters r,vas Hollis, as it iscerrain from letters to his family'that he had had such dealings rvithFlerning, some of rvhich were not entireh' satisfactory. He wrotehome suggesting to his family that they look at an article tn The Times

for 14 December 1935, clearll'under the irnpression that he wouldbe given credit for rvhat was his lvriting. In fact there r,vas only ageneral credit, as in the BAT story, and, according to ChapmanPincher, exhaustive search in The Titnes archives sholvs that theyknew nothing of Hollis's work - Peter Fleming was 'their man inChina'. HolliJ may have become aware of rvhat r,vas happening, andthis . rvoulcl account for an uncharacteristically barbed retnark inanother letter he rvrote at the time:

I lvonder if I am \{'rong to be, in general, so truthful. Practicalll' all otherpeople, as far as I can see, lie blatanth' as soolt as they get aroullcl thelte:lrest corlter. It doesn't seem to do much harm and, iu the case of peopleu,ho have a real gift for it, like Peter Flemir-rg, is exceedinglt'amusing.

( )lurprnan Pincher concludes that Hollis rvas acting out a 'Walterl\littl'islr' 'u'icw of himself when he wrote to his parents about his

iorrr rurlisrrr, llrI wc cztn now see that this is mistaken and that not onlyrlirl llollis prolr:rlrll' writc articles - he was to r,vrite a particularlylr.rrgtln ;rrrtl lornurl onc firr it lcitrnecl society lvhen he returned tollr ir,rrrr, ;rs rlt, slr:rll st't' - lrtrt lris rvolk for llA'f involvecl hirn in this,lrr,.r I r,ll.rl,,,r;rtiorr u,illr jorrrrr:rlisls. 'l'ltc orrly tlcst:r'i1lti<trr ol'whntll,,llr., .rr trr,rllr ,lirl lor lli\ I <lrrr irrg lris ciglrl v(':tls till rt<tw lt:ts lit:ctttlr.rt lrr rr',,rl,-r'rl lor tlrr';rrlvcrtisirrg rlt'1r;ttltlt('ltl.'l'lris iol) s('('ttts lrrIr.rr, lrlrrr rrrrrr lr r l'ilt to tvlt.tl \\'(' \\'(,rtlrl r;rll lrrrlrlir rcl;rtirttts, ;ttt<l

2. China Days 25

would explain why his \,vork on a newspaper in Hong Kong rnighthave been a qualification. Pincher later asked the rhetorical qlrestion'Why did the Comintern need to recruit Roger Hollis, a ,voLurgtobacco company employee?', going on to answer it himself: 'There is

nc)w, in fact, a proper answer to that question. According to a majorwork on Sorge produced in 1984 by the East German rvriter JuliusMader, BAT was helping to finance Chiang Kai Shek's militar)' costs:rnd the Sorge Ring needed to penetrate it.'

In fact, as we have seen, the Comintern had no need for agents inllAT because they already had a considerable number. The book he<luoted serves two purposes as disinformation: it conceals the factthat the Communists lvere operating on such a massive scale in Chinarrrrd also slanders BAT, a capitalist firm ltctr excellence. The attempt tosrrggest that BAT would have funded Chiang Kai Shek is clumsy,since it would only, in any event, fit a narrow timescale, the briefpcriod before Chiang Kai Shek and Mao Tse Tung joined forces tolight the Japanese. In fact BAT officials in China at the time arelrl:rmant that no such funding took place. A possible reason forrrpproaching Hollis lvas that he was a European, 'i,vhereas rnost if'not;rll of the men arrested were Chinese, despite their senior positions.It is more probable that at this stage Hollis simply reacted againstrvlr:rt he sarv happening to people he knew on a daily rvorking basis bygiving them his loyalty without becoming directly involved.

'l'he case against the senior sales official at Mukden ended later inllrc year when he was found guilty and summarily executed. Ther lrcrlue obtained from him was shorvn to have been offeredvulrrntarily, being the amount he said he had received from his( lrnrintern contacts. Far from its being extorted, the authorities hadn()t (:ven cashed the cheque, and they returned it when the case wasu\'('r' :rnd it was no longer needed as evidence. All the money whichlrrlonged to BAT or was held on their account was also returned inlrrll. 'l'he relevant file in the PRO contains no further comment. Therruplir.ation appears to be that the verdict, if not the punishment, mayI r;r r'<' bccn justified.

I lrc other aspects of Communist life in China at the time whichI'rrrclrr:r- nrentions and which are of interest for the possiblerrrlt'rcnt:cs that can be drawn about Hollis's life there concern the,'\rrrt'r'it';rrr iruthr>r and journalist Agnes Smedley, and an army,llirt'r','l'orry Stubles, traced by the Fluency Committee team, rvho,,lr;nt'rl rr Ilrrt with I-lollis early on in his time in China in 1931..'\rrtlrorr\ ( ilct's, rvlrosr' :rttcn)l)tc(l rc{rrtation of Pincher's case will be.'\,nrrirr,',1 l;rtcr, lr;rs rt'rrr;rrk<'<l tlrrrt 'llrt'r'r'is rrol a shrc.rl <lf eviclence tolrrrl. ll,rllis u,'itlr <'itlrcr Artlrrrt li,rvcrIor''Sorri:r'Klt('z)'rrski Iu kttown

26 Part One: The Real World

Communist agent rvhom we shall meet again; 'Sonia' was hercodenamel and there is no confirmation that Hollis ever met AgnesSmedle,v...' Bttt there is.

Agnes Smedlel arrived in China in Mat'1929 shorth'after Hollis.She immediately adopted a high profile in the expatriate commttnity,rvriting articles and doing liaison rvork for a number of organisationsdirected agair-rst the British presence in India. A )'ear after she

arrir,'ed she l-rad assumed such importance that the authorities raidedher horne and seized all her papers. No Comintern papers seem tohave been found. Instead there was a large quantitl' of periodicalsand parnphlets, many of rvhich she had edited, put out by theShanghai Branch of the India Youth League. She rvas nominallyearning a living as the China correspondent of the Franltfu,rterZtittrttg, ar-rd anyone on the fringe of the journalistic r,vorld, as HollisLlnqllestionably \vas, \vould soon have heard of her. After the raidshe became an even lnore prominent figure and r,vorked in a

bookshop in Shar-rghai muih frequented by Europeans andexpatriates generalll' knolvn as 'The Zeitgeist Bookstore'. This was ageneral bookshop rvhich also specialised in left-rving literature fromall over the rvorld. It rvould no doubt have been the shop that carriedthe roneoed news-sheet produced b,r Claud Cockburn in the thirties,The Week, rvhich he proudlv said rvas distributed in China. To spendtime trying to deny' that Hollis knerv her, especially as he is said tohave candidly agreed during interrogation later that he did, wouldseem to be rnisplaced effbrt. The fact that he admitted it suggests

that he probably met her through the bookstore or some innocuoussocial contact. Had there been anything more sinister at that stage,

the Shanghai police, rvhich had manl' English officers in its ranks,would have found out about it, particularly as Smedlel' had beenraided already and rvas an obvious focus for left-rving sympathisers.It is more likely that Hollis simply took notice of rvhat rvas happeningin that world and discussed it with people like Peter Fleming from a

journalist's standpoint. His orvn experience of the Comintern, of itsar tivitl,' in RAT and of horv the authorities dealt rvith it, occurred atllrt'r'c:r'1'encl of his tirne in China and mal have brought home to himtlrc sigrrilicrnc:c of the fringe r,vorld rvhich Smedley and another left('\l)lltritrlt', Altlrtrl litvcrt, rvh<tm he appearS to have knor,vn casually,.,rrlv t:rlk<'<l ol.

I lollis's lirrlt w,itlr I'.rvt'r't, lllcntirlnctl bclth tr)' Pirtchcr and in\lt1,t rttr lt,'t , rs 1r;rr tir rrlrrrll irrtt"t't'slirrg lrs it t't'f ct's to his lifi: in l{)31,lrrl,rc tlrr' (,onununist :rr tiritr lr:rrl g;rtltt'tt'rl sllt'trgllr. l\lot't'<t'u't'r' it.,1r,,\r., tlrr' ,1,,.,<' lirrl.r lrctrvrcrr tlrc lil(' slvl<' Ilollis ;rtlolrlt'tl tvltt'rr ltt'Irr.,t r.nu{'to (,lun,r ,rrrrl tlrl lilc sltlc lrc lr:rrl irr l'rrql:rttrl, ltlrit;rl ol

2. China Dnjt 27

expatriates newly arrived in the country. Chapman Pincher's accountis fuller and more accurate than the one in Sp)cotclter rvhich,curiously, has been shaped to prove the simpliste case of a

straightfonvard recruitment b1' Ervert, an active Communist agent. Itconcerns the Army officer, who was found later rvith considerabledifficulty, r,vho shared a flat with Hollis in Shanghai:

[The intelrogating officer] learned t]rat most of Hollis's friends n'honr theArmy Officer [Tor-r,v Stablesl had been able to list had been diplomats anclbusinessmen lvith some of n-hom he plaved golf. The armv man expressedcollcern about one of them called En'ert and rvhom he described as at't'international socialist'... He said he found the relationship difficult tounderstand because Hollis's politics appeared to be consen'ative.

'l"he immediate resumption of his enthusiasm for golf almost makes()ne wonder r,vhether he brought his clubs rvith him from England.( )crtainly Hollis also kept up the social life rvhich he must havekrrown would appeal to his parents, and he dull'wrote home abouto<:casions lvhich rvould seem as easily recognisable as a game of golfto the people reading them:

Yesterdav I u'en[ on a picnic with the ver1, charming wife of the Britishtonsul at Darien, the lvife of one of our Directors rvl-ro has a son at Cllifton,;r pleasant local couple and a couple of n'ealtht, but leisurely, globe-trotters.'l'here is a pleasant English couple stavir-rg at mv hotel... he is ast hciolmaster n'hom I knelr, from earlier da1's in Hong Kong.. .

I lrcrc are a number of' reasons rvhy Hollis should be meeting\()nlcone like E,wert at the same time as enjoying picnics and rounds, rl golf'with friendly local worthies, the most obvious being the samer (':rs()rr that he met Peter Fleming: an extension of his interest in1,,rrlrr:rlism. Ervert for his part might rvell have been curious to knor,vrvlrl' a RAT man ivas interested in journalists. Knolving that the(,orrrirrtern had infiltrated BAT he might have suspected that Hollisrr';rs tr'y'ing to pump hirn to get information on this subject for BAT.

As thc years passed and the political situation developed there canlrl rro <loubt, if onll'from his olvn writing, that Hollis's viervs movedrtrrrrlilv to the left, and he r,vould have been unlikely to break offr ur rtlt('ls lvith people such as Ewert and Smedley. At the sarne time, as

rvrll lrc ruarlc r;lear, the shift to the left was general, and any closeIr it'rrrlslrilr Irt: rrriglrt clcvelop rvould not necessarily be conspiratorial.Irr;rn\'(':rs('it is p:rltit-rrl:tr-ly dif'ficult to follow the allegiance of even,lr',lrr;rttrl (lorrrrrrrrrrists in (llrin:r at this tirne. After the troubles inlr)"r)lrctrlt'r'rr l{rrssi:r ;rrrrl (llrirrrr lr;rrl l)('('n lxrtcltt'rl rrp Stalin aclopted-r 1t,rlr{ \ ()l r,rlllrlror;rlioll rvitlr tltr'(,lritrt'st'trglrirrsl tltt: ('()nln'r()ll cllcttty

28 Part One: The Real World

.fapan. This \vas at a time rvhen those same Chinese allthorities wereengaged in a bitter struggle against Mao Tse Tr-rng. Many' exiledrvhite Russians actuallv became Sor.'iet citizens at this time in order tomake their position easier than that of stateless persons. -fhere

rvas

an understandins that they'lvould not return to Russia. They wereknon'n as 'raclishes' - because they were red outside but rvhitervithin. There lvere also 'beefsteaks': those lvho appeared colourlessol' innocuous on the outside but \vere in fact red through andthr-oush. Thus one rnight find oneself talking to an expatriate rvhoapparentlv hated his native Russia and yet rvas a Sor,'iet citizen. Evenstrc-h il cilsc as that rvas simple compared lvith man)', and it was thiskincl of'situation that sent visiting correspondents rushing for help toarr 'old China hand' as soon as thel' arrived to enable them to writethcir stories rvith sorne hope of getting it right. Hollis no doubtaspir-ed to be such a guide and certainh'assisted Fleming. But as time\vent on even a permanent resident could begin to loose bearings andfind that he had drifted be1'ond the point at rvhich he rvouldnormally' have changed coLlrse. A classic example, as we shall see

shortly, rvas Archibald Clark Kerr, later Lord Inverchapel.In 1934 Hollis came home on leave. Rather than go b)'the normal

routes, b1'rvhich he came out and finally returned, he decided to gothrough Russia on the Trans-Siberian railwav. Much has been readinto this. But the journey was one of the great journeys of the r,vorld,as it still is, and BAT emplol'ees frequently' rnade it out of sheeradventure. Many people even now go to Russia only because they aremaking that historic journey. Hollis's defenders have pointed outthat he hated Russia and said so in his letters. One indeed is a classicexample of abuse, and a departure from his normal tone:

...the next moming n'e arrived in Moscolr'... Lenin's tomb looked ratherlike a high-class public lavator-l'n'ithout dignitl'or artistic merit. Our guide$'as most enthusiastic as u'as to be expected but I have never seen an1'thingrvhich depressed me so unutterablv as Moscolr'. It was like driving through:r clrab slum of three and a half millior-r people, everl'one ill-dressed ir-r thenrost rleplolable ready-mades...

'I'lrt' unnristakablc period snobbery in the phrase 'deplorablert'rr<l\'-nl:l(lc's', t:onlbined rvith the sacrilegious reference to Lenin'slorrrlr, rvorrl<l irr<lct'rl srrggcst that Hollis's urand-parents'capitalistttrslirrr ls rvcr(' sorrrrrl trrr<l wc:ll, r:sltcc.ittlly as hc also metrtioned the'un\lrr';rk;rlrlr" siglrt ol t()tvs ol'ollll)t)'sho1> r.vinclows. H<>wcver(,lr.r1nn,ur I'irrr lrcr lr;rs r or rt'r lll' lroirrlt'rl orrl tlt:rt nl:ut)' rlc'u'olccl,r,ltrur('r.,,rl llrr.'.,,rr i:rlist t'r1rt'rinr('nl irr ltrtssirr',:ts il tv;rs rt'li'rtt'<l l<l

,un{,rrp llrc l.rrtlrlttl, trt'rc rltot kt'rl ll tvlr:rt llt('\'s:rrl irr [\l()s(()\\/. I\lott'

2. China Dnys 2!)

significantly', as has been explained, such viervs could perfectlv rvcllhave been held by someone rvho was a keen supporter of NIao '['sc'fung and the Chinese Communists and hated n'hat he slr\\, irrMoscow because he hated the Er-rropean civilisation of rvhich it rvas bvthen a debased example.

When Hollis returned to China in 1934 things \vere moving mor-crapidly torvards the situation in rvhich Chiang Kai Shek rvas to alh'himself, after some mild persuasion, to Mao Tse Tung in a commonf ront against Japan. Agnes Smedley, far from being prosecuted, rvasrrllowed to do radio broadcasts, aided b,v an enthusiastic young NervZealand Rhodes scholar of far-left opinions rvho rvas visitir-rg Chinarvith his father, an Anglican clergyman. There rvas at the same time arrtarked tendency for businessmen and the large firrns such as BATlo move torvards theJapanese vierv of things and for the diplomats tontove the other \,vay. The Ambassador rvho succeeded Alexander( iadogan, Archibald Clark Kerr, found himself rhrorvn cheek-b1,-

ior,vl with his Soviet opposite number when the Japanese attacks on( lhina proper rvere under rvay. His attachment to Russia became sostl'ong that he was appointed Arnbassador in Moscorv in 1942 n'henlrridges needed urgently to be built after the disastrous tour ofStaf ford Cripps. John Costello has painted a portrait of Clark Kerrrvlrich shorvs that even someone in his position, holding the r,'iervs hctlitl, rvas not necessarily thought of as a spy or as someone holdingrr rr:rcceptably odd opinions:

l'he amiable pipe-smoking Ambassador nevel' made an)' secret of' hrsst'rtrpathv for the Soviet Union. He l'as gil'en to lecturirrg his Foreign( )f'fice colleagues on his favourite topic and they' tolerated his 'steaclvp:tssiot-t fol the Soviet Union', regarding it... as just another harnrlesst't't:entricitv in a veteran diplomat. Yet even if Inverchapel n'as not a'spr'' ir-rllrc strict sense of the u'ord, the evidence suggests that the Foreign ()fficelrltrndered ir-r its failure to appreciate that... his favourable vien's df Russiarrur<le him a major securib risk.

I lt<:sc cvents occurred of course after Hollis had returned to Britain,lrrrl llrey'show that an attachment to China at that tirne could readilyprotlu(.c even in a veteran diplomat a profound re-orientation inl,t':tltics when once the Chinese and Russian Communists hadnr('n(lr'<l thcir f'ences, as they have intermittently ever since.

l'lrt'sitrr:rtion firr a BAT employee was difficult. Japaneserlrnr:rrrrls irr Marr<hrrktro str-ensthened, and BAT found that whentlrt'r rrt'rt w'islrt'rl to lrrril<l a <ig:u'cttc f:rctorv they had to re-registerlltt't r)tnl);ur\ ;rs rr l\l:rtrt ltrrti:rrr r ()nrl)rrrrt'irr:r \vltv rvhich rvould involvetlr l,osirrg Ilrr' lrt'rrr'lits lrssor irrtt'<l u,itlr its t lrt'r'islrcrl t'rtnr-tcr-r-itrlrial

30 Pnrt One: The Real Vlorld

rights. At first thel' refused, but after consultation rvith the ForeignOffice tl-rey' rvent ahead. Once the decision had been made the

Japanese response \vas so favourable that thel' soon foundthemselves agreeing, {br example, to Llse green tobacco grorvn inManchukuo. When it rvas pointed out that hardll an1' tobacco \vas

srown in N{anchukuo the Japanese replied that thel' rvould beplar-rting great areas rvith BAT's r,'alued advice. BAT obliginglvprovided nvo of their best experts in the field, rvho advised on thesuitabilitl' of land and estirnated the number of families that wouldbe needed to rvork it. BAT do not seem to har,'e been perturbed rvhenthey learned that the fhrrners rvould in fact be Japanese immigrantsand pursued their nonnal policy of'cooperating fulh' rvith the localgovernment in po\ver.

For someone rvho had gro\vn as attached to China as Hollis hadthis presented a real problem. But the difficultl' was compoundedlvhen the position on Cornrnunist infiltration rvas dealt rvith. In thelight of the acknorvledged Comintern infiltration at Mukden, BATagreed to.Japanese suggestions that it should ernplol' secret agents oftheir choosing to infiltrate the rvorkforce to give thern the earliestpossible rvarning of an1' Communist trouble. Unfortunatell' there is

no record that Hollis made his feelings plain on the matter, but hewas not alone ir-r his sympathy lvith the Chinese, as the view ofanother expatriate manager, convel'ed to the Foreign Office by theBritish Consul-General at Harbin, M.E. Denning, made clear:

N{r' tiillianr, the American Manager of the BAT Co. here has been told tliatas a r-esult of the arrests irr Mukden it x-as believed that certaitt commutristelements existecl in his factor1,. It n'as therefore suggested that thecompan)' shouicl emplov an agent, to be appointed by. the police, r,vho

rvould make the necessan investigations. N{r G,illiam, n'ho privatell' hasnever- been in favour of the step no\\' it'revocablv takeu br BAT [ofreorganising as a Manchurian Companl'] told the police that he mustconsider the malter. But he quoted the incident to me as an instance of thehelpless position to r'r'hich his companr' had been reduced as a result ofabandor-ring its extra-territorial rights.

A Marxist rvould have seen this as a classic example of the('xl)r'()l)riatcr expropriated, and indeed that seems to be how Holliss:rrv it, itrrlgirrg fr'orn the talk he gave on the wars in China after hisr('tur rr. Altlrorrglr, lrs \,vcl have seen, ther-e are signs that he might lvellrrol Irrrc t;rkt'rr tlrr'lrro-.flrpancsc coltlp:Iny line, thel'would be nonr(n (' tlurrr irrrlit;rtiorrs ;rt l'ilst t'lrsill' lxrl:rrrcc<l irt lris t:ttttty.xuti()l)s'cycslrt lrrr '. on\('rr:rtr\'(' ('rrtlrrtsi:rsttr lirl goll rrtt<l rttitltllt'-t'ltrss sot iltl lif c.llrrl llrlrr ,rrlr llrc rrcrl lr'\\'\'(';rrs Irc nt()\'('(l irrtr);t l)osiliott tvlticlt rv:ts

rrrtltorrl rlorrlrl llr;rl ol .r 'rcrl' srrlrlrot lct ol Nl:to Ist' Iltllll :lrrrl tlrt'

2. China Days 3 I

Chinese Government rather than the business empire of' hiscrstwhile employers, or Japan, or indeed Arnerica, BAT's great rivalin business in China. The fact that Hollis rvas obliged to return horneto Britain because of illness has obscured the fact that he rvas, in anycase, rapidly moving to a point at rvhich he n'ould have been atloggerheads over policy rvith his employers. Had he remained inChina working for BAT there is no doubt that he u'ould also have{bund himself rvorking rvith the.fapanese secret police rvhom BAT:rgreed to take on under cover of beir-rg their rvorkers, and he lvouldrrot have been alone in having violent objections to this. The()omintern activitl'that Hollis was acutell'ar,vare of at the time is thel'irst example of political reality being forgotten or slrppressed thatrttade Hollis's position incomprehensible to the sp1'catchers that camelatcr. Neither Wright nor Pincher attacking Hollis, nor Gleesrlcf.ending him, knerv anything of it, althor-rgh Pincher's journalist'sirrtuition brought him closer to the truth than many.

An1' doubt about Hollis's position rvas clarified b,v his talk, rvhichlroth his attackers and defenders have unaccountably ignored. Ittook the form of a full-scale public lecture to a meeting of the Rol'al( lt'ntral Asian Society for later publication in their journal (seeAppendix 1) and rvas given after he had left BAT but before hejuincd MI5, a time which has come to be knorvn frorn Sp)crLtcher as

t lrt' 'rnissing tr,vo ,vears'.

3

The Missing Two Years

The period from summer 1936 rvhen Hollis rerurned from china toearly 1938 rvhen he rvas recruited into MI5 - the 'missing twoyears'-is in fact barely' eighteen months in a full and busy life. Theimportance placed on this period, rvhich was a difficult one, a hiatus

caused by illness, and a particularly sticky illness at that, has stemmedentirely from the spycatchers' close examination of his past in an

effort to find time during which he could have been recruited as a

Russian agent. It was thought almost certain by the now notoriousFluency C-ommittee that his enrolment in what Kim Philby called an'elite force' had taken place in China, which was' as we have seen,

riddled with agents of every kind. But the publication in 1982 byGlees of the reitricted selection of previously unknown letters fromHollis to his parents covering the entire period of his time in China,some of rvhiih we have quoted, seemed effectively to have defusedthis charge. Attention was therefore switched to the 'two missingyears'. Tlie specific charge was relayed to the world for the first timein detail in july 1984 over the appropriately modern medium oftelevision byihe chairman of the Fluency Committee, Peter Wright:

sir Roger dealt convincingly with questions about his career - except for a

t*o yeit period immediaieiy before joining MI5. We-were-of the.opinionthat he rvis hiding something. He seemed unprepared to tell us what went

on. He avoided telling us exactly rr'ho he was meeting at the time, what he

was doing.

The most obvious reason for Hollis's reticence about this difficulttime must be dealt with first. This is that his illness, tuberculosis, was

not one which was normally discussed: like cancer today, it was oftenfirtat, and cure was uncertain if immediate action was not taken.'['ogcther with rnalaria, it was one of the main hazards faced by

lluirrpeans working irr the far east, (ieorge Orwell caught it inIlr"rrnin, Uufi)rtutlittcly lirr him hc wils not workillg fbr a firm like

1.J*h

'.',!i

3. The Missing Two Years 33

BAT, who took the closest interest in their employees' health andwelfare. Orwell's illness went undetected, or was only identified at alate stage, and little or nothing was done to treat it. As a result Orwelldied when he was only 49, having written his masterpiece, NineteenEightl-Four, virtually on his death bed. Hollis was given immediatetreatment in China at a Canadian missionary hospital and later inSwitzerland, but he was lucky. In the circumstances it is surprisingthat he kept as level a temper with his interrogators while theyprobed this area of his life as he appears to have done.

Although both the detractors and the defenders of Hollis havelooked at the period in some detail, major points have beenoverlooked, including the fact, already noticed, that Hollis gave anextensive account of his view of events in China based on his detailedknowledge. And once again there has been a singular lack ofcontemporary perspective which could have been gained byexamining straightforward evidence in diaries and elsewhere.

When Hollis returned from China he took up the normal round oflife with his family in Wells, the earlier break with his familyforgotten. There is always a period of cultural shock for peoplereturning home from long periods away in a totally differentenvironment. Hollis was certainly due for extensive leave, evendiscounting a period of recuperation. He quickly looked up hisbrother Christopher and they took the first opportunity to seeEvelyn Waugh. Waugh described the visit on 16 September 1936with typically understated brilliance: 'Hollis's and Christopher'sbrother Roger came to dinner. Agreeable and dull evening.' In viewof Hollis's traumatic exper.iences in China we can safely assume thatWaugh had not drawn him out and that Hollis was already exhibitinglhat extreme reserve for which he was known in later life. Waughhad himselfjust returned from his second visit to Abyssinia and wasfinishing his travel book Waugh in Abyssinia. He had also beenrcading for review Peter Fleming's ly'rn,s from Tartary, an account ofFleming's journey overland from China to Kashmir following theexample of Younghusband. From Waugh's brief entry in his diarythere is no sign that he made any connection between Hollis'slppearance and the book he had just been reviewing. For his partHollis must have found Waugh greatly changed from the man hehad known as a drinking companion in Oxford. Waugh had becomeI notable figure in the literary world and on the fringe of upper-classCrtholic life, and his views on political questions would havercflected this. The drift of Hollis's thought on the China questionwould have made any idea of'supporting Franco in the Spanish CivilWar an inrpossibilityi yet that *bi,ta haie been Waugh's inclination

34 Part One: The Real World

in view of the documented atrocities against the Catholic Church inSpain committed by the Communists.

In November 1936 Hollis went up to London to discuss his careerwith BAT. He had already decided to decline any furtherappointment unless, presumably, they made him an extraordinaryoffer, for he had made an appointment for that same afternoon withPeter Fleming at his office in The Tirnes hoping to establish ajournalistic connection once again. With hindsight he might haverealised that this rvas not the sort of connection that Fleming wouldwant to encourage. The mystique embodied in the title of Fleming'sbest-selling One's Cornltnnl, would not have stood well with theconstant reminder that he owed line after line of his reports printedin The Times to Hollis's amateur efforts. The only result of theinterview was a commission for a single article, which does not seemto have appeared, and a promise that Fleming would try to get himbooks to review for the Tirnes Literary Supplernenl, the dullest kind ofdrudgery on what has become known as the literary trade gazette.

The rebuff appears to have been so personal that, when hediscovered that his old university friend Roger Fulford was also withThe Tirnes, he went back for another try. Unfortunately he had nobetter luck. As I established in Truth Betrayed, Roger Fulford was amember of the broadcasting and literary circle which had GuyBurgess, Anthony Blunt and Harold Nicolson as its leading lights.Burgess's powers of patronage at the BBC were particularly valuedand he had brought a number of travellers to the microphone to giveaccounts of their journeys in far-off places. If Hollis had met Fulfordsocially it might have been thought that he would soon have beendrawn into this group, and a broadcast of his experiences in Chinawould have been expected: not only would the China question havebeen topical, but Burgess's own rebuff by The Times would havecreated some sympathy. However, Hollis would probably not havefitted entirely into the peculiarly exclusive world of Burgess andBlunt at this time. Unlike them and the others in the circle , Hollis wasunmarried simply because it was unusual for businessmen workingpermanently abroad in remote places to get married until they werewell established. In fact he was shortly to become engaged to a localgirl, the daughter of a west-country solicitor, and their marriage atWells Cathedral took place in the middle of the so-called'missing twoyears',

Sonte timc early in.fitttuary 1937 Hollis realised that he was gettingnowhere with his hopcd-for career in .journalism. He approachedBAT agnin ancl thcy fotrrtd hint tcntporat'y cmployrnent with theArdutlr 'Iobncco ()ontpatty. 'l'ltis was in the accotltlts (lcpartment,

3. The Missing Two Years 35

though he was described as an assistant manager. It was not animportant post, but he went ahead and became formally engaged toEve Swayne in February on the strength of it. He did not, of course,stop looking for a more worthwhile career for himself, and Glees,using family papers, has recorded that he made a number ofapproaches to companies, and also wrote to the Oxford Appoint-ments Board during the year.

Some time before his marriage, the date is not clear, he seems tohave gone to Switzerland for a further cure, which appears to havebeen satisfactory. Although there were occasional breaks in his latercareer attributed to his earlier illness he went on to lead a full life.The molehunters have tried to find significance also in this visit,since there were many known agents in Srvitzerland at the time,including'Sonia'Kuczynski. But a more likely explanation is the verynatural -,le that Hollis, knowing he was about to get married,approached BAT on the question and they naturally agreed to set hishealth to rights as far as was then possible.

An intrinsic weakness in Hollis's attempts to find employment,obvious now, was that he was still preoccupied with affairs in China,and his knowledge extended far beyond what an ordinarybusinessman would have acquired. None of the jobs he was lookingat reflected this specialist knowledge. The only obvious calling forsomeone in his position would have been journalism, but he seems

not to have wanted anything less than a desk at The Times. At somepoint, again it is not clear when, Hollis was invited to deliver thelecture we have mentioned to the Royal Central Asian Society, anopportunity he seized eagerly, choosing as his subject'The Conflictin China'on 20 October 1937. The talk, printed here in Appendix l,ir interesting as showing both the depth of Hollis's knowledge, whichhe had obviously been adding to continuously as events developed,rnd his acute understanding of the political significance of eventsthere..' After a joking allusion to his father's calling as Bishop of Taunton('l shall not attempt to make any ex cathedra pronouncements...') hedrew attention to the astonishing fact that Chiang Kai Shek and theChinese Government had reached spme sort of 'working agreementwith the Red Armies'. After adding that this had 'inspired a firmerrttitude towards Japan', he made no further reference to the RedArmy, even though its presence and activity were crucial to anyunderstanding of what was occurring. He appeared to take the linethat they were simply now part of the Chinese Government forcesflghting against.fapan. This omission seems also to have struck theBudience. So much so that onc member of the society asked if the

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36 Part One: The RealWorld

Red Army to which Hollis referred was actually the same Red Armythat had completed the so-called Long March, made famous since byEdgar Snow and other commentators. Hollis replied succinctly: 'It is

the same Red Army and they are now in the Government fold. It is

difficult to find out rvhat promises General Chiang Kai Shek had tomake to get their adherence fhe had been kidnapped by Communistforces and had been obliged to come to an agreementl and also hisown liberty...'

The general tone of his remarks was entirely against Japan.Though he stopped short of outright abuse he did make a savage

allusion to Japan's possible use of gas warfare before withdrawing itwith the remirk: 'I mean this quite impartially: the Chinese have nomore humanitarian instincts that the Japanese in warfare, but the

Japanese have the equipment and the Chinese have not.' In oneplace he makes remarks rvhich were not only against the Japanesebut smacked almost of Russian propaganda:

Ever since the seizure of Manchulia Japan has been strengthening herdefences along the Soviet border. From Korea arout-td to Chahar thesedefer-rces are highly organised and equipped ruith r,vireless statious, landinggrounds and adequate garrisons. West of this they have established a seriesof military missions and depots running along the Russian border as far as

Chinese Turkestan...

Certainly it is difficult to see how he can have known this from hisown observation. His final words made his pro-Chinese positionabsolutely plain:

The temptation to look into the future is one which few can resist and Iconfess to a belief that Japan is digging her own grave in the present war.China, even in the humiliation of a defeat by the neighbour she despises,has learned that the Japanese are not invincible, and Japan's bombs havesown the seeds of a new patriotism... Japan cannot suPpress a nationwidedetermination in so vast a country. China will bide her time, but when thetime comes she will return to the leadership of Asia. The world will be thebetter for so mighty an ally in the cause of peace.

But it also suggested strongly his political views, for the slogan-callfbr the 'cause of peace' was then the current Communist line andabsolutely unmistakable. Indeed the preliminary approach made topossible f'uture agents was nearly always expressed in terms of anopportunity f'or them to help fight for 'the cause of peace'. Burgess'sattempt$ at recruiting his f riends were always couched in these terms,at least accrlrding t<l (ioronwy Rees's accoullt, and this is confirmedlly lrhiltly's adnrissiorr to Flora Solomon that he was engaged onclnngerotts work 'lilt' the t;:tuse rtf'peitce',

3. The Missing Two Years

BAT were experiencing good trading conditions in Manchukuo atthis time along with other British companies, particularly insurancecompanies, whose business was better than it had been for many years.Had news of the talk got back to BAT it would have been awkward forhim, but it seems that Hollis may in fact have been no longer rvorkingfor BAT. Glees records that he gave up hisjob with Ardath in Octobergiving as the reason: 'He just could not bear it.' It would perhaps be ofa piece with Hollis's (reticent) character if he had resigned, knowingthat the talk which he felt bound to give would make his positionimpossible. The talk also provides indirect evidence that he was not anagent at this time, except perhaps the most obvious 'agent of influ-ence'. The audience would have been influential, and would havecome away with the clear impression that his sympathies were empha-tically pro-Chinese with a'blind-spot'on the 'red'question with thefairly obvious inference to be drawn that this blind-spot might be amore positive sympathy. Kim Philby giving the same talk at the timewould have adopted a strongly pro-Japanese line. An overtly Commu-nist speaker such as D.N. Pritt would have described the role of theRed Army as greater than it actually was and would not have missedthe opportunity to bring in a reference to the similar struggles goingon in Spain. Hollis was simply giving an account of what was happen-ing as it was known to him, with clear, simple indications of where hisown sympathies Iay. The only propagandist element was his referenceto the Japanese build-up on the Soviet border, which he cannot haveknown about from his work in BAT as contemporaries at BAT aresure that none of his duties would, or could, have taken him along theborder that he describes.

If Hollis had been hoping for some introduction from the talkleading to a career, or simply employment of any kind, he was

disappointed. In the ensuing months he and his wife were obliged togive up their flat in London and move in with his parents. Theyiravelled on the continent on a minor business assignment, but it was

only for the briefest of periods and they were back in Wells forChristmas.

The'missing two years'came to an end when Hollis was recruited toMI5, some time not later than 13 March 1938. The precise details ofthe recruitment have remained uncertain, and this is hardly surpris-ing. Even the BBC have ensured that personal files are closed forteventy years after the death of the employees concerned, not only forlegal reasons, but because recruitment into what were in their day themost lucrative and prestigious appointments was often based on

.* unavowable personal connections. In Hollis's case it has even beenrug$estt:d that he owed his recruitment to a masonic influence,

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38 Part One: The Real World

He is supposed to have joined a lodge in Shanghai. Then, throughhis father, a connection has been suggested with Sir Vernon Kell, theveteran Director-General of MI5, who is also said to have been amason. Today the very idea that freemasonry would be permitted toexist in an organisation acutely conscious of the need for 'positivevetting' of anyone having binding loyalties to any outsideorganisation would be absurd. In addition, the wider spread ofuniversity education and the general fading of late-Victoriansuperstition and Edwardian snobbery would reduce to non-existentproportions the number of recruits who would see 'the masons' as

anything more than a harmless joke. In Hollis's day masonry was stilltaken seriously in some quarters, and Peter Wright records inSpycatcher his father's conviction that his son would never get on inMI5 unless he Joined'. In Hollis's case the fact that, according to hisdefender Anthony Glees, his family deny that he was ever in anylodge seems to settle the matter.

Glees suggests that the recruitment came through a family friend,the crucial introduction having taken place at a tennis game. Thealternative suggestion of some clandestine Soviet-initiated origin forHollis's entry into MI5 seems almost as absurd as the 'masonic'theory. However, there is one aspect of the recruitment that has notbeen examined closely, and that is Hollis's early identification withinMI5 as an expert on Communism which we can now see could wellhave stemmed from his experience in China.

We have already seen that Hollis lost no time in looking up his olddrinking friend Evelyn Waugh when he came back from China. Nodoubt he also looked up the other member of the triumvirate, theCommunist Claud Cockburn, especially as he clearly did not seeeye-to-eye with Waugh, but did hold opinions which would havecoincided precisely with Cockburn's on the China question. Even ifhe did not look him up with any set purpose, Cockburn was verymuch 'common currency' within the London literary and politicalscene and perhaps had the highest profile of any of the 'open'members of the Communist Party, while skilfully distancing himselfby his pseudonym'Frank Pitcairn'when actually writing for the DailyWorker, Hollis must have met him sooner or later, certainly after theoutbreak of war and Blunt's arrival in MI5, for Blunt shared a flat inLondon with Burgess who was part of the circle which providedCockburn with much of his 'inside' information retailed, withguitablc distortions when required, in The Week.In later chapters wewill cxamine this conncction and its possible explanations.

Afier lris lecruitnrcrrt into MI5 any strict biographical treatment ofHolli,l hcorner irnpossible , Ilut,,iust as n biographer can fincl out a

3. The Missing Tuo Years 39

good deal about his subject from the books he read and what he saidabout them, so we can follow Hollis in his MI5 career by looking atthe spies he was meant to be investigating. While their activities weresecret, MI5 had to deal with other Government departments,especially the Foreign Office, and, with the influx of Germanrefugees from Nazi persecution, any of whom might be Communists,it was highly likely that MI5 reports would appear in open FO filesfor the war years. A search of relevant files has confirmed this. As theweeders who examine files before they go to the Public RecordOffice had no general instruction to removi MI5 letters, it is possibleto gain a good understanding of what Hollis was doing as he workedhis way through the world of spies.

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Part Two

The World of Spies

4

The Communist Left and MI5

A reader brought up on nothing but today's spy books, factual orfictional, with their seemingly endless allegations about infiltration ofthe security services, might be forgiven for thinking that MI5 in themiddle years of the century was so infiltrated that it could almost beseen as a Communist cell in itself. The perception of thisorganisation, once so secret that an ordinary citizen would nevereven have heard of it, was somewhat different at the time, as anintriguing remark made by Kingsley Martin, editor of the NeuStatesman, shows:

It happer-red that I was able to meet at a friend's house one of the toppeople in MI5. From the beginning he was ready to listen to the argumentthat the communists would in the long run be allied in the war whilst thefascists were a potential fifth column. He told me that he had the utmostdifficulty in persuading his staff that the fascists were the people to watchand sometimes arrest and he constantly had to correct idiotic, trivialpersecution of the left.

We may wonder who the very insecure senior MI5 officer was who soobviously enjoyed pulling Kingsley Martin's leg (no very difficultthing to do). But it can be seen that the normal image of MI5 was ofan organisation of the right, perhaps of the far right, no doubt.thronged with ex-Indian policemen who saw Communists behindevery lamp-post. There is no denying that there had indeed been apreponderance of ex-India men and views in the earlier MI5 andMI6, but the recruitment of Hollis as an expert on Communismrhows that things were no longer what they had been. With the warthe influx of recruits to both branches of the secret service tookdelight in decrying these people whose perception of the world wastomehow linked to that expected of a'pukka sahib'.

In fact, as we noticed in the early activities of Agnes Smedley inehina, as she organised material for Indian Communist frontorgani$atious, India was onc of the Comintern's most important

44 PartTuo: The World of Spies

targets, and from before the war right up to present-day Afghanistanthe Indian Communist party itself has been by far the most loyal toMoscow of any Communist party outside Russia. The internationalendeavours of the Comintern aimed at India included the activitiesof exiled Indians living in America, some of whom took part inclandestine broadcasts to India from San Francisco, causing theIndian authorities considerable annoyance. As a result far frombeing old fogeys sipping tea and reminiscing about their earlierpig-sticking days, the ex-Indian policemen in MI5 and MI6 weregreat experts on International Communism in all its facets. Theatmosphere in which Blunt, Guy Liddell, Hollis, Burgess and theothers flourished marked a change very much for the worse and wasan important reason why the 'moles', as they came to be called,prospered. It has often been said that after Russia entered the war in1941 it was understandably difficult to distinguish people who weresupporting a gallant ally from spies. But the infiltration, or leftwardslant, of MI5 began earlier. Kingsley Martin's story, besides revealingthe prevailing image of MI5 as ultra-right, also suggests that theremay well have been a senior figure who was responsible for this leftinclination that proved so damaging.

It has been alleged, notably by Chapman Pincher, that Hollis heldsuch a central position at the time that he personally preventedaction being taken against known Communists. This seems unlikelyin the early stages of the war, at least when MI5's duties were plainlyset out for them in terms of making recommendations for thedetention of suspect aliens under the Emergency Powers regulations.There were a number of people whom the Communist Party wouldhave liked protected, if possible, but who were detained, such as

Hans Kahle, whom we shall meet later, and the Kuczynskis, whowere all open Communists. But there were also people like zu Putlitzand Klaus Fuchs who were not known officially as Communists andwhose detention Hollis might perhaps have been thought able toprevent. In reality there is little he could have done, because therecommendations for detention were so numerous and his staff wereworking so intensely that he could not have disagreed with theirrecommendations without drawing attention to himself.

Mention of those who were not officially known as Communistsraises a question that can properly be considered here, as it will beseen as vital tn an understanding of exactly what it was that Hollis zuas

able to clo, Although some were 'officially' not known to be(krttrmtrrrist$ - thilt is, did not appear on MI5 lists of those withkttowtr at'l'iliations - Hollis had a ready cross-check to hand thatwoulcl etrable ltirrr to lcalise tlteir true allcgiances irtunediately. This

4. The Communist kft and MI5 45

was his file on Cockburn. It is worth noting some of the names thatHollis would have known about if his file on Cockburn was eventolerably complete. First in importance at the time was zu Putlitz, aGerman diplomat who had been spying for the British and donevaluable service before escaping in 1940, just in time, from Belgium,coming to England with the help of Klop Ustinov (father of the actorPeter Ustinov). Zu Putlitz was a close friend of Burgess's and also ofBlunt's to whom he owed a great deal and whom indeed he specificallythanked in his autobiography published after the war in EastGermany. Much has been written of Putlitz by Glees and others.What has not been pointed out is that his oldest English friend wasClaud Cockburn, who had met him first in 1926 in Germany, then in1929 in America and then again in Britain. Secondly, there was along-term friend of Cockburn's who had often travelled with him-onjournalistic assignments in Europe, Sefton Delmer. Delmer wrote anautobiography in two volumes which describes in detail his view ofthe world and the part he played in arranging black radiopropaganda from Britain during the war. We shall be examining it ina later chapter; but it is worth notice here that Glees has arguedconvincingly that Delmer was in fact a Communist agent, thoughwithout mentioning his close connection with Cockburn, which lastedat least until the sixties when both took a strong interest in a weeklypublication, written much in the spirit of The Week, called Priuate Eye.

Among the Germans who would have appeared on Cockburn's filethe most important was perhaps Hans Kahle. Cockburn first metKahle in Spain where he was commanding a detachment of Germanvolunteers in the International Brigade. He met him again when heescaped to England after the failure of the Communist campaign inSpain, and may have been the person who introduced him to theprominent scientist J.B.S. Haldane and his wife Charlotte. TheHaldanes acted as his sponsors and protectors as far as they coulduntil he was detained under the Emergency Powers Act and.deported to Canada, where he became friendly with Klaus Fuchs. Onhis return Cockburn and Haldane welcomed Kahle back and sawhim installed as the official military correspondent of the DailyWorker. Cockburn was also a close friend of the Kuczynski family,being particularly close to Jtirgen Kuczynski who was instrumental inputting Klaus Fuchs in contact with the GRU network, led by hisrister'Sonia', which ran him as a spy when he was in England. Werhall see more of this group and their activities shortly, but it is worthmentioning here that Sonia had been in China at the same time as

Hollis; if they ever met there, it would be interesting to know howroon it was befbre they discovered their mutual friend. Indeed if

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46 PartTwo: The World of Spies

Cockburn was in contact with Sonia in China he might have arrangedan introduction from around the world, courtesy of the Comintern.Such speculations, however, at this stage belong to the wilderness ofmirrors. What is clear is that Cockburn's file, which as we shall seedefinitely recorded his membership of the Comintern, could wellalso have shown his link with Sonia Kuczynski and certainly wouldhave mentioned his friendships with the other more publiclydistinguished members, notably the father Professor RobertKuczynski who was privileged to have a campaign started for hisrelease when he was detained under 188 led by none other thanD.N. Pritt.

Perhaps the most important person in this group connectedthrough their friendship with Cockburn, if not also through theirmembership of the Communist Party and secret activity as GRUagents, was Peter Smollett. In his biography of Philby, Philby: The Lifeand Views of a KGB Masterspy, Philip Knightley describes Philbyunequivocally as 'the most successful penetration agent ever'.Without disputing the title, anyone looking closely at theachievements of Peter Smollett, known before his naturalisation as

H.P. Smolka, would have to concede that here at least was a worthycomPetitor for it.

Born in Vienna in 1912, Smolka became a journalist in the CentralEuropean mould on which Cockburn, Philby and the othersmodelled themselves. He first came to England as correspondent ofthe Neue Freie Presse of Vienna, later switching to the Prager Presse.Inthe summer of 1936 he went to Siberia at the invitation of the SovietGovernment after meeting Professor O.Y. Schmidt, Chairman of theNorth Sea Route Administration that dealt with Siberia, at the SovietEmbassy in London. Later he amusingly recounted how he had firstcalled in error at the house next door to the Soviet Embassy, then theLondon home of the Rothschilds, and had been directed to thecorrect address by their butler. Siberia then meant labour camps andthe hard truths of real life in Russia under the Stalinist regime whichwas growing ever more oppressive. at least as far as the propagandawar was concerned. Smollett saw Siberia as it appeared to theRussians, a wild frontier where great strides were being made inexploration and scientific research, of all of which they were clearlyproud.

Orr his return Srnollet had no difficulty placing his articles in The

T'imeti, unlike the unfbrtunate Hollis. Smollett had great success. Hisnrticles appe:rrecl rcgularly and were later published in expandedlitrm ar il lxtok, h'orfi'lfutll':rand Aguirtsl tfu Ardic: rRrrrsialr Polar Empire.l'r'ecinely lurw lre got his introcluctions is not clcar. although Sir

4. The Communist Left and MI5

Harry Brittain seems to have been of considerable help. That thecontacts existed at the highest level is obvious from his next majorventure, in 1938: the setting up of a press agency in Europe. RexLeeper at the Foreign Office press department, which we havealready come across in reference to Peter Fleming, seems to haveknown him well, judging by the letters sent to him about the project.On l6 November he wrote to Leeper,'I have pleasure in informingyou that I have now joined the Exchange Telegraph Company to bein charge of the newly organised foreign Department', signinghimself 'Smolka-Smollet', a hybrid name he briefly adopted on hisnaturalisation, which occurred at this time. His next letter, on'23November, was more to the point, confirming that he was setting outto visit Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, Bucharest, Belgrade and Berneto establish contact on behalf of the new Exchange Telegraphforeign agency. He then made an astonishingly bold request:

I would be much obliged if you would kindly inform his Majesty'srepresentatives in the capitals concerned of my forthcoming visit. I wouldappreciate an opportunity of discussing with them the local press situationand particularly the question of how straight news from this countrystands in relation to the tainted propaganda there put out by other officialand semi-offi cial agencies.

Leeper obligingly sent out a Foreign Office telegram, repeated to allthe relevant departments, giving Smollett, as he was now known,carte blanchr: 'The author who is well known to this Department hasachieved a considerable reputation as a writer in Internationalaffairs...' Smollett had ended his letter with a personal plea: 'I shouldbe most grateful to you for securing a good entr6e for me with theBritish Diplomatic Missions...' and Leeper could not have done morefor the young man, still only 26 years of age. It was a coup whicheven Philby would have been proud of and, since he was apparentlyinvolved in Smollett's various news agency ventures, Philby no doubtadmired him greatly for it. The idea of a Soviet agent going aroundthe capitals of Europe with full accreditation from the Britishauthorities puts the struggles of MI6 and Dansey's vaunted secretsection X at the same time in a salutary perspective. If there was anydoubt about the British commitment to Smollett it was soon to be putto the test, for he and his wife were among those who took refuge inthe British legation in Prague after Hitler entered the city in 1939.The story of their escape, in company with Otto Strasser and otheranti-Nazi leaders, has still to be told. Most remained in Europe butthe Snrolletts wcnt straight back to London where they resumed theirhighly strcccsslirl career. Smollett was destined for one of the most

47

48 Part Two: The World of Spies

influential positions of all, the Soviet Desk at the wartime Ministry ofInformation, a post obtained for him through the personal introduc-tion of the Minister, Brendan Bracken himself.

Collectively these people represent a group of agents, not pre-viously identified, who succeeded as well as the agents who have sopreoccupied the molehunters and spy authors until now. Smollett'sown position was one of such eminence that it might be suggested thathe could have acted as an umbrella sheltering the others, and thisumbrella could be yet another reason why the other spies were notseen as such by MI5 at the time or later. However, Hollis must havefully understood who these people were and their allegiances. Theirmost public face was that seen, as might be expected, at the eveningreceptions held by Maisky, the Russian Ambassador. Colleagues ofBurgess's at the BBC recall vividly that these were the mbst importantsocial functions he attended and he never missed one. The simplestcheck by MI5 officers or Special Branch on those entering and leavingwould have given the identities of all the people in Cockburn's circle,had it not been readily available from the phone taps and bugs in theSoviet Embassy and the Daily Warker offices. We will examine thisquestion in detail in the final chapter.

While it is a fact the only one of the group who either knew or hadcontact with Cockburn and was not detained was zu Putlitz, this wasnot because of anything that. Hollis was able to do. Information thathas recently come to light in the Canadian National Archives hasprovided an exact account of how Putlitz was got out of Britainthrough the personal intervention of 'C', the head of MI6, with LordVansittart. In May 1940 Vansittart approached the Canadian authori-ties in London about the finding of possible places of safety for certainGermans in Canada. Zu Putlitz was one. Otto Strasser, then in Lisbonand a particular concern of 'C's, seemingly because of light he mightbe able to throw on the failed attempt on Hitler's life in the Btirger-briu bomb plot, was another. In a report from Washington on zuPutlitz the Canadian official responsible, W.C. Hankinson, gave a fullaccount of the background:

In May 1940 I was approached by Lord Vansittart and zu Putlitz himselfwith a suggestion that Putlitz should be allowed to proceed to Canada,since the time approached when all able-bodied Germans would be subjectto genelal internment.,, I did not pass this suggestion on to Ottawa sincehe had no frierrds there, instead I proposed to Vansittart that he shouldmake arrangcments for zu Putlitz to go to a West Indian Isle and this wasclrrierl out.,.

It ir r:lear li'om thir that all Vansittart's attempts to have a specialcase

4. The Commun'ist Left and MI5 49

made out for Putlitz, despite his services for MI6 as an agent, were ofno avail, and he would have been detained if he had not gone to theWest Indies. Clearly Hollis in MI5 could make no case for any of theGermans he might'have wanted to protect, such as zu Putlitz, whennothing could be done even at this much higher level. Pincher'ssuggestion that Hollis protected Communists at this point istherefore wrong. At the same time it is not evidence that Hollis wasnot an agent of influence or had dire'ct sympathy with those he wasdetaining. As he must have had intimate knowledge of all the peopleinvolved with Cockburn, as we have described, it is abundantly clearthat he knew all about them and yet later on, at crucial times, didnothing, as we shall see.

That Hollis could not help zu Putlitz and the others does not meaneither that he would have been without value simply as an agent. Hewas in a position to report to any controller he might have had justhow closely MI5 was able to follow Communist activity in the tradeunion movement, where they were doing everything they could toimpede the war effort, especially during the Battle of Britain whenaircraft factories were plagued with strikes and disruptions of allkinds. In March 1940, for example, MI5 came into possession ofsome minutes of an unofficial shop stewards' movement and their'Manifesto of the Provisional Committee of the Aircraft andEngineering Shop Stewards National Council'. The political linebeing followed was that the war was an imperialist war and that everystep should be taken to bring about peace. The background policywas that of 'revolutionary defeatism' advocated by Lenin in 1917.

Only rarely does action appear to have been taken against theindividuals responsible. What happened in one case, that of a shopsteward called William Mason, suggests why. Mason had been foundby his workmates sticking up a poster demanding immediate peace.They had taken him into custody while the Police were called, whothen decided to hold him for his own protection until it wasegtablished whether he was guilty of an offence under theEmergency Powers regulations. It appeared that he was, and Masonwas sent to London from his workplace in the Midlands. He hadgone a long way through the process that would have lead to his

Permanent detention under l88 when his case was taken up by theCommunist Party whose man he was. In a matter of days pamphletsappeared demanding Mason's release, with graphic accounts of hislong service to the cause of the working man and world peacegenerally, Allegations of harsh treatment hovered in the back-grourrd, Mason was released, We have noted that similar campaignswere run by I'ritt against the detention of the Kuczynskis; but there

50 PartTwo: The World of Spies

the case was easier to understand, for those concerned were after allrefugees from the Nazis. It is clear that Hollis in MI5 could havedone little to affect matters one way or the other, though he couldhave played down the extent of the movements. This would havebeen less and less easy, as we shall see, when the Communist Partywent ahead with more positive campaigning through a major frontorganisation calling for a 'people's peace', a natural extension of the'cause of peace'slogan used by Hollis in 1937.

The political tone changed with Hitler's conquest of the greaterpart of Europe in May 1940. MI5's veteran leader Kell was sacked,and a new security authority was set up called the Security Executive,which sat with Lord Swinton as its chairman, and was consequentlyoften referred to as the Swinton Committee. MI5 had a seat on thiscommittee later occupied by Hollis, but their line, which was in factperceived as favourable towards the left, was not always followed. Inparticular the Executive took a very objective view of the CommunistParty. In this they were at odds both with MI5's line as followed byHollis and the senior officer who spoke to Kingsley Martin, and withthe Government's more open policy towards the Party and Russiawhich was being followed in the hope of splitting Russia fromGermany. R.A. Butler had set the scene with a statement in theHouse of Commons inJuly 1940:

The Policy of H.M. Government has been and remains to improve andstrengthen the relations between this country and the USSR. Success inthis policy has appeared more likely since March of this year when theUSSR made a friendly approach to H.M. Government and proposed theresumption of trade negotiations... H.M. Government at once respondedto this approach from the Soviet Government and it is to be hoped that thediscussions which H.M. Ambassador in Moscow is at present engaged inmay finally remove any danger which may have been apprehended thatthe Soviet Government would work either economically or militarilyagainst Britain in the interests of Germany.

The Security Executive were of course aware of this policy, but theywere also aware that any action of the Soviet Union could be taken as

an attempt to lull Britain into a false sense of security for the benefitof their allies, Germany. They were particularly aware that, thoughButler had mentioned Russia's possible economic and military roles,nothing was said about political warfare. One of their earliest actionswas lo comnrission a report on the activity of the Communist Party inthe trade unions, and MI5 duly sent in all they had on the shopstewilrcls'(:onlnlittces; No doubt they pointed out, as they always did,that the eviclcttce tlrcy hatl r:ould ttot bc produced in a court of law,ntrrl tlte llrrblit'outcly which lrnd lrctt t:ttgcrttlcrccl whett Mason was

4. The Communist Left and MI5 51

detained showed that chaos and perhaps a general breakdown ofpublic order would result from wider action. Detention of theleading officers of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union Party,countrywide, had resulted in the detention of 1800 men, with nosteps taken to ensure that their families would be looked after. Therewould be many times that number if the trade union extremists andCPGB members were detained.

The Security Executive were obliged. to accept the validity of thesepropositions. However, on one question they took a strong line, andthat was over the two publications put out by the Communist Party ofGreat Britain, the Daily Worker and The Week, which was supposedlyrun by Cockburn as an independent news sheet. The Daily Workerwas by far the worse offender. Never once did it give even theslightest support to the war effort. Anyone who read it at the timewho was not a regular reader would have been astounded that it wasnot suppressed, or at the very least prosecuted for sedition. TheSecurity Executive took this view themselves and repeatedly askedMI5 for information which would enable them to prosecute theproprietors, who included Haldane and the 'Red Dean', Hewlett

Johnson. But the officer in MI5 responsible for the Workerpersistently said that he could provide no evidence that would standup in court, thus blocking any action. When the paper was finallysuppressed, in circumstances which will be described in the nextchapter, the officer concerned was actually named. He was RogerHollis.

The possibility of there being any misunderstanding about Hollis'sactions here - that he was acting under a general policy directive, forexample, or that his superiors might have been the guilty party - is

removed by an incident which took place in 1940 over a particularlyoffensive Daily Worker editorial.

The Security Executive sent a strong request to Brigadier Harker,wlro was then running MI5, requesting irnrnediate action and thep,roduction of substantial evidence that would clinch the case, sincethe article concerned was blatantly seditious. Harker in reply gavedetails of why he could not be of any assistance and why nothing was

being done:

I have not discussed with the Police or the Director the possibility of suchprosecution [of the Dail",l Worker for sedition] but the attached file relatingto the case of Claud Cockburn (840,119) is an illustration of thedit'tit;rrlties. lt seems to me fronr that file that the police have very little

, irrlirrnratirrrr trf a hind which could be pr,oduced in court as eaidence aboutthe secrt:t rrrlr:lr inat ions ol' t lte r:otrttrtunist pat'ty.

52 Part Two: The World of Spies

The first thing to be noticed here is that in mentioning the Cockburnfile Harker provides us with contemporary documentary evidencethat Hollis was dealing with Cockburn's file ar rhe time, since he itwas who was dealing with the Daily Worker and must have submittedCockburn's file to Harker. This is important, because until now allwriters on the question have had to rely on statements from PeterWright and others that it was so. There is as yet no contemporaryevidence that Hollis kept the file in his own safe throughour the waryears, as Wright and the other Fluency Committee membersmaintain and has not been disputed, although such evidence couldeasily come to light as research in the Public Record Office proceeds.It is quite sufficient, for the general case against Hollis, to know thatit was in fact he who dealt with Cockburn's file and with the DailyWorker and its sister news sheet The Week, and that it was he and healone who was preventing action being taken against them. At thesame time he was protecting Cockburn, The only obviousexplanation for Harker's view was that Hollis was using Cockburn asan agent or that his information was being obtained from someoneclose to him, or by some illegal means such as a phone tap, but this isunlikely, as we shall see in the last chapter.

Although we do not have the Cockburn file itself, and if it stillexists it will almost certainly have been weeded, we do have anabstract of its entry for Cockburn prepared by Hollis as part of ageneral history of the CPGB. The Security Executive requested thisand then copied it to Washington in exchange for a similar history ofthe Communist Party in America. It has been released in theNational Archives in Washington. It was prepared in late lg40 afterthe difficulty over prosecution of the Daily Worker and shouldtherefore be a good guide to how Cockburn was seen by Hollis andhow Hollis wanted him to be seen by the Security Executive:

Claud, Cockbum is pre-eminent amongst those staff members (who assistedthe editor William Rust) and serves as diplomatic correspondent of theDai\ Worker under the alias Frank Pitcairn. An Oxford graduateCockburn was for a time Foreign Correspondent of The Times in theUnited States but later developed conscientious objections to working for acapitalist newspaper and resigned. He is a journalist of outstanding abilitywith a wide range of well placed conracts, and in addition to serving withthe Daily Worher he publishes his own venture The Week, a confidentialnews-letter written in such a way as to conceal its affinity with the(lommunist party, Thc Weekis intended primarily to propagandise bettereducated r:ircles than those reached by the usual communist literature.(kx'kbut'tt lirllows the usual straight communist international line inForeign Al'firils, arrd with his experierrce has proved useful as antx't'griorrul repreicnliliive olt the Westerrr l)urrrpearr Bur.eau of the( lrnrirrlet'rr,

4. The Communist Left and, MI5 53

There is no trace here of anything other than a favourable verdict onCockburn, with more than a hint that Hollis admired what his olduniversity friend stood for. It is by far the most flattering entry in thereport. If this genuinely represented Hollis's view it is hardlysurprising that no action was taken and that the Communist Partywere confident enough to move their campaign from the factoryfloor and the columns of the Daily Worker and initiate a full-scalenational movement with strong revolutionary overtones, appealingfor a People's Government and a People's Peace. We shall examine itin the next chapter.

5

The Revolution That Never Was

The main purpose of a political intelligence officer charged withoverseeing Communist affairs in Britain, even when she was fightinga war against fascism, would be to see that no active revolutionarymovement got under way. When Stalin's Russia, which had alwaysbeen in the vanguard, of the fight against fascism, signed theNazi-Soviet pact in August 1939 and effectively made common cause

with the German Nazi Government, supervision of the Communistsin Britain should have been all the more vital. Hollis, as the officerconcerned, was fully aware of this, as he had already seen the liaisonestablished between Russia and Chiang Kai Shek in China, a model,albeit of lesser significance, for the Nazi-Soviet pact. If a similarrevolutionary movement were to be successfully establis\ed inBritain the European War, not then a world war, would clearly cometo an end, with Germany and Russia the two main powers andBritain an island on the periphery with allegiance to Russia.

We shall now examine the astonishing chain of events which tookplace in Britain exactly along these lines. It ended finally when a

would-be revolutionary meeting took place in London with delegatesrepresenting over a million people intent on bringing about a

revolutionary change with a 'People's Government' and a 'People'sPeace' passing motions which they hoped would start a movementparallel with that which had taken place in Russia in 1917. Themovement was coordinated between Moscow and Berlin. Moscowdealt with propaganda on the ground, using as its principal organthe Daily Worker, with its political leader-writer Frank Pitcairn (that is,

Claud Cockburn) steering the campaign's rhetoric, while Berlinproduced related propaganda over the air which exactly comple-mented what was appearing in the Daily Worker, with appeals to theBritish to stop fighting and make a people's Peace.

In describing the movement that came to be known as the'People'sOonvetttiott' it should be said f rorn the outset that thcre were always

5. The Reuolution That Neaer Was 55

people, such as George Orwell, who regarded it as nothing morethan a cynical attempt fostered directly by Moscow in collaborationrvith Berlin to get Britain out of the war which, after Dunkirk, waseffectively over. This view was held by many in the Labour and tradeunion movement as the call for a People's Convention grew and wasexpressed most vigorously in print in the left-wing paper Tribune,notably by Orwell and John Strachey who had lately split with hisCommunist colleagues and was able to describe in detail exactly whatthe policy of revolutionary defeatism meant and what the realpurposes of the Communist Party were in launching the nominallyindependent Convention movement. Orwell was never forgiven bythe Communist Party or their sympathisers; it was at this time thatrumours that he was working for the security services, recentlyconfirmed by American sources, began to circulate. There is littledoubt that the banning of Animal Farm by the Ministry ofInformation in 1944 was a by-product of this bitter struggle in 1940seen in the columns of Tribune and the Daily Worher. Although therest of the press largely ignored the Convention movement, perhapsas a result of the censor's stops, Hollis and MI5 lvould have beenquite sure that they were not alone in perceiving what washappening. With the natural divisions in British society othermembers of the Security Executive may well not have been aware ofexactly how strong the movement was becoming until they sawposters on the streets. They rvould then have asked MI5 - that isHollis - what was going on. We cannot know the extent to whichHollis played down the significance of the movement, but thedifficulty he made over the Daily Worher suggests that he would nothave exaggerated what Cockburn and his colleagues were doingwhile preventing at all costs any move against their papers.

The first sign that the Communist Party of Great Britain intendedto respond to Germany's victory in Europe and Britain's evacuationfrom Dunkirk by a major political campaign calling for a People'sP€ace came in an official Party statement published in the DailyWorker on 22 June 1940. Six days later William Gallagher, theCommunist MP, expressed the opinion in the House of Commonsthat 'the time has come for a complete reorganisation of theGovernment in the form of a People's Government'. Then, on 7 July,at meetings at Holborn Town Hall and the Conway Hall, a

cclmmittee with the slightly awkward title of 'The People's VigilanceCommittec' was set up to pursue aims almost identical with those ofthc Oornrrrrrnist Party, though it was not officially stated that it wasrun lry the Party. Its manifesto, A Call to the Peopll, was written byD,N, Pritt who, as wc h:rve seen, wars in the forefront of the

&itffiT.*'a-;

't..'!t

54

-4.

5Cr Part Two: The World of Spies

movement to get key German Communist detainees freed. Theappeal was cunningly worded to imply falsely that the committee hadthe support of the Labour Party:

To those who are not socialists or members of the Labour Party the appealis equally urgent. The old order is passing, after it has worked incalculableevil in this twentieth century, hitherto so tragic and murderous, yetpossessing in its capacity for material progress an infinite promise of a

freer and happier life for all. Let all men and women of all classes give-

their thoughi io the future, rally to this policy, and find their way out oftragedV into peace and prosperity.

There then followed a succinct summary of the statement issued inthe manifesto which was identical with the Communist manifestoissued a few days previously: The Men of Munich must go; We mustbe friends with the USSR; Our democratic rights and our tradeunion conditions and practices must be restored and maintained;Our standard of living must be defended, and profiteering must be

stopped; We must have a People's Government and a People's Peace'

A more demoralising programme in a country at war could not beimagined. Yet much of it appeared to be echoed in Butler's speech,already quoted, which was widely reported in the press at the time.No doubt Hollis, responsible for monitoring Communist activity, was

duly recording all these facts and identifying the Communist Partymembers, such as the chairman Harry Adams and the vice-chairmanWJ.R. Squance, who were running the organisation under D.N.Pritt. If he was monitoring Cockburn's activity, or using him as asource, he would have rapidly built up a picture of the entireoperation. If he did not know through these sources of theinvolvement of Berlin in the programme, the MI5 officers whocensored the BBC's monitoring units'output in their daily Surunaryof World Broadcasts would soon have pointed out broadcasts appealingfor a People's Peace that exactly echoed the calls put out in London,many on 'black' programmes such as 'Workers Challenge'purporting to be in England. Even Attlee was aware of the broadcastsand complained about them in a public speech. A fiercecorrespondence ensued between him and D.N. Pritt which was

prrblished as part of a bitter pamphlet war, with the title Another LieNaiktl: Tfu Prilt-Attlee Letters. This revealed that Pritt had been inconrnrunir:atirln with the enemy -both with supposedly'underground'(lrruruttrrists itt (ierrn:lny, whose letters he freely quoted, and withtltc (lct'tttittt :tttthot'ilics, who dcnied that there had been anynrclrtion ol' tltt: l'coplc's ()otrvctttiott irt thc (ierman prr,r.r within(ict'ttrirtrl' * t'ot't't't'tl!', sittt't' tltt: grt'cllxtgitttcla hncl bcctt t:<ttt{'ittccl t<l

5. The Reuolution That Neuer Was 57

their English-language radio stations, black and white. It is quitc:clear, as we shall see, that for six months nothing was done about tltcmovement by the authorities, who let it run its course, no cloubtlulled by Hollis's anodyne reports and his blocking of action againstthe Daily Worker, the campaign's mouthpiece.

With the party truce in operation, the conflict that rapicllydeveloped around the People's Convention movement, as it was soonrenamed, took on a much lvider significance; it was the onlymovement which totally opposed the war at a time when Britain wasat her lowest point. It is essential for an understanding of thebackground to Hollis's work in monitoring the Communist Party thatwe should examine the campaign in some detail. Many of the figuresinvolved, such as Alan Nunn May, are to be found mentioned in themolehunters' analyses of Hollis's failings. The need for some accountof these events is all the greater because they have been almostCntirely neglected, although they rank among the most remarkablein modern British political history. After Britain and Russia becameallies, the whole episode became embarrassing to all sides: to theCommunists because they had clearly been acting with Berlin tobring the war to a rapid end, to the right because any idea that a

revolutionary movement could exist in modern Britain in whatever$uise was anathema. None of the books on Hollis or the Soviet molesF€ntions the People's Convention movement at all, even though itsrupervision must have been the most important job that Hollis had atthis time. That the Fluency Committee grilled Hollis about why hehad not said that he knew Cockburn but did not even mention thcmovement suggests that MI5's files had been so thoroughly wecclerlby then that even they did not know what had happened in 1940 an<l

194 l.The first campaign seized on by the People's Convention was thc

question of bombing and the need for adequate shelters. Far frotrrItrengthening public morale under the severest trials it had evcrGxperienced, the movement sought to break morale at every point.The advent of heavy bombing on London had long been anticipatedby the Government; back in 1936 the Cabinet had believed thatMussolini would attempt a 'mad dog' attack on London rvith hisbomber squadrons, which had recently flown across the Atlantic toAmerica. Yet no real thought had been given to such obviousCXpedients as the use of the tube tunnels as shelters, Irnrnediatclytfter the first raids l,ondoners to<lk the law into thcir owtr hatrds attclOce upicd kcy statiotts. Thc first was Filcphitnt artcl (lastlc, {irllowcd by'

Ghalk !'at'ttt, irt wltat was <lest:ribcrl :rs thc biggcst wot'kitig-<:litssilcRtonstlirtiorr thc t:irpitirl lrirrl t'l'cr' sct'rr.

Part Tuo: The World of Spies

The Communist Party, in collaboration with the People'sConvention organisers, set up so-called 'deep shelter committees'usingJ.B.S. Haldane, a pioneer of concern on ARP, as spokesman,with Nunn May a main supporter. Genuine shelter committees whichhad sprung into existence were taken over by the Communists inwhat were sometimes violent struggles. Claud Cockburn unhesitat-ingly followed the Party line with malicious allegations to inflamepublic protest, remarking in The Weeh:'"fhe deep shelter committeeshave been broken up by gangsters hired for the purpose, withcomplaints to the Police proving of no avail...'He proceeded toreport at length a rumour that a child had been crushed to death in astampede for one of the shelters, claiming that the authorities haddeliberately hushed up this and similar deaths. When it was pointedout that no child had been reported missing, he replied:

Since there are no coroner's inquests on air-raid casualties and since scoresof children unattended from many areas of London run wild in andaround the shelter in question, like the 'homeless children' of the Russiarrrevolution, this evidence, ol lack of it, is less strong than it would have beenin peace time.

Every article that Cockburn wrote at this time was preoccupiedwith the possibility of immediate revolution on the streets of thecapital. They were the worst kind of sedition at a time when themorale of the British people was being tested as never before.Cockburn has been seen in later years as a 'character' whoseeccentricities were to be tolerated. The reality was that his activities atthis time rank among the most offensive in the history of Britishjournalism and he did not scruple even to run disguised pro-Nazipropaganda at the behest of his Soviet masters in the Comintern. Aparticularly unsavoury example occurred in 1940 over the Polishquestion. The Vatican had delivered to the British Government bysecret means the first detailed dossier of Nazi atrocities in Poland;this had been published both as a book and as innumerable details inBritish propaganda stories. In order to counteract this, Cockburnpublished a story that the Vatican was secretly negotiating with Hitlerto establish a new closer concordat.

The story was widely believed and was yet another instance of theOommunist Party playing the anti-Catholic card which, as they hadcitt'ly lcartrecl, was invaluable in dealing with certain sections of thellrrglislr cstlblishrncnt, 'fhis kind of exploitation of social prejudiceswirs on(' lhirl t'er;rrircrl tlrc most detailcd knolvledgc of what peopletltorrgltt nrtrl rlirl, nrr<l cxpl:rirrs tltc thirst firr 'gossip' which has

llrurlerl rrrirnl' ollst.r'r't.r's ol'tlrc irctivitv ol'(lorrrrtrrrnist agctrls. Hollis,

5. The Reuohrtion That Neaer Was

reading all this as he updated Cockburn's file, if he was doing hisjob,must have been taken back to the very similar activities of the Commu-nists in China. There was a particular parallel in their infiltration ofthe student movements in China which he had remarked on then inletters to his parents. It was repeated in Britain in 1940. The situationin Cambridge, for example, the home of the so-called 'ring of fivespies', was particularly interesting both in showing how the People'sConvention worked and the point at which the University authoritieswere forced into action. After initial pamphleteering and word-of-mouth propaganda a meeting was arranged for a large body ofundergraduates to be held at the Dorothy Caf6, much frequented byleft-wing students. It was to be addressed by D,N. Pritt. But two hoursbefore he was due to speak the owner was forced to tell the studentorganisers that he could not allow it to go ahead.

A protest demonstration went to the Proctors, who had apparentlybeen responsible, and made vigorous protest. In giving their reasonsfor not allowing the meeting to proceed, they pointed out the dangersof a disturbance and said that their primary concern was 'that theywere unwilling to allow members of the University to lay themselvesopen to prosecution under the defence regulations'. This phrasertrongly suggests the intervention of the security services, through theSpecial Branch no doubt, for such a specific reason could not havebeen given in those words unless in fact they had been informed thatdirect demonstration against thb war and for peace at the meetingwould be taken as an infringement of the Emergency Powersregulations.

Soon after the main Convention meeting in London, in January1941, a meeting was organised by the Cambridge Undergraduateeouncil at the Guildhall on the topic'The Freedom of Speech in War'.Prominent among the speakers, and one of the principal organisers,wos Raymond Williams, at that time secretary of the Union Society,who revealed that the authorities had gone beyond banning the

_ Dorothy Cafd meeting by suggesting that it would be in 'good taste' ifthe Union Society ceased its world-famous debates for the duration ofhostilities.

Overt action of the kind which appears to have been taken by thetccurity authorities here is interesting in showing that they were fullylware of what was going on, no doubt informed by Hollis and his' colleagues. It couldbe iaid that, while prepared to let a genuinepolitical rnovement run its course in the public arena, they could notbe reen to all<lw any continental or Chinese-style student disturbances

59

;ffi.*.to develop, particularly as many of those involved would shortly. bccotne of'lir:crs in thc arnrccl lirrccs,

Part Two: The World of Spies

Another central plank in a genuine revolutionary movement was,of course, strong support for industrial workers and a strong base inall factory committees and union movements. It was here thatTribune and other Labour papers took their firmest stand. At firsttheir policy was to ignore the Convention movement, butcorrespondence began to come in from workers. This letter from aDurham miner is perhaps typical:

I see you are declining to make further comment on the Communistcontrolled'People's Convention'. Perhaps you are justified in London butin several other places people are being fooled by it and I wish you wouldprint the circular which the Durham Miners Association has sent out whichputs the matter quite plainly.

The most characteristic complaint was that individual unionmembers, often senior officials, would put themselves forward as

delegates to the Convention when their unions were unaware of it ordisapproved of it. The organising secretary of the Convention, whoin real terms ran it, Arthur Horner, President of the South WalesMiners Federation, was the most obvious example. Tribune pointedout that the Union had not backed the Convention and had actuallyvoted against involvement. The Daily Worher took the other vierv, andclearly thought that revolution was indeed about to break out. TheWeek echoed this in Cockburn's best style:

The first sporadic opposition in the factories has also gained enormouslyboth in strength and cohesion and is expressing itself in support of thenou' famous five point programme of the People's Convention. Thecharacter of the support ranging from shop-stewards of virtually everyimportar-rt aircraft factory to leading artists and musicians leaves no doubtof the breadth ar-rd depth of the opposition [to the war] that has gatheredand is gathering. It is clear from the character of the press attacks andother attacks upon the People's Convention Movement that theindustrialists are above all alarmed at the strength of the 'drive' developingon the r,ages issue... it is essential from the viervpoint of the ir-rdustrialiststo interfere drasticalll' with. . . some form of compulsion in industry.

There are signs here of a leak, for industrial conscription was indeedbeing considered at this time and seems to have been one of thepositive steps taken by the Government to deal with the possibility ofinclustrial unrest, if not revolution, of whose strength in the absenceof'norrtrirl political processes they only had anecdotal evidence.

Wc ltirvc ttrcntiorrccl thc (]errnan radio broadcasts in Englishsrtplrost'rlly lx:irrg prrt out l)y stations opcrating illegally in Britain. ItItin lrct'tt sttggt'stt'rl tlrirt li'rv pcoplc listcnccl to thcsc stations, thenriritr r)uc lx'itrg 'Wot'kt't's (llrlrllt.'rrgr", Brrt t'virlt'rrcc th:rt thcy wcre

5. The Reuolution That Neaer Was

listened to, and that their line was very close to that of the People'sConvention, has been found in accounts by one of the few radioreporters to mention these broadcasts, Fred Harold in Tribune. Themyth of the BBC's unbroken record of broadcasting withundiminished strength throughout the blitz cut no ice with him:

I tried to get the BBC I o'clock News in London last night. It was almostimpossibleto get or hear when got, in fact I gave it up. But on the Mediumwaveband no less than FIVE Nazi or Nazi-controlled radio stations werecoming in at full strength all the time.

He also gave a clear idea of how close the radio stations were to eachother in content, with hints on how to tell one from the other:

Now that Goebbels runs his 'Workers Challenge' radio station it is

exceedingly difficult to seParate one proPaganda from another. Theyborrow each other's phrases without hesitation. I have found only twolitmus tests which are still valid. The Fascist will bring in spite against thejew sooner or later whereas the Communist will not. The Communist willspeak of Russia and Stalin with a sort of religious reverence w-hich canimmediately be recognised and separated from the sort of uneasyevasiveness with which the fascist deals with the subject.

With such determined propaganda it is hardly surprising that theorganisers of the People's Convention, and even more their naiverfollowers, thought that they really were taking part in the build-up towhat would be a turning point in British history.

The Convention when it finally happened was a completeanti-climax. No revolution broke out and the authorities took onlyrelatively few steps, which effectively guarded against all possible

dangers. The photographs reproduced as Plates 4 and 5 were takenby a representative of Picture Posl. They show a few celebrities on theplatform besides D.N. Pritt and the other leaders, notably BeatrixLehmann and J.B.S. Haldane. Also present were the future PrimeMinister of India, Mrs Gandhi, and Krishna Menon. (The presence

Of the last two cannot necessarily be taken to represent anycommitment to the Communist cause.) For the most part thetudience appear uninspired and more curious than militant. Theylook like the sort of people who, if there had been no party truce,would probably have attended any fringe party political meeting.

The bland reality did not prevent Claud Cockburn fromdescribing the meeting in terms which were almost certainly thectuse of the closing down of the Dai\ Worker and his own paper' AItudy of the photographs taken at the Convention does not reveal a

ringle soldier in uniform. This did not deter Cockburn's ringinglccount of'events fi:llowing on the Cttnvention:

61

Part Two: The World of Spies

What is the biggest event this week? You may have your own notions aboutit, but I think this. I think that the biggest event this rveek is the fact that in56 different barracks and camps of the Army men are gathering togetherto listen to their delegates - their soldiers' delegates - reporting to them onthe proceedings at the People's Convention, and at the same time thosesoldiers were meeting... scores, hundreds of thousands of workers not inuniform were doing the same thing or preparing to do it in all the greatfactories of the mighty war-machine of Britain.

A classic example, no doubt, of wishful thinking, but quite sufficientfor the Security Executive finally to lose patience at such obviousincitement and to arrange for the paper to be suppressed withintrventy-four hours. The file on the decision to suppress the papershows without doubt that Hollis was the MI5 officer dealing with thecase. The Security Executive made their report to the war cabinet,rvhich on the same day issued the relevant instructions:

The War Cabinet, having decided that the Dailt Workcr land The Weeklshould be suppressed the Secretary of State IHerbert Morrison] made anorder under Emergency Powers Regulation 2D. The procedure hadpreviously been discussed rvith Mr. Canning, Mr. Hollis of MI5, Mr. Innesof the Lord Advocates Department and the relevant orders arrd noticeswere dlafted.

It is natural to ask, in view of Hollis's undisclosed friendship withCockburn, whether he attempted to warn him beforehand in anyway. There is in fact direct evidence that there was some priorwarning, described by Patricia Cockburn in The Years of The Weeh.After explaining that the issue of The Week which was banned hadbeen mild compared with the normal issues, and that it had beenconcerned with affairs in the United States, Ireland and Chile, shecontinues:

Rather absurdly as things turned out, the editor fher husband, ClaudCockburnl had allowed himself to be persuaded by friends in high placesthat a couple of innocuous issues of the paper r.vould save it. In reality thedecision to suppress it had been taken a considelable time before. Theissue of l5January was seized by the Police before it could appear and wasbanned.

In fact, as we have seen, the decision to suppress the paper was takenwithin twenty-four hours, in the face of opposition from Hollis atMlI'r rvho was still, no doubt, putting forward Cockburn's file as arcilson wlty no action could be taken. If there is any truth in thesttggcsliorr tltlt thc (lockburns hacl been warned by'f'riends'in high;rlitces tlrrt lrciiorr rrriglrt l)c tirkcn lgairrst thcnr, it is clif'ficr.rlt to seetvlto it t'ottkl possibly lruvc lrccrr othcl thlrn l-lollis hirrrscll'. ll Hollis

rat*a*.

5. The Reaolution That Neuer Was

kept the Cockburn file under lock and key it was not available to othersin MI5. They, in any case, would not have been following the affair indetail, which would have been essential if a timely warning was to bedelivered. Hollis must have realised that there was a risk thatthe DailyWorker would be suppressed. This could not be avoided if theConvention meeting had anything like a success. But he may havehoped to get a stay of execution on The Week, which was particularlyvaluable as a propaganda weapon aimed at the literati and upper-middle classes, whose naivety was such that they failed to notice theCommunist policies behind its flippant tone. In any event Hollis'sfailure to disclose his connection with Cockburn at this seriousjuncture is most damaging for his case.

Anyone looking at the photographs of the People's Convention cansee that the meeting was by any proper 'revolutionary' standards afailure unless it was going to be a particularly quiet 'English' revol-ution. Despite Cockburn's boasting about soldiers going back to theirbarracks in the 'lgl7'spirit there was nothing resembling this to beseen. The closure of the Daily Worker and The Week and the generalclamp-down that this initiated was sufficient to quell whatever lifethere was in the movement, despite the fact that the various sub-committees of the Convention continued in action. Nor was anymember of the Communist Party or any other person detained underthe Emergency Powers regulations. This was particularly noticeableover the suppression of the Daily Worker, since the only other paper tobe suppressed in the war, the British Union paper Action, had seen itsstaff detained wholesale, including ordinary employees of the printerswho had no connection whatever with the paper's political controllers.The most drastic action taken overall seems to have been Bevin'sintroduction of industrial conscription. Whether this could be directlyattributed to a need to cope with the success of the Conventionmovement among the organised workers through the shop stewards'movement is open to question. Although Arthur Horner and hiscomrades were well known, their activities were also well understood.The British Labour movement generally had come to know themethods of Communist infiltration only too well. But even if there wasno link it would have served as a timely reminder to those attracted tothe idea of a People's Peace that the country was in fact at war and wasgoing to remain at war until victory was achieved.

The most amusing post-script to the whole affair was provided byCockburn hirnself:

Witlr \xl papcls to work lbr I felt as if I had been sudclenly castrated. Iwotkcrl ilritirbly' irrrrl inef'lcctivcly as n solt of l)rrblir: Relations :urd Press

63

Part Two: The World of Spies

Officer for that congeries of loud-mouthed committees called thePeople's Convention. I detest committees, conferences and publicspeaking, and since the People's Convention involved a non-stopexperience of all three I used sometimes to wonder at that period whetherI had died without noticing it and was in hell for my sins.

What had undoubtedly died was any possible concern for the truthon Cockburn's part, for despite his close involvement in every stageof the movement, right down to his article in the final issue of theDaily Worher, he makes no mention of his role in the affair other thana comic account of the actual suppression.

When the Official Report of the Convention came to be published,an anti-climax if ever there was one, there was an amusing echo ofHollis's earlier experiences in China, for one of the messages ofsupport read out at the Convention was from Mao Tse Tung:

The great Chinese People have experienced three and a half years ofheroic rvar of liberation and will continue with ever more solidarityfighting and crushing Japanese Imperialism and its lackeys for a newdemocratic country. Hoping for a strengthening of international militantsolidarity between the British and Chinese peoples.

The statement had been cabled from Chunking and musttherefore have gone through the censorship, when it would havebeen reported to Hollis in the usual way. No doubt he would haveagreed with every word. Although its militant note would not havechimed in with the Convention's appeal for a People's Peace, it showshow close the Chinese Communist line was to that which was to beestablished when Britain and Russia joined forces after the Germaninvasion of Russia, and to Hollis's publicly expressed line before thewar. Appropriately the Convention movement was wound up themorning after the invasion.

There has been considerable discussion about Stalin's apparentignoring of Churchill's warnings that Hitler was about to invadeRussia. Churchill had his information from intercepted Germancommunications and, in view of the subsequent debacle, it hasseemed entirely plausible to believe that Stalin stubbornly refused tolisten to him until the very last moment. In fact matters were not assimple as that. Files in the Public Record Office establish that D.N.Pritt, still leader of the People's Convention movement, was closelyinvolved in moves by Stalin to avert what was only too plainly aboutto l:r'cak upon him,

Iltttlct"s spccch, cprotcc.l carlicr', pointccl the way to stronger tradebctwccrr llritirin arrtl Russi:r, lncl thut approach developed in thenlonth$ lirlklwirrg, lltrt tlrclc wcrc slr,rn)l)lirrg lllor:ks. l)r'irrc:ipal ilnlonl{

5. The Reaolution That Neuer Was 65

them was the position of the Baltic states and Turkey. StaffordCripps in Moscow had failed completely to come to terms with Stalinon these and other matters and was cordially hated there. Stalinknew that things had rapidly gone to the bad between himself andGermany from the beginning of 1941, although it is not clearwhether his failure to deliver the promised revolution in Britain hadany direct connection with this. He had been obliged to build up histroop concentrations on the German border, and the Germans hadbuilt up theirs. In a final desperate move he tried to deal directly withChurchill in London, using as an indirect route D.N. Pritt, who inturn approached Anthony Eden through Sir Walter Monckton.

The detailed points Pritt made, embodying in precise diplomaticterms the exact situation vis-i-vis the three parties, were an attemptto use every possible argument to show that, whereas Britain, andChurchill, were convinced that a German invasion of Russia wasunavoidable, Russia did not think so. Indeed Stalin was convincedthat, if only Britain and Russia could come to terms in the matter ofthe Baltic States, a question of disputed gold and shipping, and overTurkey, a question of warm water access for Russia with other'minor' details, a formal treaty between the two countries could beentered into and Germany would thennot invade Russia.

Eden circulated Pritt's letter to Butler, who remarked on severalerrors in it, and to the senior Foreign Office official, Orme Sargent,who agreed that it should be ignored. The approach came tonothing, and within weeks the invasion of Russia was a reality. ThePeople's Convention was wound up and the Communists who hadpreviously been sabotaging the war effort whenever possibleimmediately executed a complete uolte face and threw their fullweight into the fray. 'The Revolution that Never Was'was consignedto history.

6

Our Soviet Comrades:The Projection of Russia in Britain

When the Nazi-Soviet pact was signed in August 1939 the membersof the British Communist party had to do some hard thinking inorder to arrive at a justifiable position. When Germany invadedRussia on 22 June l94l the British public as a whole had to come toterms with a similar shock: Russia was now an ally. Winston Churchilltook a realpolitik view, saying that he would make a favourablereference to the devil himself if he were to aid Britain and the alliesin their struggle against Germany. His immediate broadcast to thenation provided the leadership without which a new publicconsciousness of the situation would have taken many months toestablish. But in the weeks immediately following the invasiondetermined efforts still had to be made to change the public's mind.This was done mainly through the media, which then meant radioand the press. Both worked in collaboration with the Ministry ofInformation [MOI], taking advice on policy from the Russiandepartment there which, as we have mentioned, was run by PeterSmollett. The BBC was to some extent autonomous, but it had aproducer working for it rvho was an expert on Russia, a closecolleague of Smollett and a personal friend - the ubiquitous GuyBurgess. It is no exaggeration to say that the image of Russia whichwas placed in the public mind in Britain following Churchill'sbroadcast was largely the rvork of Smollett and Burgess, both ofwhom, we now know, were Soviet agents, and their colleagues. Onecannot but admire the Soviet spymasters for having two of their menin strch crucial posts at the very molnent they were needed. At thesirrnc tirnc thc llritish equivalcnts of'these spymasters would clearlyItitvc lt:rtl glcat clif'fictrlty in bclicving that thc two tnen werc notsirrrllly tkrittg ir,jolr, lnd that lhcir Sovict s)'nlpathics wcrc not rncrelywltitl lltc llolitit's ol'tht'lrorrl rlt'rrrirrrrlt'rl ol'tlrt'rrr. Il'Hollis h:rrl

{ir i,l

,

6. Our Souiet Comrades: The Projection of Russia in Britain 67

announced that he suspected Burgess or Smollett he would havefound little sympathy for his denunciation, for wasn't it quite obviousthat these were the views they would have - shared indeed withChurchill himself, his faithful henchman Brendan Bracken and agrowing proportion of the British public? The very idea of a

penetration agent, now a commonplace, was then new and original.Further, bv this time Hollis was working with colleagues in MI5,notably with Anthony Blunt, Guy Liddell and Roger Fulford, whowere close friends of Burgess's. He candidly admitted seeing much ofBlunt socially during the war and would thus also have met Burgess,at their flat. As has been suggested, he may well have come across thecircle before the war when he looked up Fulford, subsequentlyrecruiting him into MI5. But this is not to say that Hollis wasnecessarily guilty by association.

There is a considerable difference between sympathising with apolitical viewpoint, acting as an agent of influence, as Hollis could beseen to have acted over the Daily Worker affair, and actually crossing astreet to hand over documents and information to an agent of a

foreign power, however close an ally.In projecting an image of Russia in the public mind Smollett

adopted a variety of tactics. In public, and in dealings with theForeign Office, he could take a position mildly critical of Russia, or atleast one that strained to be objective. But within the corridors of theMinistry of Information he was totally committed to the Russiancause and international Communism. His memoranda, some ofwhich have survived in the Public Record Office, show that heworked either directly in collaboration with the Soviet AmbassadorMaisky or through Maisky's press attach6. A good example of thesystem at work can be seen on the occasion of the 24th Anniversaryof the USSR. A Political Warfare Executive directive was sent to allnewspapers and the BBC saying that the event was to be treated as a

Russian news item, and in that sense only, with no actual celebratorygovefage. News of the directive appears to have reached the SovietEmbassy, who telephoned Smollett and sent round their pressattach6 to discover what he intended doing by way of publicity forthe anniversary which was 'the National Holiday of theUSSR'. Smollett's first line of attack was on his old stampingground, The Times, where he called up an editorial, despite the PWEdirective. As he minuted:

I allangc<l with (lalr <tI'Thz Tilrc.s [E.H. Carr], unofficiallv, that therew<rulrl lrc a fir'st lcadcr in T'hr Tints which will be very friendly and possiblyil l unl( )v('r' l l t'eat u tt rliscttssiotr otht"t' t lttttt nrt editorial l.

liffll*.

68 Part Two: The World of Spies

His next problem was with the BBC who had received the PWEdirective through the policy liaison official Ivone Kirkpatrick (astaunch anti-Communist who was to head Lord Mayhew's IRD afterthe war). They naturally followed this line. Smollett suggested to acolleague at the BBC that they might consider a programme ofmusic, with a complimentary programme 'in view of the very obviousstep taken by Maisky which was no doubt intended as a definite hintthat they would welcome something', but they declined. He was alittle at a loss on how to proceed next, when the Foreign Officephoned him to ask what was being done in the press and on the BBC.Smollett seized the opportunity and said that the BBC were onlyplanning a news item, under instruction from Kirkpatrick, butwithout mentioning that this was due to a PWE directive. He thensuggested the musical programme which he had agreed withMaisky's attach6 and asked directly whether the Foreign Office sawany objection. In due course the Foreign Office let their wishes beknown to Kirkpatrick, and the programme went ahead, on conditionhowever that the Internationale should not be played! No doubt thePWE were annoyed to find their directive circumvented. If theypressed a direct enquiry it would have foundered on the MOI'sRussian Department, which Brendan Bracken defended against allcriticism, as he did all his staff throughout his time as Minister. Asexamples of a brilliant agent of influence at work it is difficult tochoose between the ability to order an editorial from The Tirnes,which Smollett did here and at other crucial times, such as thecontroversial occasion rvhen the British took action against theCommunists in Greece, and the ability to run circles round the PWE.No doubt Philby acted with such dexterity on many occasions, but theactual evidence is never likely to come to light.

Smollett's need to struggle against the PWE and Kirkpatrick showsthat not everyone fell in immediately with the pro-Soviet line.Among those who did not was the Security Executive, as we haveseen. In October 1941 they issued a fresh study on the CPGB in theform of a 'considered answer' to the question 'Holv far should theCommunist Party's professed support of National Unity and theNational Effort be accepted at its face value?' The report itself is stillclassified, but to judge from the reactions of an American official inl.ondon, A.J. Drexel Biddle Jr., its tone was plainly critical. It is alsoclcar that the rcport was not prepared by MI5, i,e. by Hollis as theOorurnurrist :rf'firils of'ficcr, btrt by 'a high ranking British Authoritywlto sclvt's in tlrc r:<lnliclcrrti;rl calncity of' liaisou in rnattcrs ofst't'ttt'ity' lrt'lrvt't'tt tlrc lllitislr lrrr<l Allicrl (iovcrnrncrrts Icxr:lrrrlingSovit't ltttssilt ol't'ortt'st'l'. lr is irrlt't'r'stirrg th;rt MI1-r, rvith llrcir scirl on'

6. Our Soaiet Comrades: The Projection of Russia in Britain 69

the Security Executive, were no longer the only compilers of suchreports, though it is not clear whether their change in status at thecreation of the Security Executive was as a result partly of a collectivedrift towards the left in their ranks which made them no longer anobvious choice for such work. Certainly many of their officers wereactual penetration agents, as has become notorious, and this may wellhave been associated with some such drift within the organisationcontinuing after the creation of the Security Executive. Later reve-lations have established that the one MI5 officer who unquestionablyheld right-wing views was Maxwell Knight. At about this time Knightprepared a paper, The Comintern is I''lot Dead, which was submitted toHollis, who rejected it with the observation that it was 'too theoretical'.All other papers Knight sent that in any way reflected on the generallyestablished line on the Communist Party had to go to Hollis's desk, andgot no further, according to Knight's secretary Joan Miller, in herautobiography, One Girl's War, which is still banned in the UnitedKingdom. Whether Knight's opinion which he sent to Churchill'ssecurity man at No. 10, Major Morton, reached the compiler of theSecurity Executive report will probably never be known, but it doesestablish that Knight was not entirely on his own in being suspicious ofthe Communists, while also making clear that Hollis, as the MI5 experton Communist affairs, was certainly not pressing any anti-Communistline himself, rather suppressing the reports of those who were andprotecting Cockburn and his associates.

Smollett surmounted his difficulties in the next few years bycreating a public image of Russia which was as far as possible from thepre-war 'stalinist purges' view. Play was made with the religiousrevival being experienced in Russia, a phenomenon the authoritiesthere apparently viewed with favour. The best example of his work is

perhaps the following circular put out in February 1943:

Arpynnents to Counter"the Ideological Fenr of 'Bolsheaism'

(l) We fThis was an official MOI paper for the BBC and all newspapersand newsreelsl should show that all the horrors associated by Germanpropaganda with the Bolshevik Bogey - destruction of culture, break-upof family life, forced labour, prison camps, seizure of property,destruction of religion, elimination of freedom, etc. - have in fact beenperpetrated by the Nazis themselves in Occupied Europe. In short theio-called 'Red Terror'is merely a reflection in the Nazi propaganda mirrorof the reality of the Nazi Terror.

(2) We shor.rld btrild up a positive picture of Russia which implicitly refutesthe Nazi pictr,lt'e 0f the Bolshevik B<lgey, stressing such points as:

(l) 1'hc lllrliotic lt'clings irrcreasingly dislrlayerl by the Rtrssian people and

Part Two: The World of Spies

encouraged by Soviet leaders during the war, with appeals to past Russiannational glories, etc.

(b) The great contributions made by Soviet Russia (in contrast to NaziGermany) to science, learning and culture, and the continuiry which theyshow with Russian cultural and scier.rtific tradition from the past.

(c) The development of small savings and personal property and individualinitiative in the USSR, as showing that the 'small man'thrives in Russia. Bycontrast the small man has been completely betrayed by Hitler, who, havingclimbed to power on his shoulders, now proceeds to liquidate him.

(d) The creditworthiness of the USSR as contrasted with the Gelmans inirrternational business f raltsactions.

(e) The increasinglv tolerant attitude of the Soviet authorities to$rardsreligion. (Note: this argument must be used with great discretion andsupported with evidence that is likely to command respecr. It should beaccompanied by reasoned explanations ofthe changed attitude ofthe SovietGovernment towards religion, viz: their increasir-rg confidence in thestabilitl, of the regime and the loyalty of the Churches in Russia; and eventhen it should only be used in addressing people already symparheric ro rheUSSR on other grounds. For the rest it is best to try to remove the questionfi-om the sphere of religious controversy altogether; or to take the line -adopted by certain Portuguese and Spanish bishops - that in r-espect ofreligion Soviet policy is certainly no rvorse than that of the Nazis, and thatwhile the Soviet attitude to the Churches has been improving, that of theNazis has steadily deteriorated. At the same time rve should expose thehypocrisy of the Nazis' propaganda line on this point, and their inability toconvince - e.g. their own bishops, l'ho did not rally to the anti-Bolshevikcrusade.)

(f) In building up this positive picture of the USSR, we should encourage allspeciali.st interest in Russian achievements, e.g. b,v interesting militaryaudiences in Russian militarl techniques or doctors in Russian medicalservices, etc.

(3) We should point to the major charrge of direction rvhich has taken placein Soviet policy under Stalin. While the Trotsk,vist polic.v was to bolsrer upthe security of a rr'eak USSR b1, means of subversive movements in othercountries controlled by the Comintern, Stalin's policy' has been and con-tinues to be one of maintairring a strong Russia maintaining friendlvdiplomatic relations rvith other governments - a policy which has beenjustified and confirmed b1' the events of the pasr rrto vears. If Stalinmaintains the Cominteln ir.r being, it is n.rerely as a second line of defencewhich rvill be proved superfluous to the extent that he can rely on the(:o-opel'atiol"l of Br"itain and the USA.

Wc shoulrl rltrote evidence to shou that palallel n'ith this devekrpment inSovict lxrlicy thclc has becn a clrauge in tlre t1'pe of pelsonuel in power inth(' tlSSR. 'l'hc irk,ologrrt's urrrl <ltx trirraire irrtt nra(ional revolutionar''y' [ofrllriclr Srrroll('t rlits tlrc t,llitorrrt,ll lr:rvt: irrtt.rrsirrgll llt'r,rr leplirr:tri

-bt'

peoplc ol lltc tttirnrrgct'iirl irnrl tcclrnir':rl tr'pr', lxrtlr rnilitlr'1'trrrrl t ivil, u'lro alc

6. Our Soaiet Comrades: The Projection of Russia in Britain 7Iintergsted in getting practical results.

(4) Bearing in mind that in many countries fear of Bolshevism arises,particularly amongst the ruling classes, as a reflection of their fear of'internal disaffection owing to inadequate social conditions, or to rheatmosphere of unrest and disorder following on the cessarion of hostilities,we should stress:

(a) That countries with a progressive social policy at home have nothing tofear from Bolshevism. The best antidote to internal 'Bolshevism' is aninternal policy designed to provide decent standards of living and security.

(b) That Britain and the USA, with the other United Nations, intend torestore and maintain military security, law and order, and economic stabilityboth in Europe and the world, and are preparing plans to that end.

(5) We should point out that, even supposing the USSR wanted to extend itsinfluence throughout Europe, it will not, in the immediate post-war period,have the physical resources to exert undue influence. The food, consumergoods, etc. which Europe will so urgently need when hostilities cease cancome only from the West and not from Russia, which will irself be a deficit

This last point is interesting in showing that the allegations that Stalinhad a blueprint for dominating as much of Europe after the war ashe could was already being countered by propaganda within Britain.A practical example of how the Communist Party actually behavedwas shortly to be found in an incident in Algiers in which, as we shallsee, both Hollis at MI5 and Cockburn were to be directly involved.

Smollett did not have to wage his war against the BBC entirelyfrom the outside. Burgess had already built up an imporrant positionfor himself and a high reputation for his knowledge of Russianaffairs. When the German invasion came he was immediately calledupon for his opinions on the kind of talks the BBC should be puttingout if they were to give the right impression of Russia and create asympathetic picture of her within the shortest possible time. Hisrecommendations did indeed show wide knowledge:

Draft Suggastions for Tallu on Russia

The suggestions which follow are put down hastily, as the problem isurSent.

I have had several informal conversations with .|ohn Strachey andPtrrfess<ll Bernal and one or two people at the MOI and the Foreign()f fit:e, brrt what fr llows is not intended to be in any sense a worked-outst:ltetnc:

(l) l,irelnrru'e: Not nll(ll io be sirirl helc, Wc slroulrl all probably agrce orlrflait *

Part Tuo: The World of Spies

what must be done from the Russian classics. The suggestion has arisen thatWar and Peace, if intelligently handled, could be both an illustration of greatRussian literature and topical, the crossing of Beresina, Kudenov, Borodin,the burning of Moscow, etc., all the instances about which the public isreading in the press.

There is also the famous hunting scene which is probably the mostbeautiful description of old Russia and which was Lenin's favourite passagein Tolstoy, and one which he is said to have been reading, and to havereferred to, during the hunt that took place on the day of his death.

Modern literature: The obvious name here is Zoschenko. This man'ssatires are well known over here. They have the advantages of painting apicture of contemporary Soviet Russia, of being humorous, of not beingBolshevist propaganda, and of being the sort of thing that could not bepublished by the Nazi rdgime in Germany. There are also young Sovietwriters, such as Nicholai Tikhonov and Ilya Ehrenburg who are ranslated.

(2) Science: Professor Bernal [f.D. Bernal] will advise, but he is onGovernment work and is not often available in London. He has suggested

J.G. Crowther (who has spoken for us - badly, but who is in touch and wouldknow who to go to). Haldane, if the ban is lifted, would obviously be anexcellent man. Bernal says that he would be prepared, ifasked, to arrange avery friendly approach for me to Haldane, who he says, is now moredifficult than ever.

(3) Culture: There is possibly something to be done both in history and thearts. Dr Klingender and Dr Blunt are possible speakers on Art - neither areCommunists lThis statement is vitally important as we shall see]. Christo-pher Hill (a Fellow of All Souls) is a Communist but is also probably the bestauthority in England on Russian historical studies. Ballet and Music areprobably easily covered.

On wider topics for 9.20 talks audience, the problems are greater. Threethemes are suggested as being of interest and contemporary importanceand capable ofbeing covered without any too great tendentiousness.

(i) A concept of economic planning: The Soviet Union were the pioneers ineconomic planning, which is now a fairly'safe'subject, or at least one whichis frequently talked about in our programmes. It is suggested that BarbaraWootton, whose book on Planning has a high reputation generally inacademic circles might be used as a speaker here. I don't know what herbroadcasting is like. On town and civic planning Sir Ernest Simon is anauthority, both in general and on the work done by the Russians.

(ii) The Soviet Union treated as a federation of States. It is suggested thatthough the political and economic independence of the nationalities of theSoviet Union is purely fictional, there is nevertheless here a topic of generalimportance and interest, and one in which the Soviet Union has done someultcle$tlilg exlx:nments.

It seerrrs prrrbirbly tlrat tlrc'l'ulkomans, the Uzbeks, have had - at arly rateiun(,nl{ thc yorttlr - lrr itnlrlessiorr ol'national life and vitality, at least on the( lrltln'nl rirle,'l'hele ir plolrahly nrltrlial irr tlrr.work that has be,en <lone irr

6. Our Soaiet Comrades: The Projection of Russia in Britain 73

producing written languages and fostering contemporary culture of theAboriginal people in Central Asia, Trans-Caucasia, etc.

John Lehmann has written a certain amount of interesting stuff onTrans-Caucasia for the Geographicctl Magazine and should be safe on thistopic. Ella Myatt and C[ontroller] H[ome] [i.e. Sir Richard Maconachie]would probably have something to say on Central Asia. There must beothers.

(iii) Carefully handled there should be room for an objective talk on theforeign policy of the Soviet Union. Its peasant and agrarian policy which,though tendentious for other countries, can probably safely be tackled forthe home audience here.

Burgess's identification of Hill as a Communist at this time, firstnoticed in Truth Betrayd, has answered many questions raised byAnthony Glees in The Seuets of the Seraice. The key point is that, as

MI5 had to vet all those who appeared at the microphone for theirpolitical reliability, Burgess, in recommending people for talks whichany producer might put out, had to give their political statusaccurately after consulting MI5. If he had not done so - if, forexample, he had concealed the fact that Blunt was a Communistwhen MI5 knew he was - the first producer to use him would haverun foul of MI5 immediately. We can be sure therefore that Mll didknow that Hill rvas a Communist then, and that they did nol knowthat BIunt was.

What is also clear from Burgess's recommendations here is that hewas quite open about his affiliations: nearly all his chosen speakerswere Communist Party members or of the far left. The matter wasnot immediately obvious to the public because outsiders did notknow how talks were arranged, and Burgess's speakers would bespread through the entire output of the BBC on all its channelshome and overseas. But complaints were registered, usually byConservative backbench MPs and, the charge having being made, itfell to Burgess's Talks Director George Barnes to produce an answer.This he did, writing to the Controller of Home Programmes, SirRichard Maconachie, on l7June 1942:

'Ihe allegation that our broadcasts are biased towards the left, if repeatedwill fester. As it is based upon a misunderstanding of the nature of theOorporation's work I suggest that the following points be made in replyfire then lehearsed the facts before making his crucial argument]. Sinceidcas firl l)r'ogrammes originate with producers, their political views, if any

[sir'!1, an<l the t:ilcles in which they nrove are of great importance. It is

l)l'()lx'r', ;rrr<l I have rrever heard :l conservative deny it, that the BBCpr'ogtarunlc stall slrould bc t'ect'uited largely from young men and it isirxiorurrtit' tlrirl yorrrrg rnt.n tt'rr<l to ntix in progressive circles. (lreat trouble

Part Two: The World of Spies

is taken to make their contacts as wide as possible and the greatest care istaken when planning series of talks to consult experts with politicalsympathies of each kind.

This apologia for youth is an excuse served up even today. In thiscase Barnes can be seen to be deliberately shielding Burgess. It wasuntrue that political sympathies of every kind were consulted in theseprogrammes, as he well knew. Burgess's recommendations, which ofcourse would never have been seen by an outsider, show this beyondargument. Barnes ended on a note of challenging arrogance:

To sum up: the great majority of our programmes have nothing to do withpolitics: criticism of political bias in the remainder must be directed to theresponsible controller [i.e. of the relevant department rather than the BBCas a wholel and the oitic informed th,at ill-directed criticism merefi indicatesignorance Imy italics].

This loyal backing of Burgess by Barnes, for that is what it was,probably stems from close personal friendship which developedbetween them through their common background of Dartmouth andCambridge. I have found no examples of Barnes himself puttingforward a Communist or far-left view.

Just as Smollett had difficulties with the PWE so Burgess foundthat his sympathetic view of Moscow did not meet with universalacceptance rvithin the BBC outside Barnes's Talks Department orfrom Ivone Kirkpatrick. In particular the Home News Departmenttook a more straightforward literal approach to news reaching it,from all sources, about events on the Russian front. The solutionfound, on which no doubt Burgess was consulted, although the exactmechanism by which it happened is not clear, was a savage attack onthe BBC news sent to Brendon Bracken by the Soviet InformationBureau at the Soviet Embassy in London. Bracken forwarded it to SirCecil Graves, Director-General of the BBC:

The Soviet Information Bureau wishes to call the attention of the BritishMinister of Information to a number of incorrect statements made by theBBC during January and February of this year, in which attempts werenrade to anticipate the strategic moves of the Red Army in its struggleagainst the (lerman invaders.

No rrtore serious charge could be imagined, and there followed akrrrg scrics of'allegedly damaging remarks in BBC news broadcasts,witlt rttorc tlran:r hint that there might be some Nazi mole in the BBCrlt'libcrntcly lt:nking viurl information to thc Germans. The resultxotrglrt wirs sirnply thc I|[X)'s strict aclhcrencc to the Moscow line.llt':tckcrr rlrrl,v lt,lrlierl tlrirt thc lll](l harl lrccu srrit:rllly chastcncd,

5. Our Souiet Comrades: The Projection of Russia in Britain 75

while denying all the allegations. We can irnagine the reaction ofBurgess and Smollett, who alohe saw all sides of the episode. It is

extremely unlikely that anyone in Britain would have been able toobtain strategic information about affairs on the eastern front,though the Russians may have had an exaggerated view of theabilities of the British Secret Service MI6. It is equally unlikely thatany MI5 investigation would have been set afoot to see if such a moleexisted in the BBC. Only once, on the outbreak of war, had theSpecial Branch under their direction entered the BBC in secrecy andremoved suspects under the IBB regulations. These included twobrothers and a sister of the famous William Joyce who wrote scriptsfor the German black radio station Workers' Challenge and alsohimself broadcast later in the war. In fact the members of his familyworking in the BBC all proved loyal citizens.

The atmosphere in Britain resulting from the efforts of Burgessand like-minded colleagues at the BBC and Smollett at the MOIchanged rapidly towards one of growing sympathy for Russia. Thiswas transformed into fervid support in many quarters when theRussian Army eventually moved onto the offensive. Simply to blameHollis and others in MI5 for not keeping track of Communistsympathisers at this time is to overlook the basic fact that a greatmany members of the public would have had to be covered. In factMI5, if they had persisted, could have laid themselves open to thesuggestion that they had some actual sympathy with the Nazi enemy.

But the result was that Burgess and the others, including SeftonDelmer, the mole in the PWE identified by Glees, were all able tocontinue with their activities undisturbed, and confident that theircause was the right one. Burgess in particular was able to provide hisSoviet controllers with information of great value obtained while hewas at the BBC.

7

Radio and the Administration of Total War

From the beginning of the war it had been realised that everyeconomy would have to be made in the use of raw materials and inimproving industrial and agricultural output within Britain as far aspossible to save on imports of food and manufactured goods. Anessential feature of the system evolved was the use of radio as asubstitute for the circulation of printed notices and information on awide range of subjects which affected farmers, for example, therebysaving on the enormous cost of printing and paper, which was placedon restricted supply as soon as war broke out. The producer involvedin the talks on agriculture was John Green, a former President of theCambridge Union and an early member of the English Mistery (apatriotic movement) who had subsequently developed an interest inagricultural affairs. In collaboration with the Ministry of Food hesoon established a modus operandi for what was effectively a system ofradio administration in his field. The early morning programme'Farming Today', which still survives, is typical of the kind ofprogramme produced and stands as a tribute to Green's initiative.

When Burgess returned to the BBC it was to restart his pre-warpolitical programmes under wartime conditions. Burgess shaped hisprogrammes along appropriate lines, which were an extension ofideas of a 'radio administration' to the overtly political sphere. Hisrole as an agent of influence in the BBC was important at a crucialtime, but he was also an agent of a more conventional kind. Therehave been various accounts, drawn from defectors, of a massiveoutput from Burgess of information. The assumption was that heknew nothing but 'political gossip and tittle-tatrle' of a kind similar towhat hc h:rd gathered before the war at rhe BBC. In facr, as we shallscc irr this and thc next chapter, Burgess played a highly original andt'otttplit:irterl rolc irr wartimc London which gave him close access totttitny (iovu'nnlent rninisters. "fhrough his krrowlcclgc of thc m<lstitttitttitle rletirils ol'lltt: wiu'on tlrc lrorrrr. li'orrt, wlrit'h cxtc:rrclcd to

7. Radio and the Administration of TotalWar

advance information on budget announcements, and shortagesnecessitating emergency regulations, he would have been able toprovide Russia with valuable insights into the reality of life in Britain atwar. He would also have been able to provide answers on particularmatters of fact through his ability to contact on a priority and highlysecret basis virtually every ministry in London. In his dealings with theArmy, which we shall examine in the next chapter, he saw theAdjutant-General in person, and cleared a whole range of armymatters as they involved BBC coverage in talks br news through theArmy security officers. One of his few failures was with the Ministry ofEconomic Warfare, where his hopes of establishing a liaison seem tohave come to nothing.

To understand precisely what Burgess was doing at the BBC thatgave him such access, and what he made of the wide remit he was givenin the Talks Department, it is essential to understand that he couldquite well form his own political theories on any subject, whetherabout the situation in China, or what was happening in Britain duringthe war. ZuPutlitz, describing Burgess after his defection as one of themost controversial characters in the history of modern England,attributed his initial fascination with Burgess in Cambridge in 1932 tothe fact that Burgess was the first'young Englishman of good family...who seemed really to have made a study of Marxism and who franklyand brilliantly claimed definite left-wing ideals'. The situation inwartime Britain caused him to think seriously about what was happen-ing to Britain and where it was going, Not surprisingly he wasinfuriated by the bureaucracy, almost as bad as it is in modern Britain,that was strangling life everywhere. In 1941, ironically for a Marxist,although perhaps influenced by his profound admiration forChurchill, he thought that one way out of the problem lay through thebroadcasting of Parliament in some form:

In my opinion the present general and almost complete administrativetotalitarianism covering every branch of national life, personal habits and' freedom included, along with industry and wages etc., has enormouslyincreased the desirability of covering Parliamentary debates more fullythan we have ever yet seriously thought of doing. The House is the onlyplace in which these administrative decisions are or can be questioned ordiscussed effectively. The Prime Minister has recognised this in his recentspeeches. Historically speaking this is a new situation. I think it isimportant and possible to meet it - but it will require careful investigationand coverage in higher spheres than ours.

His hopes in this direction were misplaced, as he soon realised. Twoyears later an alternative system had been largely evolved by whichthc inevitalllc wartime regulations and administrative actions could

78 Part Two: The World of Spies

be tested and questioned, and if we look through all the papers wesee that Burgess played a key role in creating ir, and it was this thatgave him his unique position. The basic idea he repeated in minuteafter minute over the years:

May I be allowed the repetition of the general point. Our mobilisation ofman- and woman-power has been in extent the most complete - and inspeed the most rapid of all the belligerent powers. Our rationing,state-controlled and social schemes are probably the most complicated ofall, partly from lack of unification. Berween them these facts have createda novel and urgent personal and national need for a service that I am surebroadcasting and its logical extensions can alone and most cheaply perform.

And in a letter to his most important contributor he once wrote, at adifficult time: 'I imagine somebody, sometime, as well as you and Iwill appreciate the role of broadcasting in administrative marters'.

Wher-r the system that Burgess evolved with speakers rhat he hadhimself found and trained or collaborated with succeeded so well,the BBC naturally attempted to formalise it. A draft memorandumremarked, in an almost verbatim echo of Burgess:

Since the outbreak of total war Government intervention has beenextended to every detail of the daily life of the man in rhe streer with theresult that the public now depends upon an undersranding of Governmentregulations in order to conduct its daily life and efficient administrationdepends upon the public being able ro fill in correctly the official forms.Experience has shown the value ofbroadcasting such explauations and atp_19sen1 tlere are four weekly series of talks with this purpose: JohnHilton Talking'; 'For Home Guards Only'; 'Can I Help yoir?'ind ,Cilingthe Factory Front'.

The first three of these had been ser up entirely by Burgess, andtheir principles had been evolved by him in collaboration wilh seniorofficials in virtually every wartime ministry. The first two will be dealtwith in the following chaprer, but it is worth looking here ar the series'Can I Help You?', perhaps the best of them, togerher with otherprogrammes that Burgess produced almost in passing.

The way the system worked, and it was effectively a substitute forparliamentary representation, was as follows. Regular weeklybroadcasts, normally on Saturday night, covered topics which werecausing difficulty, or needed explaining, to rhe general public. Aspecial link-up was esrablished with the newly formed CitizensAdvice Bureaux, and a close watch was kept on the effect of newrc'gulations or newly drafted forms as they came out. When atlif'fit:ulty o(:('ut't'c(|, whic:h was rrsually obvious irnrnediately from(iAB rcporls, eillrcr tlrc spcakcr or Burgcss, as proclucerr was told of'

7. Radio and the Admini,stration o.f Total War 79

it. Burgess then either went to the relevant Ministry in person orestablished reliable contact by messenger with a senior official, and arapid decision was taken on a way either of solving the problem or ofchanging the regulation. This was then conveyed to the broadcaster,who wrote a script incorporating the explanations or alterationswhich was then broadcast as soon as possible. The resemblancebetween this system of going to the CAB and the normal method ofgoing to an MP's 'surgery'was made closer still when correspondencewas encouraged. Almost immediately ten thousand letters and morea month flooded in. All of them were answered with the advice ofofficials of the Ministry concerned, although in each case actuallysigned by the broadcaster.

At first Burgess had arranged talks in his pre-war fashion,ordering individual contributions from friends, as I have describedin Truth Betrayed. Thus in January 194 I he got Aileen Furse, Philby'ssecond wife (with whom he was then living, unmarried, with theirfamily) to do talks in the'Kitchen Front' series about the communitykitchens she had established in wartime London. It is worthremarking in passing that if the molehunters had gone through theBBC's archives they would have established, from details such as this,a more realistic idea of the wartime friendships and life of Burgessand Philby and the rest. Aileen Furse exists only as a shadow in theiraccounts; Burgess is always described in terms of the flat he andBlunt occupied in Bentinck Street, with the Philbys in a differentworld entirely. A glimpse of real life at the time such as this, a friendgiving his colleague's wife some opportunity, and recognition,without any overtones at all is particularly revealing. It is revealingalso that whereas the molehunters never got this close to the world inwhich Philby, Blunt and Burgess lived, Hollis was not only aware of itbut part of it.

The realities of the war situation soon turned Burgess's energiesaway from his pre-war models to his new talks. The first serious topicwas, prosaically enough, concerned with income tax. Before the warabout a million income tax forms were sent out annually. The taxhad evolved from the tax on 'income' in the sense of unearnedincome; it was paid only by those of some means. The crushingfinancial burden of the war had brought about a decision to extendthis'income'tax to ordinary working men and women - people, thatis, who earned their wages, and who had no'income'at all. By 1941

over five million forms were going out, mostly to people who hadnever filled in a form in their lives, until the burden was shifted toemployers by the PAYE system making them unpaid collectors of thetax, Ilurgcss re:tlised that thcre was an urgent need for someone to

Part Tuo: The World of Spies

explain these things and reduce the appalling confusion beingcaused. Luckily he came across an officer from the Inland RevenueStaff Federation, who could speak on the wireless (actual officialswere not permitted to do so) and who also knew the field.

The result in the'Can I Help You?' series was brilliantly successful.So original was the idea that the Chancellor of the Exchequer askedto see the scripts when he heard about it through Sir Gerald Canney,Chairman of the Board of the Inland Revenue. The stage was set forthe closest collaboration at the highest level. Today even genialtelevision broadcasts by Chancellors or their advisors are quitecommon; but then nothing like these talks on income tax had beenattempted before and the impact was great. At one bound massiveadministrative problems which had been causing trouble toindividual officers throughout the country were solved, as peoplelistened in their own homes to simple explanations of forms they hadin front of them. The system was soon extended and rapidlyreplaced the ad hoc issuing of instructions by Ministries, which might,or might not, be included in some news or feature programme. Theold system of a Minister himself infrequently giving a talk on ameasure he was about to introduce delivered in general terms,de-haut-en-bas, was displaced.

Apart from the Treasury and the Home Office, the Ministries withwhich Burgess dealt were those of Labour, Supply, Works, Food, theBoard of Trade, then under Dalton, the Post Office and theAssistance Board. The specific topics dealt with were exceedinglynumerous, and included the Fuel Economy campaign, IndustrialClothing Coupons and rationing generally, the Rent Restriction Acr,the White Paper on War Grants, utility furniture, retail traderestrictions - concerned largely with small shops over which Daltonseems to have taken a particular concern - new legislation onWorkmen's Compensations and so on.

At times the feedback was so direct that rumour of a new measurewould reach Citizens Advice Bureaux before it had been enacted. Asa result Burgess would find himself sitting in on discussions with hisspeaker and an Under-secretary deciding how to treat a particularproblem. Even Budget strategy was not sacrosanct, as we shall see inthe next chapter when the question of a possible raise in army paywas disclosed to Burgess and the BBC by the Treasury before theArmy had been informed or had had time to inform those dealingwith the matter in the field.

'l'herc wcrc of course other producers involved in these series, butnol rnitny, 'l'ltc rnairr one was Nornran [,uker, thc friend who was laterIo tlrt'ow ir pitt'ty lirr But'gcss in New Yrlrk befirre he c:rme home to

7 . Radio and the Administration of Total War 8 I

England for the last time from America in 1951. The work load onall of them was enormous. Occasional flashes of humour occur evenin the drabbest paperwork: someone notices that the radio officer of'the Price Regulation Committee was the appropriately named MissCutting; Burgess alerts a financial expert to do a talk on the Budgetin 1942 and, without making any leaks, suggests he choose as histopic 'austerity'. Many of the issues had political overtones, thoughthese were not often apparent at first. New regulations dealing withthe relation of landlord and tenant having been announced, a

suggestion from 'Can I Help You?' that local government officers orCAB officials would be able to assist with problems brought a speedyresponse from the legal profession, who pointed out that legalmatters affecting two private parties such as landlord and tenantconcerned them and that there was a not inconsiderable body of lawon the matter which was outside the competence of the local CitizensAdvice Bureaux, if they had any legal stinding in the matterl It wasgratifying to both Burgess and his speaker that they established theirgoodwill so well over this question that they were later specificallyentrusted with publicity on the most complex matters of newLandlord and Tenant Law arising from the Blitz which at first hadcaused great injustice and bitterness. A letter from the LordChancellor's Office is perhaps worth quoting at some length:

Dear Mr Burgess,During our conversation on the telephone last night it was arranged that

I should send you such material as I have in my possession with referenceto the Landlord and Tenant (War Damage) Amendment Act l94l so thatyou should, ifyou think fit, draw the attention of your broadcaster to this.It is the view of this department that it would be helpful to the public, inview of the resumption of air-raids if he could deal with this section in oneof his talks. The Ministry of Health,.. are of the same opinion.

You will recollect that in one of your broadcaster's talks he explained theprovisions of another Act for which the Lord Chancellor is responsible...the explanation which he gave of this Act seemed to us to be so satisfactory

' and helpful that we are encouraged to think that this explanation of theeffect nf the War Damage amendment is likely to be as successful... If youand he think that this subject could properly be dealt with in one of histalks I am at your disposal for the giving of any such other information orexplanation which you may require...

If we look at this situation through the eyes of the more naivemolehunters and their wilderness of mirrors we should perhaps beasking whether Hollis ought to have been aware that Burgess wasgaining sur:h dctailecl inf<rrmation with close access to a variety ofleading {igures in wartinte Britain. On occasiotrs when Burgessbrrrrrpetl irrto Ilollis hc worrlrl no rlorrbt ltirvc lxlrc<l hirn with his talk

82 Part Two: The World of Spies

of Administrative Totalitarianism, and indeed if Burgess wassending this material to Moscow one wonders what they would havemade of it, except to see in the changing pattern of events still morefuel for their speculations on how close tlie British revolutiruel tor thelr speculatlons on how close the British revolution mightactually be. There was, however, a more sinister, thoueh nevergh neveractually dalgerous, side of Burge5s's activity in this sphere, and thatwas in his dealings with the Army. 8

Army Morale, Gry Burgess and the BBC

The longest-running series of talks put out by the BBC TalksDepartment, and those which its producer Guy Burgess regarded asby far the most important, were a continuation, in war dress, of apre-war series on unemployment. The broadcaster was thenextremely famous and the best-known microphone commentator onthe harsh realities of the time - the first indeed to reach a genuinemass audience through radio. His name wasJohn Hilton. Reputationis a notoriously fickle mistress, and by the time the molehunters andspy authors came to investigate the Cambridge intellectuals his namehad almost been forgotten. He was even confused with an old schoolfriend of Anthony Blunt's with the same name: in the index for themost recent biographical study of Blunt, Mash of Treachery, heappears in the same entry as Blunt's school friend, leaving theuninformed reader with a very odd idea of his personality!

Burgess first met Hilton at Cambridge. With George Barnes heattended his inaugural lecture as Professor of Industrial Relations, achair founded by Montague Burton expressly for Hilton, and anextraordinary breakthrough because Hilton had never had anyuniversity education or, indeed, ever passed an exam in his life. Hehad begun as a mill apprentice at Bolton and had made his way, bysheer mental ability and a proficiency at statistics, to become anexpert employed by the Garton Foundation and then a Governmentadvisor on statistics in the First World War. He never forgot hisroots, and was the person who suggested to the founder of MassObservation, Tom Harrison, who had earlier investigated primitivetribes in their native habitat, that he go to Bolton and find out whatlife was really like in Britain. With the coming of the slump in thethirties Hilton began a series of talks on unemploymenr which werebroaclcast from factories and unemployed centres all over thecountry. lt was introduced by a talk on unemployment by the Dukeof'Winrlsor', thcn Prince of'Wales; it is probably this talk, and others

84 Part Two: The World of Spies

related to it, that remain in the collective memory when referencesare made to the Duke's concerns with unemployment, at least asmuch as to the single remark 'Something must be done' always citedas its origin. Hilton's early files at the BBC have unfortunarely beendestroyed - they are believed to have been lost in the bombing - buthis files for the war years survive. They give a most detailed insightinto the last years of his life, for, as we shall see, the enormous workload became too much for a man now no longer young, and he diedwhile struggling with the tens of thousands of letters from individualsoldiers and their families who so depended on his broadcasts.

Hilton's first broadcast to the Army was from France, rvhere hehad gone as a roving reporter with the BEF. He returned to Britainwith them, and then in many hundreds of broadcasts covered everypossible facet of Army life as it affected the ordinary rank and fileand their families. This early simple reportage was developed byBurgess into the sort of direct liaison with the authorities that we sawin the last chapter. From concern about the problems of familieswhose fathers were abroad, or even in POW camps, he was led todirect liaison which explained for the Army exactly how they were tocommunicate with the POW camps, where to write to and what theirentitlements might be under rapidly changing regulations. Burgess,or his colleague Norman Luker, verified every detail with the Armydepartments concerned before Hilton broadcast them.

With hindsight, in the security world's wilderness of mirrors, rhepotential offered by this to Burgess would have been very worrying.It was well known that the entire order of battle of the Italian army atthe time of their entry into the war had been worked out byCanadian censorship officials looking through intercepted mail fromItalian soldiers to their relatives in Canada and America. Burgesshad sight of mail, much of it uncensored, sent from every unit inBritain or from members of their families. Further, he was in liaisonwith the Army on matters of morale, as will be explained, and he wasprivy to a great amount of secret information about major events,such as the invasion of Europe, and many less important butembarrassing facts.

As an agent of influence his position was even more dangerous for,unlike Claud Cockburn with his foolish editorials in the Daily Worker,Burgess really was able, through Hilton, to influence what soldiersactually thought. However, while all this is no doubt rrue, it was notthe whole story;we have already seen the distortions which can occurf'rom this kind of loSJic, culminating no doubt in a suggestion thatHollis shoukl havc trcen alert to what Burgess was cloing, or mightcven havc lx:ern slricklirrg hirn, Irr far:t Rrrrgcss clid not nced activcly

8. Army Morale, Guy Burgess and the BBC 85

to conceal his revolutionary convictions. The problems of life inpost-war Britain, as embodied in the Beveridge Report, were as

much a subject of discussion in the Army's Directorate of Welfareand Education as anywhere else, as a candid letter from an officerthere, Major R.A.C. Radcliffe, who was in liaison with Burgess,makes clear in discussing proposed talks by Hilton on the report:

...the Government should watch very closely to see what they can do afterthe publication of the Beveridge report. If they really do somethingconcrete and adopt one or two of the many suggestions which willdoubtless be made, I think they may allay the present suspicions abouttheir intentions; if on the other hand they talk and do nothing, I think itwill be generally felt that they do not mean business and the people willjust watch until the opportunity occurs as soon as the war is over to turnthem out and put in people who will take action.

Whether this turning out will be achieved without trouble andbloodshed, and whether if it means bloodshed to any extent those whowant the new order [sic: the German administration in Europe wasreferred to as the New Orderl will be prepared to pay for it in that way is Ithink the big question for the future. I confess I do not know the answer.So by all means let us have John Hilton discussing the Beveridge Reportand see what reaction we get.

This astonishing document shows that Burgess's views of a possiblerevolution were as nothing compared to some views current in theArmy and freely expressed in the formal education side of theDirectorate known as ABCA, the Army Bureau of Current Affairs,though not in such unguarded terms as this in their publications.Further, Hilton's broadcasts were definitely seen as a way of gaugingthe likely response within the Army to the actual possibility ofrevolution tout court, with'trouble and bloodshed'.

In fact Burgess was circumspect in his actions, and did not risedirectly to this provocative letter, at least in writing. The Hilton talkson Beveridge produced the usual crop of letters rather than anyrevolutionary demonstrations. The security aspect of havingrevolutionary opinions circulating within the armed forces must havetaken second place to defeating the enemy, if Radcliffe's letter is anyguide, for all Burgess's dealings with the Army were monitored bythe Army's own military intelligence service. Radcliffe's letter forexample had begun by thanking Burgess for two Hilton scripts andthe suggestion that the BBC should go ahead with them would onlyhave been made after they had seen them. This is made quite plainelsewhere in the BBC archives, since Burgess and Luker frequentlydealt dircctly with the security department concerned, a branch ofMilitary Irrtclligcncc, 'MI', but one actr.rally coming under the DMI

86 Part Two: The World of Spies

(Director of Military Intelligence) rather than the 'covert' depart-ments MI5 and MI6, so welf knolvn now, which had been hived offfrom Military Intelligence proper many years before. Therelationship between these departments and MI5, and in particularthe shadowy department known as MI(PW) (presumably MilitaryIntelligence'(Political Warfare)) remain a myster|; but if Hollis, oru.tyo.t. dealing with the activities of the Communist Party, had been

aware of Burgess's affiliations and conveyed the matter to theiropposite ,r.r-b". in the Army intelligence service responsibility forlacl of action would have been theirs. If Hollis or his colleagues

deliberately failed to alert the Army, their action, as we have seen,

was hardly likely to have affected matters one way or the other.However, that Burgess was able to gather valuable informationconcerning morale ind probably lower-grade operational informa-tion is undeniable.

A crucial recognition of the position of Hilton's talks as being as

important as it was perhapsxatural for Burgess to suggest that they

were came rn April 1942. The Army had been consideringappointing one of their own officers to take over from Hilton. Finallytfre ,ta3utant-General decided to interview Hilton personally, alongwith Blrgess as his producer. Burgess's report of the meeting, as a

result of which Hilton's broadcasts moved onto an entirely differentplane, explains the position:

The Acljutanr-General stated that as a result of enquiries he had made he

was satiified that John Hilton's talks were perlorming a useful function insustaining morale on welfare matters, land] tha_t they were a.usefut n1ag9between

-the authorities and the rank and file without being officialpropaganda.^

...one of the problems confronting the War Office was how to get across

the spirit of the ne\v army to unitJ whose officers frequently showed adesire and a tendency to' live in the old. In particular there was the

problem of getting the common sense of Army Council instructions puti.to5 to theTorceJwhich naturally had to be written in official language.

For these reasons it was intended not to proceed with the iciea of seeking

an official military spokesman to do tasks better fulfilled, informally and

unofficially, by John Hilton.

The need to put Hilton's broadcasts on this sound footing ha-d

stcmmecl from th" ..eution of a new committee, the Army Morale(lonrnti(tec. 'fhe secretary was IVIajor John Sparrow, later to have a

rlisrirrgtrishc<l at:irrlcrnicr cllreer as Warclen of All Souls, Oxford.llrrlgt'ss rli<l rrol lllcvi<ltrsly krtow Spltt'rtlw, :tntl adclressccl himlor rrrlrllt, irr ( ()t t ('spontlcrrcr'. lrlrn<lirrg ()\'('l' <l:tr'-lo-<lltl' lI)lllt()t's t<l

lolrrr lliltorr ltirrrscll to st'ttlc rlilcr'lll'rvillt Sp:rl'l'()w.'l'lrt'ltt'ttt:tl ttt't'<l

(\

4. Celebrities on the platformwith D.N. Pritt: Beatrix Lehmann,who wrote the manifesto on Artand Education, and J.B.S.Haldane, who coordinated the'deep shelter' movement in whichNunn May was also closelyinvolved.

ID. N. PR,ITTT r(.c., on.F.

FORItrARDfrcc

PEOFLE,SGOVERTTMEfff

2. D.N. Pritt on the platform during'The Revolution That Never Was' inLondon, January 1941. Pritt played acentral role at this time in theorganisation of revolutionary activityaimed at creating a PeoPIe'sGovernment and stopping the war atany cost. He was to be involved inStalin's last desperate attempts tostrike a deal with Britain to avertthe German invasion of Russia in1941.

3. The Manifesto of 'The RevolutionThat Never Was', written bY Pritt.Dcspitc il,s widc cir<:ul:rt,ion it tlid not:rl)lx'itr in l,lrt' prinl,ctl llril.ish Libr:rrv('il l,irl()gu('.

l, A ,-i,.rrr.r;rl t rrtt ol llrt'rlcllpi;rl{'r;, ii;u(l lo tr';lli;r'ul ovt"tr,r'r.ll rr';rrr':ir'rrllrl, ;r'i \i'r'rr' llrc Wcl:ilr, rvtllr Atllrrtt ll,,tttctr'nrr.l rlilrrrl ilrg Ilrr' ( 'nttvrttlintt

;r nttlltottllrr liortllr

lrr,oplr'. Scol l;ttrrl wttl;W:rl,':; M tttct t,',(1..,

WHTRT TRAI{CTBTGINS

WFIAT I SAW INALGIERS

BY

I-..-RANK PITCAIRNWith a F"oreword by the Editor

of the Daily Worker '

PRICE TWOPENCE

7. A Soviet radio communication centre in 1936. Messages were even then sent at highspeed on tapes: the reels and machines used can be seen clearly here. This enabledwartime spies in Britain such as Sonia Kuczynski to send coded messages at a speed which<:ould not be taken down by the monitors. The comrade here is shown playing wirelesst:hess using morse code which caused considerable difficulties at first to spycatchers whowere unaware what the signals were.

{i 'l'lris p:trrrlrlrk,t lrv (lo<'lilrrrrrr gi vr.s;r lrigllrly rrrislcrtrlirrg ltt'<'otttll ol'lris.jottl'trcv to Algicl'sirr lll.l:l ll:rrrrrr.rl l'r'or1 goirrg lry llrr.Wtrr'()l'l'icr':rttrl l.ltr':trrlltot'ilics, lrc l'irrlrllV H()l Ill('l'('llrrorrglr llrr,r.r'rrrrir':rrrlr.ol'llollirl rrl N4li, l"ilcrr irr !lrr'l'rrlrlil lilcolrl ()l'lit'r'lr:tvr'<'tt:tlrlr'<lllrr.;rr.ltr;rl:;lrrrl.l1 lrl r.:tl;rlrlt:'lrr.rl lrttr' 'l'lrc lrllt'tr; lt tt'lt'lt'tttt'lo lltr':rllttrr;rl:l lry llrr'('111111t,i1 l';ttl1, ll:ir'l llr;l llr,\'llttltott;tt1'(irivcltttttlttl lot lltc tl'llrill ol l''t:tttr'r'lr:tr;r'rl ttlAlgtr.r n

9. Lord Inverchapel, Archibald Clark Kerr,Maisky's opposite number in Moscow for muchof the war. Like Hollis, Inverchapel was inChina before the war and found that hisloyalty to the Chinese fighting the Japaneseled him to close friendship with Russia in hersupport of China. Inverchapel became a friendof Stalin's who gave him a tommy gun as apresent when he returned to Britain! GuyBurgess arranged meetings betweenInverchapel and Peter Smollet, a Soviet agentrunning the MOI Russian desk, when theformer made brief return visits to Londonthus establishing direct links with all involved.

10. A meeting of the Executive Committee ofthe Communist Party of Great Britain. BehindIdris Cox, from left to right, are PhiI PiratinMP, Bill Brooks, leader of the YoungCommunist League, and Professor GeorgeThomson of Birmingham University. For thevital connection between George Thomson andKlaus Fuchs, see p. 154.

..ait@"@,,*:?;;"' t' ',.

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:,%.*s

#(/;;

:

'W*;!

M't^ ,W

ll. 'f'onr l)ril)(trg and (iuy llurgess in Mos<:ow :rt thc tim<l of writing of Driberg's Guy/lrrrr1r'.ss: I'rvrlnt,i,l, tui t.lt. Ikt,t:k,tynnt,'tt,tl,.'l'lrt'r'nt,irt. Jrro.it'r'1, was coor<linatcd by Hollis at MI5,willr llrr. l'rrll krrowk.rlgr.ol'l,lrc K(lll, lrol,lr ol'wlrorrr rrrorril,orr.rl l,lrc f irral l,cxt. In divulgingrk'l:rils ol'lris sr.r'r'r.l wor'l< l.o l)rilrr.r'g, llrrrgcss ptrrvirlcrl Llrc l'irsl, lt<'l,ttltl cvi<lt'ttt'<'lry wltit:ltIrr,r'rrrrlrl lrrrvr. llcr.lr lrroscr'trlr.rl tttrrk.r'llrr.()l'l'ir'iirl Sr.r't'r.ls Act il'ltr.tr.lttt'ttcrl lo llrillritr-rt

trt'tt

B. Army Morale, Gtry Bttrgess and tlze BBC g7for any committee on Army morale had been made plain ip c:r'li.r,memoranda' Reference was made to a 'growing brJwned-'ffircss,,which was obviously due, it was pointed J,rr, ,o lack of action befirr_c:the second front was esrabrished is a definite possibility.

As in industry' one of the natural focuses of disaffection lvas thcq.uestion of pay. When in Augus t Ig42 ir rvas decided ro issue a WhitePaper on the subject, Hilton's broadcast was used as a front-line to putover a favourable,interpretatiol, if possible, and to gauge genuineresponse among the ranks. This *ai .o,rridered ,o i-pZ.tint thatBurgess was summoned to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's office bythe Chancellor's secretary to discuss exactly rro* Hilton ihould put thematter over' It was made clear to Burgerr ihut the Government in factproposed no actual changes in soldi.i', puy' 'the Government simprysets forth certain considerations about' ti"r" ,"ul rate of pay whenallowances etc. are taken inro account., Th;;l"i;; """.ur.,

theTreasu-ry clearly did not want Hilton enrering ir,to ?,ry- dir.,_,rrior*about the actual merits of the white paper ou", the air, and that wouldappear to have been the central reason r,vhy Burgess was briefed atluch a high level' with amusing understatement Burgess remarked toGeorge Barnes in a memo.ond.,- rhat ,... there Lo, possibry becomplications rvith the war office y!g.upqarently do not see eye-ro_eye with the Trea-sury on the matter'. uis aided footnote, ,p.S. This isa matter of first-class parliamentary and political importan...'..,, at theend of a lengthy report was also an indication ?hat he rvas fully,conscious of all the overtones of the situation, even if everyone at theBBC was nor. And it is clear from a security poir.t of view that, if,suchsituations had arisen at the time "f tn. people,s conventionmovement, in the aftermath of Dunkirk, Hilton,s broadcasts couldhave had a crucial effect.

The element, first noticed here, of the authorities, conscious use ofHilton for political reasons * Burgess and Hilton were in fact expresslyinformed of the contenrs of tlie white rup". in advance by theTreasury before the Army knew of it, so that tlie War Office would nothave been able -to give Hilton prior instruction on their view _ wasdeveloped rapidly a1 this time. Spo.ro*'s interesr was handed over roanother officer, Eric Maschwitz, who founded the A.my,s b -

adcast_ing section but is better known to prosperity as the author of ,These

l":*i ll]:q:',u".d ,A Nightingale Sa'g in ilerkeley Squar.t. H. *u,tar less guarded about the view he toof of Hilton'i brbud.asrs. In aletter of octob er rg12 Maschwitz first p.uir.a Hilton,s talks and his

'cp'r:rti'' rvirh the rank and file, and isked that he give two talks arvt:t:k llrrlrcl tharr rlrrc. Ilrrt hc f hcrr .crnarkccl:

ntal porl,rail, ol'llurgoss l,akcn.jrrsl, b<llirrc his rlcal,h in Mos<.ow. IIis ai,l,<:nr;rl,s]ril';rirt lta<l llt't'tt blot'kt'tl lt.y llollis rlr.s;ril,r,r.k':lranr.r, l'rorrr Llr. llrlrrr.'ltr'<lir.y: ll,llis's l'('ils()lrs

^,r.:r.irrr.rr ;r rrr.ysr.r.y r,'r,rr,r,.rrr.rr<.v ().rrrrrrir,r,(,(.ir,s

i;ttts lt;ttl rrtt.yl'ltittg l,o losc lry irrr.y rr.<lr.li.r,l,iolr.'l'lrc Sovicl,:rrrl,lr,r.il,ir.st'gl'ss l'trrttt rrtr.r.lilrg l,lrillrV, Wlt, ltrrrl rr,r.r,rrll.y rr.trrr.rrr.rl lo |Vt11g1,,,*. Btrr.gcssl.willtottl tlttlkitrg lttty I'iltrrl ('onunnnr('lrlior! ot'wlrrrl lrr.kirtw, rrrrrl willrorrlIrln cLrst. lrrr.vivlrrpq I't ir.rrrlr.

ffire

Part Tuo: The World of SPies

...the War Office.. . r'ould not wish to 'compromise' Hilton with his publicby allowing any implessiou to alise ir-r the listener's mir.rd that he was iu alysense the 'Voice of the War Office' or being used in any t'ay for''propaganda'. . .-

Professor Hilton has for some time been askit-rg for the assistance of a

young serving officer as advisor on Army problems alising from hisbroadcasts and correspondeuce. The Wal Office does not favour this idea,it beiug felt that the associatior.r of a serving soldier with him would'compromise' him and lead to the impression in the public's mind thatHilton rvas himself, ir.r fact, a 'hirelir-rg' of the War Office.

This was an entirely new and offensive tone, and might even suggestthat the Army Intelligence officers had gained some insight intoHilton's and, perhaps, Burgess's political background.

Hilton's talks continued at the new rate of twice a week.Considerable flows of additional mail were soon building up,particularly after military operations started again in North Africawith the Allied invasion. Then early in 1943 Burgess suddenlysuggested to Hilton that he should go to North Africa and be withthe troops, promising to deal with both the approach to the BBC andall the ancilliary problems that would occur with mail arriving at hishouse during his absence at the rate of a thousand letters a week.

Burgess was as good as his word and, in a masterly campaign,launched the idea with the BBC and then with the War Office. Hepointed out that Hilton had begun with the trooPs in France, andthat, having an audience which listening figures suggested included'the families of almost all other ranks serving in the entire Britisharmy', it was only logical that he should go to where action was nowtaking place.

Hilton was duly dispatched in late May 1943. He returned inmid-June having seen thousands of troops and made somememorable broadcasts. The triumph was mixed with tragedy,however, as on his return he showed signs of illness. After a few talkshe became very ill and died at his home in Cambridge, the strain ofthe journey having precipitated a dormant cerebral condition.Burgess was deeply shocked and wrote rnoving letters to his'familyand to Edna Nixon, his secretary, who was later to write the standardbiography of Hilton. The shock 'must have been all the greaterbecause Burgess had been responsible for the entire venture. Butthere was another, deeper level of guilt, for he may have had otherclandestine motives for sending Hilton to North Africa. Thesemotives he shared with Claud Cockburn who also went to NorthAfrica, in his case apparently working with the GRU, who were nowcontrolling (lonrintern metnbers after thc abolition of'the Comintern

8. Army Morale, Guy Burgess and the BBC 89

itself by Stalin. The purpose of the two trips was far removed whereJohn Hilton was concerned. He was simply going to make conracrwith the troops as he had at the beginning of the war and ger materialfor his future talks so that the families of men in the campaign wouldfeel closer to what was going on through listening to a well-knownbroadcaster who had actually been out there. But it is clear fromBBC memoranda that Burgess's concerns about the trip were farcloser to those of Cockbr.irn and their Soviet conrrollers.

Before Hilton went on his trip, under the guise of obtainingintroductions for him, Burgess had gone around the War Office andobtained detailed information about all the units in Africa, rogerherwith their most important personalities. In a memorandum toBarnes he couldn't resist running off a list of his triumphs:

Informal introductions have been arranged as follows: As regards tlte 8thAnny - the 2nd Rifle Brigade with its excellent Colonel Tom Pearson andits historic S Company under Martin; the I lth Hussars, the originalearners, it is believed, of the title'Desert Rats',., As regards tlu Ist Anny tothe Intelligence officer of the Guards Brigade - this man saw rhe se.iousfighting and the serious casualties of the Coldstreams. To a subaltern inthe Gordon Highlanders who gave valuable advice on these talks when hewas stationed in England; to General Eisenhower's very able Sergeantassistant... As regards the Air Force Hilton has a personal letter fobtained byBurgessl asking Air Marshal Tedder to give him every assisrance.

Interestingly enough, the only branch of the armed forces whichBurgess omitted was the Navy. He remarked to Barnes: 'Pastexperience of which you are aware has lead us to omit it.' The pastexperience was that, despite every attempt by Burgess and Barnes,the Navy steadfastly refused to have anything whatever to do withthem or the programmes they tried to involve them in. Theirposition was that morale of the Navy and the families of naval menwas best dealt with by the Navy, and Naval Intelligence concurred inthis view. Whether they had any knowledge of Burgess's political

- Views as a result of his early connection wittr them is not clear, but itrtill rankled as this memorandum shows.

The precise reason why Russia would wish to have detailedknowledge of the situation on the ground in Africa may not havebeen obvious at first, but Cockburn's visit made it plain, for it wasconcerned with the possible establishment of a revolutionarygovernment there, as we shall see.

I

Claud Cockburn and the Algiers Affair

After the People's Convention Cockburn's file lay in Hollis's safe

relatively undisturbed. Cockburn carried on rvith his organising forthe Convention and general political activity, and returned to writingfor the Daily Worker when the ban on it was lifted on 5 September1942. Then in 1943 his file became 'current' again in an

extraordinary affair not involving matters in England at all'On 18 July the Foreign Office were alerted through lwo

independent channels to the fact that something had happened inAlgiers which had angered Britain's American allies. At first it didnoi appear to be anything other than an over-zealous journalist

-u.ragitrg to get somewhere that he shouldn't have, a matter forcoueri congratulation perhaps and mild rebuke rather than a

telegram in cipher from Harold Macmillan, the resident BritishMinister in Algiers, and an irate letter from the United States

Ambassador in- Britain, John G. Winant, to Anthony Eden. Thisaccused the British of 'bad faith', a strong phrase in diplomatic use atthe best of times, let alone when addressed to an ally in the middle ofa war. What had happened?

From a number of contemporary accounts the sequence of events

seems to have been as follows. The position in Algiers at this time,and the controversial deal struck with the Vichy leader, AdmiralDarlan, in order to establish a stable situation, had caused outrageamong many, not only those on the left. It led directly to theassassination of Darlan bv a man allegedly using a SOE revolver, whowas immediately executed. In an attempt to deal with the crisis theAmerican forces kept a close eye on local political developments andraided a number of centres of political activity, one of them that ofthe local Communist Party, To their surprise, they found an

Englirhrnan there who said he was a politicalcorrespondent, He gave

the nanrc 'Frittrk ltitcairtt', "fherc were not llleant to tre any prlliticalt:orrcspotttlcttts ilt tlrc war tltcatt'c, attrl hc wils llot tlnc of'the srnall

1X)

9. Claud Cochburn and the Algiers Affair

group of war correspondents who had been allowed on a limitedvisit. He was therefore arrested while investigations were carried out.Harold Macmillan's assistant, Oliver Makins, now Lord Sherfield,was immediately able to identify'Frank Pitcairn'as Claud Cockburn.Having himself vetted all the war correspondents allowed in the areaand cleared them with the Allied Force authorities and with Etousa(European Theatre of Operations United States Army), he knew thatCockburn was not one of them. Cockburn managed somehow toevade his captors at this point, but before he did so his passport wasexamined and was seen to contain a valid export visa issued by thePassport Office in London. As this must have been issued afterclearance by MI5 and the Ministry of Information, it was obviousthat Cockburn had not acted entirely illegally in coming to Algiers.The American authorities, however, said that they had earlierspecifically refused a request for Cockburn to come to Algiers.Makins had no option but to send a strongly worded telegram to theForeign Office asking for enquiries to be made. Unknown to him theAmerican authorities, who perhaps knew more about the politicalside of what happened, had also complained. The result had beenWinant's strong letter to Anthony Eden, which reached the ForeignOffice at the same time as Makins's cipher telegram. The ForeignOffice file on the incident is headed succinctly 'UnsatisfactoryExplanation of Mr. Cockburn's arrival in North Africa':

From Mr. Makins. Is puzzled about Mr. Cockburn's arrival as Allied ForceHQ were neither consulted nor informed and according to availableinformation Ministry of Information arranged with Passport Office forMr. Cockburn's exit permit contrary to the wishes of the War Office andEtousa. Feels the matter should be further investigated.

The formal investigation contained in the file was carried out by SirAnthony Rumbold. It seemed to show that the mistake had been dueto a concatenation of accidents. This anyway was the explanationgiven in letters sent to Makins and Ambassador Winant, and in theintense activity of the time the matter was allowed to drop withCockburn's reapprehension and return to Britain. A reading of thepapers in the file today, coupled with an analysis of what Cockburncaid and did at the time and subsequently, shows that much more wasinvolved than a journalist's chasing of a good story. Cockburn'spurpose in going to Algiers was a political one, and, as we shall see,

the Communist Party's intense desire to get Cockburn there had onlybeen satisfied by the active collaboration of Cockburn's case officer inM15, who was Roger Hollis.

The sequence of events began when the Daily Worker insisted that

9l

92 Part Two: The World of Spies

they should have a war correspondent at the front in North Africa,naming Cockburn, or'Frank Pitcairn', as their man. The War Officeimmediately objected in strong terms: as well they might, sinceCockburn rvas well known to Military Intelligence as the man whohad encouraged mutiny in army barracks throughout the country atthe time of the People's Convention. The Americans also objected,though ambiguously, unfortunately, as they also said that they wouldbe able to provide a passage for him if he had an exit permit. MI5also refused ro recommend an exit visa, but only initially. Thewording used by Rumbold is curious: 'The Security Authorities hadpreviously objected to Cockburn being given an exit permit butthey... r,vithdrerv this objection provided the Foreign Office agreed.'Rumbold later identified 'the security authorities' as MI5, althoughhe does not name Hollis, who held Cockburn's file. Thecircumstances in which Hollis changed his mind, an exceedingly oddthing for him to do, let alone passing the buck back to the ForeignOffice, rvhen MI5 were the authorities whose opinion was beingsought, were created by the Dai$ Worker trying a new tack.

Harry Pollitt, faced with the refusal of an exit permit, wrote a

disingenuous letter to the Passport Office expressing doubt aboutthe reasons for refusal, and asking why the War Office was involved,as it was intended to send their man Cockburn as a ciuilian politicalcorrespondent. The Passport Office failed to see the illogicality ofthis remark - the War Office were involved because there was a waron in Algiers, not because the correspondent was a military one - andreferred the refusal back to the Foreign Office. An official at theForeign Office, who knew nothing about the previous correspond-ence, having been on leave, it was alleged, referred the matter backto the War Office who said that they had refused because ofAmerican objections while keeping their own reasons secret. TheAmerican authorities, naturally enough, declined to acceptresponsibility for refusing permission for a British ciuilian. TheMinistry of Information was contacted and they too could see noreason for an exit permit not to be issued, if MI5 had no objection. Atthis point Hollis withdrew his objection if the Foreign Office agreed.The Foreign Office official, faced with this new situation andperhaps thinking it odd that MI5 should change their mind andplace the final burden of decision on him, agreed to the exit permit,and the Passport Office duly issued it.

The central facts in this complicated story are that Hollis at MI5and an MOI oflicer, hnowing that the War Office and all other partiesinvolvcrl strongly disapproved, agreed to (lockburn's going to NorthAli'ic:r rrnrlcl thc irtvcrrtc(l status of' political t:orrespotr<lent - therc

9. Claud Cochbttrn and the Algiers Affair

were no such correspondents in North Africa at this time - andHarry Pollitt must have been fully aware of the nature of theapproach he had to make to ensure success in adaance, There can bcno other interpretation, since the position of political correspondentwas invented and there were no precedents; had Pollitt merely beenfollowing normal procedure there could be some residual doubt, buthe was not. Officially he would not even have known that MI5 wereinvolved in the piocess of issuing exit permits, let alone have reliedon their changing their minds. This raises the obvious question, whywas it that the Communist Party were prepared to risk the revelationof such collusion and the possibility of a fierce row when it becameknown? Why indeed had the Daily Worher and the Party been so

intent on getting Cockburn to North Africa?Sir Anthony Rumbold's file entry gives no answer to these obvious

questions. It is in fact a wholly inadequate whitewash of what hadclearly been a deliberate ploy by those involved, mainly Hollis andPollitt, to get Cockburn to Algiers. The explanation given was in factaccepted and the risk that Hollis and the others had run did not leadto exposure. They cannot have known that Cockburn would bearrested in the circumstances that he was, or have realised that theentirely unique status which had been invented for Cockburn wouldmean that an enquiry would be inevitable if anything went wrong. Itmust have been a shock to Hollis when he was contacted by Rumbold,as he must have been; but his explanation of what had occurred,whatever it was, must have satisfied Rumbold and would be mostunlikely to appear on Cockburn's file, which of course Hollis kept.The file may yet contain enough information to answer the questionwhy such risks were taken to get Cockburn to Algiers. In its absencewe have to turn to evidence provided by Cockburn himself.

Cockburn's arrest and final removal from Algiers was made muchof by the Daily Worker. It completely misrepresented what hadoccurred, alleging that some important communiquds from theirreporter had been banned, and that this was a reflection of thewidely prevalent censorship designed to cover up the extent of thedealings with Darlan and other ex-Vichy officials. Cockburnpublished a pamphlet, Where France Begins, under his nom-de-plume'Frank Pitcairn' (see Plate 6), containing much of what he wouldhave said about his experiences. Taken with references to what hewrote years later, the overall conclusions to be drawn, in context, arereasonably certain.

In Algiers there were many French MPs f'ronr the pre-warGovernment who had been kept in Vichy pt'isons there and releasedwlten thc Allies arrivccl, "t'hcy int:ludctl a largc number of'

93

i.

.$

{r?i.!

94 Part Two: The World of Spies

Communists and formed, in fact, the greater part of the pre-warFrench Communist Party. Their perspective on the internationalsituation appeared to have changed little with the years, and theirpolicy and view of the world were seriously out of step with currentpolitical wisdom as seen from Moscow. Cockburn's task, it seems, wasto enlighten them, beginning rvith the official line on General deGaulle which rvas at this time to cooperate fully with him and hisgroup. The Communist deputies might have been surprised by thisbut would certainly have been flattered by the principal proposaloutlined by Cockburn in his pamphlet, which was the setting up thenand there of a provisional government not just for Algiers but for thewhole of France. They were to become in Algiers what was in effect a

National Committee for France somewhat along the lines of theCommittee set up for Poland after the split with the London PolishGovernment in Exile which we shall mention shortly. Even in theguarded language of a pamphlet published in London Cockburnestablished the programme quite unambiguously:

The Communist Party see as the first and foremost task the raising of theanti-fascist war spirit in North Africa which involves... the earliest possibleestablishment of a Consultative Assembly primarily representative of andresponsible to the Underground resistance movements of France withNorth Africa also represented - and not merely a North African Assemblywith some representation of the French underground.

This Communist tactic failed, although their support of theCommittee of National Liberation established in London underGeneral de Gaulle and their infiltration of his organisation causedcontinuing difficulties and aroused Churchill's direct interventionand anger when they attempted to send delegates from Algiers in1944, as we shall see in the next chapter.

Christopher Andrew has suggested that there was no great needfor Cockburn to come to Algiers as a Communist agent as they hadtheir man Klugman with the SOE in Egypt,where he was in liaisonwith Tito and others in Yugoslavia. But this seems unlikely on twocounts. First, Algiers was a theatre of military operations and a longway from Cairo; Klugman would need both a good reason and timeto get over to Algiers. Secondly, although Klugman wouldundoubtedly have had some contact with a Soviet controller, he canhardly have been in a position to get full-scale instructions on such acomplex question as the setting up of a provisional NationalAssembly. On the other hand, it is certain that Pollitt was not onlyf'ully infirrnred of'what was in Moscow's mind, as was Cockburn, butwil$ prc:parcrl to risk (lrrkburn's ;rositiott itt orclcr to get him tcr

9. Claud Cochburn and the Algiers Affair

Algiers. Although the 'row' which followed did not cause as muchdamage as it might have done, thanks ro the Rumbold report,Cockburn was never seen in the same light again by the authorities.

The circumstantial case for direct Moscow involvement throughtheir agents in London is strengthened by the actions of Burgess,mentioned in the last chapter, in fostering the project of Hilton's tripto North Africa and then using this to obtain military informationabout the campaign there. It strongly suggesrs that this informationwas needed in order to give them essential grounding for theirprojected move to establish a Communist Provisional FrenchGovernment in Exile. In fact Harry Pollitt did not approach the WarOffice or the MOI about a passage for Cockburn until Hilton's triphad been concluded, although the other military correspondents hadactually departed two weeks before then.

When the reports Cockburn published in the Dai\ Worher on hisreturn and his pamphlet reached Hollis for inclusion in Cockburn'sfile he would have been uniquely placed to make as assessment oftheir importance and their place in what has been called 'stalin'ssecret blueprint for post-war Europe'. Glees has given an account ofthis matter in The Secrets of the Seruice unaccountably not mentioningAlgiers; even more oddly, he does not seem to mention the very firstdifficulty between Russia and the West: the rupture between thePolish Government in Exile in London and Moscow caused by thehorrific discovery in April 1943 of the bodies of 15,000 Polishofficers in the Katyn Forest, where they had been massacred in l94lby the Russians. The facts were hotly disputed by rhe Russians at thetime and the Polish Government's task was not made any easier inLondon by the fact that it was the Germans who discovered thebodies and who announced the crime to the world. That theirconclusions concurred with that of the London Poles was obviouslyembarrasing to the Poles in their argumenrs with the Russians. It hastaken the passage of nearly half a century and the emergence ofGorbachev and glasnosl for Russia finally to admit to Stalin'sperpetration of the Katyn massacre.

The direct result of this event was the setting up of a provisionalPolish Government in Moscow, but before we examine this there isone other factor which has not been noticed in the many accounts ofwhat happened: a particularly unpleasant propaganda campaign runby the Communist Party of Great Britain. This suggesred, inpamphlets and elsewhere, that the whole Katyn massacre story was aficticln invented by the Polish Government in London in activecollusion with the Nazi Government in Berlin. It was seen, it appears,ai the firsl stirgc in an attcmpt to frlrge a separate peace, Stalin's

95

96 Part Two: The World of Spies

constant fear, no doubt echoing his own guilty conscience over theNazi-Soviet Pact. What is astonishing about this campaign is that thepamphlets making the allegations were able to be p,rinted in Londonior fn. CPGB and circulated without any interference from theauthorities. It has been pointed out that Britain stopped examiningMoscow's secret radio tiaffic to London after Barbarossa, but theyseem also to have been given free rein to continue their propagandaon the ground through the CPGB against friendly governments inexile in London with rvhom thel'did nor happen to agree. Hollis musthave known of this. And it may be noticed in passing that his colleagueBlunt's duties with MI5 included monitoring all communications ofneutral and friendly governments and embassies in London. ThePolish Government was foremost among these, and it can only be

wondered whether and to tvhat extent such events as the trials ofPolish citizens in Moscow inJanuary 1943 for treason and espionage

sremmed from his activities. Certainly the Polish Secret Service was an

extremely strong and well-informed part of the London exile com-munity and their reports were valued by the Americans.

An immediate consequence of the falling out between the Russian

Government and the London Polish Government in Exile over Katynand the earlier espionage trials in Moscow was the creation in Nloscow

on 13 May of a 'Union of Polish Patriots in the Soviet Union', whose

newspaper speedily ser out aims and purposes which led eventually tothe ireitiorr of the Provisional Polish Government announced inMoscow in 1944 and set up in Lublin as soon as Soviet forces movedinto 'liberated' Polish territory. This was no isolated move, however,but the first step in a wide-ranging change in Soviet tactics thatamounted to the much-discussed 'secret blueprint' for post-warEurope. On 15 May the Comintern held a conference and announcedthat ii was dissolving itself as the changing conditions meant that it was

no longer appropriate to use it as 'the directing centre of theinternaiional worliing-class movement' - the text of the resolution was

broadcast on 22 May and widely commented on in Britain andelsewhere. To make the position quite clear Stalin took the unusualstep of writing to Reuter's chief correspondent in Moscow, HaroldKing, explaining why it was thought that this was the 'proper' move forhimlo make. HiJ comments are illrrminating because they show that itwas motivated by Stalin's desire to conceal the existence of a Bolshevistsecret plan for a take-over in liberated countries which was widelyrumoured then, and not only among the Poles:

lr [the dissolution of the (]ornirrtelnIcxyroses the lie of the Hitlerites to theetl'e1t tlrut'Morcow'allegcrlly irrten<ls to itttet'vettc irr tlre lile of otltet'

9. Claud Cockbttrn and the Algiers Affair

nations and'bolshevise'them... It exposes the calumny of the adversarresof Communism within the Labour movement, to the effect that theCommunist parties in various countries are allegedll' acting not in theinterests of the people but on orders from outside... it facilitates the rvorkof patriots in the freedom-loving couutries for uniting the progressiveforces of their respective couutries, regardless of party or religious faithinto a single camp of National Liberation. . .

Hollis must have been better placed than almost anyone toappreciate the significance of all these moves. Not only rvas he theperson responsible for monitoring the CPGB, and therefore awareof the Polish situation in detail, including the pamphlet about theKatyn massacre. He also knerv, through Cockburn, exactly rvhat hadbeen happening in Algiers and could not fail to link up theproposals, actually published by Cockburn, for a provisionalGovernment. for France acting as representative for the under-ground in France itself with the remarks made by Stalin on theclosing of the Comintern. Here, clearly, was the new policy being putinto action. And in fact Hollis was to spend the greater part of histime for the rest of the war dealing with the most important of therash of organisations similar to the Polish Patriots, that of theCommittee for a Free Germany lvhich was set up in Moscow on l2July 1943 and shortly afterwards in London.

Before going on to examine in some detail the work of thiscommittee in Britain and what Hollis must have learnt from it, it is

interesting to note how well the links established by Peter Smollettwith The Times served Stalin in the days after the abolition of theComintern. In an article on24 May the paper remarked:

The decision to dissolve the Communist International is a wise step andone of the most important political events of the war. It removes the lastremaining apprehensions, long unfounded but persistent in manyquarters, that the Russian Government rvas pursuing through this policy a

policy of world revolution... It destroys the last slender ideological basis ofthe Axis in the Anti-Comintern Pact and the last crumbling mainstay ofAxis propaganda in the 'Bolshevist bogey'.

The echoing of the phrase 'Bolshevist bogey' in Smollett'sinstructions to the BBC noticed earlier emphasises how completelythe 'open' channels of information had been infiltrated. Smallwonder that the 'moles' went undetected by anyone else in MI5,against this background and what was, in effect, the beginning of thecold war.

97

l0

The Roots of the Cold War in 1943

It has become conventional to date any analysis of the ideologicallybased conflict between East and West which has dominated our timeto the period after the end of the war. Winston Churchill's 'ironcurtain' speech is seen as creating a watershed for the suspicionsabout Russia which had been growing since the war ended. In factthe roots of the cold war, and the groundwork for some of the mostimportant early coups, such as the treachery of Klaus Fuchs and AlanNunn May, are to be found during the war itself, in 1943. MI5 wereinvolved from the beginning in monitoring the activities of many ofthose involved, and these Russian successes were a direct result oftheir shortcomings. Hollis was a central figure in what occurred and,as will be explained, it is almost impossible to believe that he did notknow what was happening and at critical moments actively cover upwhat he knew from his political masters.

That the conflicts between East and West were seen as just that bythe Russians was obvious to commentators from the West in Moscowby the end of 1943. To the Polish and Algerian-French Committeeshad been added numerous others, including the Free GermanyCommittee. A telegram from the British Embassy in Moscow in late1943 reported a Soviet official as saying: 'Anyway, we now havesomething that will prevent you from introducing "Darlanism" allover Europe!'The official in the Foreign Office commenting on thisremarked that it was 'a possible indication that the Soviet authoritiesregard the Free Germany Movement amongst the captured Germanprisoners [mainly from Stalingrad] as possessing more than merepropaganda value'.

The extraordinary naivety of this comment is a measure of thefailure of British Intelligence to alert their colleagues in the ForeignOffice and elsewhere to what they perfectly well knew washappening, Although MI5 only dealt with matters within the UnitedKirrgdorn, tlte present:e ol'()crman (lornrnurrist exiles in Rritain with

1lli

1 0 . The Roots of the Cold War in 194 3

close links with Moscow meant that they were in a position to providethe fullest background information. They did not do so and in fact,in the case of Fuchs, Nunn May and others, enabled the Russians togain a head start.

When the Free Germany Committee was announced in MoscowHollis must have realised its significance, having dealt with theexactly similar event in Algiers involving Cockburn. His job atBlenheim, near Oxford, was focussed on the German Communists inBritain, who were always at loggerheads with the exiled SocialDemocrats. When the Communists approached the Social Democratswith a proposal for a similar committee to the Moscow CommitteeHollis knew of it immediately and was in a position to see it for whatit was. Its significance can be seen now from the name of one of theleaders of the Moscow Committee alone: Walter Ulbricht. When thefirst meeting of the British Free Germany Committee came to beheld in London on 25 September 1943 Hollis had arranged for thefullest surveillance of all that happened and for a detailedbreakdown of the political background of those involved.

Hollis did not himself prepare the report of the meeting. This wasdone in London by one of his officers, Captain S.P. Brooke-Booth, afact which is not without significance, as will become clear when thefinal cases for and against Hollis are examined later. The two mostinteresting personalities mentioned by Brooke-Booth at the timewere Hans Kahle and Professor Robert Kuczynski. Kahle,Cockburn's friend from Spanish Civil War days and now a fellowcorrespondent on the re-opened Daily Worker, addressed the meetingat length as a representative of the Moscow Committee. As MI5knew, this was only a formal title, although part of the 400 invitedaudience may have thought from his enthusiastic manner that hehad indeed just come from Moscow. Actually he had remained inBritain since his escape from Spain except for the brief period when hehad been detained and deported to Canada. When he had firstarrived in Britain he had stayed with the Haldanes, and on his returnto Britain from Canada, with MI5's specific approval, he hadimmediately re-established contact and taken the job of militarycorrespondent with the Daily Worker, as we have seen. Kahle's speechrepeated the aims of the Moscow Committee and made it quite clearthat their purpose was to establish a provisional Government againstthe day when Germany would be liberated and the Nazi regimeremoved.

Prof'essor Robert Kuczynski, as Chairman of the Committee, wasobviously an irnportant figure, though he did not f'eature aspromincntly as Kahle lnd othcr speakers who were totally

99

100 Part Two: The World of Sptes

committed to Russia such as Siegbert Kahn who wrote pamphlets fora group called ING publications and put forward the orthodox lineuntroubled by any British censorship or, it seems, surveillance byMI5. Brooke-Booth reported the activities of the nascent committeeand reviewed what was known of the participants. Clearly, to him,the committee had no obvious role, in the situation that its membersfound themselves, other than to attempt to forge links with SocialDemocrats and win them over to the Soviet view of things. Holliswould have seen more in the situation, having Cockburn's file andthe full range of reports before him, including information on abrilliant young scientist Klaus Fuchs. He already knew Fuchs's case,

as he had been responsible for vetting Fuchs when he first worked inBritain as a scientist, subsequently when he became a British subjectto enable him to rvork on Tube Alloys (the Atomic Bomb project),and again at this time when he was cleared for the Americans, whoinsisted that all who worked on their end of Tube Alloys bethoroughly vetted. The first link Hollis would have establishedbetween Fuchs and active Communists would have been theconnection with Hans Kahle. When Kahle was sent to Canada hefound himself confined with Germans who rvere mainly Nazis.Among the few Communists in his group of detainees was KlausFuchs. Kahle got to know him well, and when Fuchs returned toBritain he put him into contact with the Kuczynski family, first withJrirgen and then with Sonia. At the time of the setting up of the FreeGermany Committee Kahle happily made use of Fuchs's presence inBirmingham when he set up a branch of the Committee there.Astonishingly, rvhile Fuchs was taking an oPen part in theBirmingham Free Germany Committee he was also sending outinformation on the Tube AIIoys project and, according to Soniaherself, was doing so through her. She was a secret member of theparty and handling a considerable number of GRU agents, first froma cottage just outside Oxford and then from a new location withinOxford itself. Despite all this Fuchs was cleared by Hollis at MI5. Inthe penultimate chapter we shall establish Hollis's precise role in thisaffair. For the moment it is worth emphasising what has beenestablished here for the first time: namely, that Hollis knew ofFuchs's activities not only through surveillance of the Committee butthrough his file on Cockburn which gave him an entirely separatebearing on all those involved - Fuchs, Kahle and the Kuczynskis -thus removing any doubt about what was happening.

After the inaugural meeting of the Free Germany Committee a

parnphlet was published by Siegbert Kahn, The Na.tionaL Cornrnittee'l'rw Grnnrurl', 'I'his rcvcalccl by chancc attothet' asPect of'the af'fair

10. The Roots of the ColdWarin 1943

which was of major importance and must have been known to Hollisand MI5. Kahn began by talking of the most convincingmanifestation of the power of the new group - the fact that it had itsown radio station:

Since the middle of July [1943] a new radio station'Free Germany'hasbeen speaking three times a day to the German people. Amongst thespeakers are members of the German Army: plain soldiers, staff officers,dbctors, military lawyers, NCO's of all the services and German writers,politicians and trade unionists. They all jointly exhort the Gelman people:'lJnite fol ending the war by overthrowing Hitlerl Put an er-rd to thiscriminal war and the criminal Hitler gangl For the salvation of the Germanpeoplel For a free and independent Germanyl'

There is more than an echo here of the Algiers announcements, andeven of those put out at the time of the People's Convention aimed atthe British people. But the most interesting thing in Kahn'spamphlet is the mention of a radio station within Germany itselfallegedly run by a National Peace Movement. He even quoted from a

broadcast made from this station on 4 August 1943. In fact no suchstation was recorded by the BBC monitoring stations. This was notbecause the station did not exist, but because it was, almost certainly,a British 'black' broadcasting station, one of many run by SeftonDelmer at Woburn Abbey. Similar situations arose on a number ofoccasions when exiled Governments enquired of the Britishauthorities why there was no mention of, s?/, a Norwegianunderground broadcasting station, which they could hear clearlyevery night, on the BBC monitors'reports. The reason for this was

that since the stations were 'black'it was decided that the BBC wouldignore them rather than give the complete text, which could easilyhave been arranged. This would have involved the BBC havingcontact with the.illegal broadcasters, which they absolutely refused todo in any shape or form. Sefton Delmer's Peace Movement radiostation flourished, and there must have been many Germans hearingit in Russia who actually believed that it was being broadcast frominside Germany.

Unlike the Norwegian Government in Exile the Russians and theirGerman shadow administration in Moscow did not need to enquireabout the station, because Sefton Delmer was putting it out as part ofthe war effort with their full knowledge; no doubt he providedSiegbert Kahn with his quotation! Viewed as an event in the cold warthis was a remarkable coup, for the British had in effect been dupedinto broadcasting the most sophisticated propaganda for a post-war(lommunist ()overnrnent in Germany by Sefton Delmer, acting for

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102 Part Two: The World of Spies

his Soviet masters. N{any have doubted that Delmer, a DaiQ Expressreporter later with impeccable Express views, could have been a Sovietagent as has been suggested by Glees and others. However, his loyaltyappears to have been determined by a traumatic incident that tookplace when he lvas in Germany as a reporter before the war. One day,when he was unable to cover a Nazi demonstration, an impoverishedcolleague agreed to go instead. Later that evening the man was caughtin a burst of gunfire from a Nazi machine gun. He did not dieimmediately. He tried to pull himself along the street away from thearea; for hours no one dared risk help him and he finally died there.The shock of this incident was reinforced for Delmer when he wascalled upon next day to identify the body. Years later he was able toremember every detail of the scene, down to the holes in the soles ofhis friend's shoes. Readers of his autobiography, which gives a fullaccount of his black broadcasting, may clearly perceive his loyaltythough he does not explicitly state it.

The significance of these broadcasts for MI5 was not merely toemphasise the importance of the Free Germany Movement, but in theothers involved in them. These included Philby, a regular visitor toWoburn, a friend of Delmer's and one. better able to appreciate blackpropaganda than most, and zu Putlitz, a friend of both Cockburn andBurgess who returned from America towards the end of the war andimmediately began rvorking with Delmer on his broadcasts havingbeen formally'introduced'by none other than Anthony Blunt.

The cold war as seen in Moscol, the fight against 'Darlanism', didnot stop with attempts to set up Soviet Governments in Exile forGermany and other occupied territories. It also sowed the seeds of aprofound distrust between the other allies, notably Britain andAmerica. Early in 1944 Fred Warner at the Foreign Office News Deskwas asked by an American correspondent to comment on Russianallegations that Britain was deliberately releasing able-bodied Germanprisoners of war, and that these were then appearing on the Easternfront where some had allegedly been captured, revealing what hadbeen happening. Warner discreetly replied: 'Such moves by theRussians are puzzling. I cannot explain them and can only say thatthey make me very pessimistic about the prospects of a really closeco-operation with the Soviet Union in the postwar years'[17 Marchlg44l. The most serious example of this kind of provocative remarkby the Russians had occurred a few weeks before in what came to becalled the'Prauda incident'. This was described as follows by awell-infbrrned observer, Sir ()iffard Martel, present at the time, whoh:rrl llccn [{c:td of'thc Rritish Military Missir-rrr to Mosc]ow:

10. The Roots of the Cold,War in 1943 103

On January 17, 1944 the Russian newspaper Praada published a messagewhich was alleged to have come from their Cairo correspondent on 12

January to the effect that a secret meeting had taken place betweenRibentrop and two leading English personalities at a coastal town in theneighbourhood of the Pyrenees... The aim of the meeting was to be themaking of a separate peace with Germany, and the message added that themeeting was not without result.

There was, so far as is known, no truth in these rumours, which nonethe less created friction between the allies. On the ground in Englandthe chosen avenue for this new Soviet cold war ploy that was to reachits height in the years after the war over the China question was, onceagain, Claud Cockburn's news sheet The Week and the otherCommunist publications. The Week's first issue after the inauguralmeeting of the Free Germany Committee came out with an explicitstatement of the new policy: 'Britain's only real card in standing up tothe United States is the Soviet Alliance.'This has remained in broadterms the Soviet policy for Britain from that day to this. TheAmerican authorities in London were incensed by this publicationand sent a copy of it to Washington, who asked them to send copiesof all subsequent issues. This they did until the magazine closed. As itwas a paper with a considerable following among well-to-dosupporters of the left and the media generally, the Americanauthorities no doubt saw in Cockburn's outpourings a significantstrand in British thinking. The Russians here scored a palpable hit intheir new cold war tactics.

In order to make matters quite clear to the British, the Russiansseem to have decided to sacrifice a pawn in their version of the 'greatgame'. While employing Cockburn for their overt campaigns theyalso stepped up espionage on a wide front. Their use of Fuchs andNunn May and others was kept exceedingly secret, but in minormatters they continued on such a scale that discovery was almostinevitable. Knowing that their CPGB headquarters were bugged andthat everyone entering and leaving the building was followed, theynone the less used D.F. Springhall, perhaps the most immediatelyrecognisable 'high profile' British Communist, to run a series ofagents in the field who were supplying military secrets. InevitablySpecial Branch officers following Springhall on a routine basisdiscovered what he was doing. Arrests and prosecutions followed.With the British subjects involved, notably Captain Raymond lJren,an SOE officer, the matter was straightforward. However, Springhallwas the National Organiser of'the CPGB, and to prosecute hirn forengagin[f in subversive activities against the Crclwn when Russia wasan ally 1gr'ciltly valued irr rnilitary tcnns worrltl havc been cxtrernely

104 Part Two: The World of Spies

difficult politically. MI5 decided, no doubt after consulting theirpolitical masters, that Springhall should be prosecuted instead underthe Official Secrets Act, which he duly was. He was given a long termof imprisonment. The Russians for their part sacked Springhall fromthe CPGB, claiming that his activities were illegal as far as they wereconcerned, and then retaliated in a mild way against the sentence byarresting a Russian secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow on a

trumped up charge.It ii not easy to be exactly certain of the Russians' motives here'

Whether they deliberately offered Springhall as a ploy, or whetherthey simply intended their adoption of all-out espionage to bring thenew cold war'anti-Darlanism'message home to Churchill as stronglyas possible, the desired result was obtained. Churchill was very angryindeed at what had occurred and in the following year sent his oftenreprinted telegram to Duff Cooper, the then resident in Algiers,protesting at his suggestion that some Communist delegates beincluded in a party with de Gaulle coming to London:

I suppose you realise that we are weeding remorselessly ev-ery singleknown communist from our secret organisations? We did this after havingto sentence two quite high grade people to long terms of penal servitudefor their betrayal, in accordance with their communist faith, of importantmilitary secrets. If therefore the French Committee or any representativessent here are infected with communism they will certainly not be madeparty to any British or, I expect, American secrets.

The Soviets' early moves in the cold war had indeed evoked theresponse that Churchill indicated here. Whereas the ordinaryMinistries were left alone at first, the security services were looked atclosely. In his diary entry for 13 August Alexander Cadogan notedbriefly: "'C" [head of M16] about Communists in his organisation.'What was actually done was to set in train a thorough check on MI6staff, the pre-war veteran Valentine Vivian taking responsibility forthe distasteful work involved. An anonymous ex-MI6 officer is

quoted by Glees as saying that there was some check on Philby in1944, and no doubt this was Valentine Vivian's investigation. Clearlyit was not very effective; though some officers appear to have been

moved to less secure posts, Philby himself was not suspected. There is

no doubt that a similar exercise took place in MI5, but there has beenno discussion of it in any of the books in the field drawing onrecollections of former officers. The massive penetration of theorganisation, which we now know occurred, seems to imply that theinvcstigation wils carried out by someone who was himself reluctantto poirrt thc I'ingcr al obviotts suspects. although Maxwell Knight

l0 . The Roots of the Cold War in 1943 105

strongly suspected that there must be an agent in MI5 after TomDriberg, his mole in the CPGB, had been identified by a leak. Holliswas the officer in charge of Communist affairs in MI5, and we havethe direct evidence of Maxwell Knight's assistant that his paper 'TheComintern Is Not Dead'and similar documents all reached Hollis'sdesk but got no further, as we have seen. Whether Hollis was theofficer in MI5 given the task of removing Communists from M15, as

Vivian did in MI6, will probably never be known, but he would havebeen the obvious choice.

There is another pointer to Hollis's collusion with the CommunistParty, and that is over the question of Niels Bohr, who was not a spy,and the other nuclear experts, Fuchs and Nunn May, alreadymentioned, who were. The Bohr affair will be examined in detailshortly, but for the moment it is sufficient to say that Bohr hadapproached the authorities, and even Churchill himself, with a

request to be allowed to co-operate with ex-colleagues of his in Russiaon nuclear questions. Churchill was outraged and threatened Bohrwith internment, even saying in one memorandum that Bohr was onthe edge of mortal crimes. The significant point is that Bohr hadpreviously told MI5 of the Soviet approach to him, and they werefully aware of what he was doing and Churchill's subsequent reactionto it. Whether the officer who dealt with Bohr was Hollis directly orsomeone in his department, he cannot possibly have been inignorance df Churchill's views. Yet he did nothing to draw attentionto the cases of Nunn May and Fuchs, and no doubt others, who heknew perfectly well were engaged in exactly the same work as Bohrand were active Communists.

As the Springhall affair developed, the American authorities inLondon were kept informed of the case and were specificallyasked if there had been any similar outbreak of espionage inAmerica. They must have been amused by this request, since by thistirne they had already begun to realise that the British securityservice MI5 was not entirely reliable. In one important report toWashington the Embassy in London actually quoted an extensivereport from the Polish Political Intelligence Service in London on theactivities of the Communist Party in Britain, which they had observedwas becoming very active long before any of the British authoritiescommented on the fact. By chance the Polish report had come to theAmerican Embassy two days before the British section of the FreeGermany Comrnittee was established, adding weight to theirconclusions. The report is of particular interest since it does not dealwith Clornrnunist activity among the various exile groups but withactivity in thc trativc conrmunity, A main feature of their findings,

106 Part Two: The World of Spies

which would have escaped Churchill's personal attention, absorbedas he was in the most complex problems prior to the second front,was the establishment of a chain of Communist bookshops in citiesthroughout the country from Exeter to Edinburgh. These werebeing used as the front line in a new campaign for all the far-leftgroupsr not just those that were openly Communist. They displayedan enormous varlety of pamphlets, including many of thosementioned here by Cockburn and others. The Polish intelligenceofficers had examined these in detail and realised that it was quiteimpossible for them to have been printed and distributed with thepaper rations and funds available to the CPGB, the nominalpublisher of most of them. Although the Communist Party did notfield many candidates at the end of the war, the general propagandacampaign for the far left, focussed on these outlets from 1943onwards, must have affected the climate at the time of the election in1945. With his known feelings about Communist activity Churchillwould no doubt have been verv interested to know what washappening at the grass roots, if MI5 had ever informed him. As itwas, the report came fi'om the Polish side, who were known to be atloggerheads with the Russians. If the American authorities hadpressed for action over the fierce anti-Americanism seen inCockburn's paper and everywhere else on the left, they would havefaced a united front arguing for freedom of the press, particularly apress sympathetic to Russia which was trearing the brunt of thefighting. MI5, in the person of Hollis in charge of Communistaffairs, also took this view it seems. Understandably, the public wouldhave been incapable of taking in any news or propaganda dealing inan unfavourable way with Russia, especially when every newsreel wasfilled with coverage of fighting on the Eastern front and the wallsthroughout Britain were daubed with the slogan 'Second FrontNowl'.

It was for this reason no doubt that the purge which Churchilldescribed as'remorseless' in the security services was so weak in M16and almost non-existent in MI5. None the less it did expand fromthis small beginning in the secret heart of the Government services totake in a number of other particularly sensitive Ministries, mainly theMOI. We have already seen how Peter Smollett used his position atthe Russian desk-there to call up crucial editorials rn The Times. Thisprocess continued right through 1944 and seriously distorted theestablishment's view of Russia in the build-up to the greatcon{'ereuces in Moscow and Yaita which were to determine theout(:onlc ol'thc war and the shape of'Europe afier it, Giflard Martel,t'ortrrncnliug irr l{)46 rru a Tiner e<litorial on 3 l'cbruary 1944 dealing

10. The Roots of the ColdWar in 1943 r07

favourably with a new Soviet constitution, realised that somethingwas amiss in the paper's line. He quotes the central theme of theTimes article at length. The writer had received with enthusiasmRussian proposals for decentralisation and devolution of powers toeach of the sixteen Soviet republics, though this might mean Russia'ssending sixteen delegates to each conference, saying that they wouldbe 'received with particular interest and sympathy in this country,owing to the interest which it obviously owes to the flexibleframework of the British Commonwealth of Nations [sic]'. Martelremarks that at the time those in Russia realised that this was simplypropaganda, and his analysis begged the question of how suchpropaganda had got into The Times. Whether or not Churchill everdiscovered how this was done in detail, through Smollett and hiscreature E.H. Carr, the MOI did indeed begin to feel the effects of apurge, combined with the application of security measures whichhad never been extended to it before. At crucial meetings prior tothe landings in Europe Brendan Bracken himself was denied accessto the Cabinet and complained bitterly to Churchill in writing.Churchill replied movingly, saying that Bracken could see him anytime he liked and blaming him for'beating me up on paper', tellinghim not to do it again. But Bracken was still kept from secretmeetings. He even had the chagrin of having to listen to complaintsfrom his censorship chief Francis Williams that American paperswere carrying reports of material not released in Britain, or bannedby Foreign Office censor stops even when it had leaked out.

The fierce battle within the MOI which developed as a result ofthese events has not received the attention it deserves. The papersreleased into the Public Record Office are incomplete anddisordered. But some incidents have become widely known, thoughwithout their significance in this cold war being seen till now. Thebest example is perhaps that of the MOI's banning of GeorgeOrwell's Animal Farm. Written sometime between the end of 1943and early 1944 it was easily recognisable as a savage attack on theSoviet Union. Orwell had been forced to leave the BBC after makingan uncensored broadcast referring in cynical terms to the abolition ofthe Comintern. His revenge, one of the most brilliant satires in theEnglish language since the days of Swift, was also an unmistakableblow in the cold war. The MOI faction associated with Williams knewimmediately what Orwell's book was and took the opportunity tostrike a blow for their side which was also undeniably in line withformal Government policy of support for Britain's ally. When apublisher approached them for 'advice' on whether to publish thebo<lk or not - censorship was a very gentlemanly business then, when

108 Part Two: The World of Spies

it affected books - they unhbsitatingly banned it and FrancisWilliams, head of censorship, was directly responsible. Orwell had setgreat store by the book and when its publication was stopPed he was

obliged to seek his living as a journalist, appropriately enough onTribune, which had carried his earlier bitter attacks on the People'sConvention. When the book finally came to be published it was seenby the general public as one of the most effective blows struck in acold war which they were just becoming aware of; in reality it owed itsforce to the bitter struggle which had started in 194314, at the timeOrwell wrote it.

Francis Williams's threat to resign came over the question ofcensorship of news reports of the civil war in Greece. Williams wasresponsible for all censorship, but he discovered to his acuteannoyance that all information reaching the MOI was beingcensored in Cairo before it reached Britain. There is as yet no directevidence linking Williams's stand with the Communist secret activityin Britain. In view of the almost universal outcry on the left againstthe suppression of the Communist Greek partisans there-may havebeen no need for any. It was sufficient no doubt that Smollettexerted his influence on The Times to produce one of the mostfamous and most frequently cited editorials opposing Churchill'sline. Williamsfs own protest was directed more against the ForeignOffice, whose Press Department co-ordinated the pro-Churchill lineand ensured that Williams received nothing but Pre-censoredinformation. Williams found again that information which had hadcensor stops placed on it at the request of the Foreign Office waspublished wit-h impunity by the Am-erican press, and it may well bethat his anger was fired more by the affront to his amour propre thanby any active subversive intention. Further, although he did not carryout his threat of resignation, and went on to become Attlee's publicrelations officer in the immediate post-war years, he never won hiswar with the Foreign Office Press Department, as MOI Papersreleased in the Public Records Office make clear. The solution to thatproblem was yet another classic example of infiltration by GuyBurgess who, as we shall see in the next chapter, arranged histransfer to the Press Department after carefully cultivating a

connection with the head of it while he was at the BBC.Hollis's brief as an MI5 officer watching the activity of all

Communists in Britain gave him a ringside seat at these early stages

of the cold war. There cannot have been one of the vitally importantareas which we have looked at here that he did not have directinfbrmation on, either through (lockburn or known Communistssrrt:h as Hans K:rhle itncl lhc Kuczvtrskis. Flc collitl>orated on an

10. The Roots of the ColdWar in 1943 109

almost daily basis with Philby in MI6 on Soviet matters after theanti-Soviet section there was set up with Philby as its head. Evenbefore, he worked closely with him and would have known all aboutthe black propaganda broadcasts, for example, and been responsiblefor the vetting of men such as zu Putlitz who worked for the stationscontrolled by Sefton Delmer. Particularly damaging was Hollis'sclearance of all the Soviet agents so far known who were infiltratedinto the Atom Bomb project. We will examine his response to themin Part Three, but it will already be clear that he did nothing,although fully aware of his Prime Minister's vigorously expressedfears about the dangers of Communist infiltration and espionage.The fact that the detection of Communist infiltration was more thana theoretical possibility at the time was revealed after the war whenChurchill disclosed the purge of the security services in his history ofthe war. But there was an even more pointed revelation of it in 1955when the then Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party,Maurice Webb, revealed in an article in The People that he haddenounced Guy Burgess as a Communist in 1944 and had been insome way responsible for his'removal'from the BBC.

It has never been clear before why Webb should have made such adenunciation at a time when Russia was Britain's ally; it can now beseen as entirely plausible within the framework of the emerging coldwar described here. If what Webb said was true - and there are goodreasons for questioning at least some of the facts related by him - andthe BBC had a record of Burgess as a Communist, the close linksbetween the BBC and MI5 would inevitably have meant that thisinformation would have reached Hollis's desk. If there had been anactual dismissal, the most unlikely part of Webb's story, tbis wouldonly have been after direct discussion with MI5, who moriitored allsecurity aspects connected with the BBC's affairs directly. Holliswould have known that there was already a file on Burgess as one oftheir agents who was 'running' some useful sources of information.He could have safely discounted Webb's denunciation in terms of a

misunderstood meeting in connection with Burgess's MI5 alter egoand left it at that. If he was acting to protect Burgess more directly,he might perhaps have taken the risk of destroying all reference tothe incident. Whichever action he took, it is unlikely that he realisedthat this move of Burgess from the BBC at the very beginning of thecold war was to be the prelude to his defection less than a decadelater.

ll

Prelude to Defection

The circumstances of Guy Burgess's defection to Russia with DonaldMaclean in 1951 have been analysed by every writer on the subject,from leader writers immediately after the defection to scholarsdealing recently with espionage. A consensus has emerged thatBurgess was not supposed to defect and only did so on the spur ofthe moment. There are many reasons for believing this to be true.They will be examined later in the narrative at the appropriate place.What has not been remarked is that a corollary of the theory thatBurgess's flight was a last-minute decision must be that he was surethat he himself was not in any danger from MI5. The same applieseven more strongly to Anthony Blunt who, by his own account, wasordered by his Soviet controllers to defect also but declined to do so,as seems to be confirmed by the very first news reports of thedefection published in the Daily Express, which made mysteriousreference to a third possible defector:

According to a friend, fBurgess and MacleanJ planned the journey to'serve their idealistic purposes'... News of their plan was given to theauthorities by [the] friend who said they expected him to go with them.They were to go to France as if on holiday and then make their way behindthe Iron Curtain. The friend backed out.

Burgess's certainty on this is the more remarkable since, as we haveseen, it has been alleged that he was denounced as a Communist in1944 and obliged to leave the BBC because of it. As the prelude toBurgess's defection undoubtedly began with his move from the safehaven of the BBC, under the wing of George Barnes, MauriceWebb's allegations in The People newspaper are the most logical placeto start in decribing the stages on Burgess's'long road to Moscow'.

Webb's claim that he had denounced Burgess on at least twooct::lsions w:rs made when the 1955 White Paper on the defection,prrrrnptcrl by allcgations by the defector Vladimir Petrov in

Il0

11. Prelude to Defection lllAustralia, looked like bringing the whole Burgess question our intothe open. There was talk already of a 'third man', said by now to bethe person who had warned Burgess and Maclean rather than theperson who refused to defect with them, and the most likely reasonfor Webb's speaking out was that many in Parliament knew that hehad been a close working colleague of Burgess's throughour the warwhen Burgess had been at the BBC. A good deal of what Webb hadto say suggested that Burgess had attempted to use him in order toobtain confidential information, implying that Burgess's posr ar rheBBC was not of any great importance, a myth which has survived tothe present day. In reality Burgess knew vastly more than Webb, whowas in fact no more than a parliamentary correspondent, with aleading position in the press lobby. At one point Burgess tried ro gerWebb the job of sole parliamentary reporter for his programme 'TheWeek in Westminster', in place of the medley of MPs who normallydid the commentary. He failed, but he did get him a parr-rime jobdoing talks when he left the BBC for the Foreign Office. Webb'sanxiety that this might come out, and that it would ruin his positionas leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party, was justified. If he hadbeen thought to have been a recruit of Burgess's, this would indeedhave been the end of him.

Webb's account as reported in The People was not merely couchedin general terms. Two instances are described that ring true. Thefirst concerns a conspiratorial incident that took place in a pub after abroadcast he had done for Burgess:

As they were talking a man wearing a gaberdine overcoat came into the farcorner of the saloon. Thereupon Burgess's manner became tense. 'He'sone of our chaps,' Burgess said as he went across the room to speak to him.A few seconds later he came back and told Webb that he would have roleave at once. Webb followed Burgess and his companion to the door andwas interested to see that they went back not to the BBC but into theOxford Circus tube station. Webb was interested because he recognisedBurgess's friend as one of the organisers of a Communist sponsoredpacifist People's Convention Webb had attended four years earlier.

The identification of the People's Convention as pacifist is of coursedisingenuous and can only reflect the total oblivion into which thatevent had fallen when he mentioned it in 1955. Webb does notexplain his own presence there or divulge who the organiser was.There is also, more telling than anything else against the story, thevastly improbable action of Burgess in identifying a fellowCommunist to Webb unless Webb was also included in thedescription of 'our chaps'. It seems clear that Webb knew that thereha<l been a purge in 1944 ancl decided to use it as a peg on which to

TL2 PartTuo: The World of Spies

hang his story. There is no other evidence to indicate that the cold warreached the inner circles of the BBC as Webb implied, and all Webbsucceeded in doing by making the allegations he did was to draw thespotlight on himself, for no other evidence on the matters he disclosedcame to light until my own researches in the BBC archives in themid-1980s. Webb may have remembered making some objection toBurgess's behaviour at the time that he could have used as cover if theBBC denied publicly that he had ever approached them which, withBurgess's skeleton in their cupboard, they were most unlikely to do.

There is of course an alternative explanation of how Burgess cameto leave the BBC and go to the Foreign Office News Department,which now follows. It was necessary first to explore Webb's claim. Iftrue, it would have meant that MI5 knew that Burgess was a Sovietagent in 1944 and then covered for him when he moved into theForeign Office, which had not been entirely unaffected by the purgeinitiated by Valentine Vivian in MI6. We have seen already how theactivities of the Foreign Office News Department were blunting thealmost totally pro-Soviet line being furthered by the MOI's Russiansection. As the fight against'Darlanism' grew, the Russians'need forsomeone in the FO News Department in Britain must have becomemore and more acute. Papers in the BBC archives establish beyonddoubt that, from the earliest days of the cold war, Burgess was payingspecial attention to the head of the News Department, WilliamRidsdale.

In May 1943 Burgess approached Ridsdale with the suggestion thata more adventurous kind of programme dealing with foreign affairswould become highly desirable, particularly on post-war Europe, as

the war drew to its close. In the formal report Burgess made to GeorgeBarnes Poland was one of the questions discussed:

It was agreed that controversial issues were likely to arise, and must bedealt with in these talks. We took the Polish/Russian dispute as an example,and Ridsdale said that had we had a commentary during the week inquestion this matter would certainly have had to be dealt with. I said whatabout the Foreign Office stop [the Foreign Office censorship over the BBCforeign affairs operative during the war] which had existed on subjects ofthis kind and Ridsdale said the matter would have to be taken on a

sufficiently high level for such stops to be got round. He was confident inthis case he could have done this - ifnecessary by going to the secretary ofstate in person [Anthony Eden]... Ridsdale... said that though the talksmight well be subject to criticism and attack from various vested interests(e.g. over Poland) this could, in his view, be faced. It was important that theBl)(l should give such talks as otherwise the public field was rather open atthe plese rrt fot'agitati<lrr rtrn by iuterested parties. This situation was likelyto rlevelop lrrd he pelsorrnlly hoperl thut irrr eal'ly stat't wotll(l be possihle.

11. Prelud,e to Defection 113

Even allowing that the report was by Burgess himseli it is quite clearthat Ridsdale was already very much of his way of thinking on thePolish question, and it would have been but a short step to gettingprogrammes on such questions put out with Foreign Office backing.Later, in 1944, Burgess's move to the News Department seemedsimply a logical progression. The exact details of how Burgess putthat to Ridsdale is not known, but obviously Ridsdale would not haveobjected and would probably have found someone with Burgess'swide knowledge of the inner workings of the BBC and Governmentministries a desirable asset. For his part Burgess would immediatelybe able to discover the Government line on controversial events suchas the fighting in Greece, and also steer the departmental view morein the direction favoured by the MOI Russian desk and Stalin.

When Tom Driberg visited Burgess in Russia after his defection hediscussed with him every aspect of his work in the Foreign Office andthe BBC. He discovered that Burgess had greatly enjoyed his time inthe News Department with his colleague Fred Warner, whosubsequently accompanied him when he moved to Hector McNeil'soffice in the post-war Labour Government. Driberg wrote later:

This was perhaps the happiest period of his career in England. When wewere talking about it he said: 'I was remendously patriotic about the NewsDepartment, as a department, and I still am.'

Burgess's use of the word 'patriotic' was not necessarily ironical. TheNews Department of the Foreign Office was very much atwentieth-century creation. It combined the vast diplomaticexperience of the Office gathered over hundreds of years with theworld of press, radio and propaganda that created the patrioticimage of Britain after the First World War and between the wars. Itwas always at the centre of matters involving the newer diplomacycreated by the media of press and radio, which earlier generationswould have ignored entirely. We have already seen it in action inChina when it suggested and approved a 'leaked' article by PeterFleming on BAT's troubles. Burgess would also have found that suchcoverage as there was of his JBC activities, and the radio war that wasso important in the lead-up to the Second World War, would havefallen to the News Department, with the files being under their codenumber. It is indeed true that for the twentieth century, vast thoughthe series of files of Foreign Office general correspondence are, theyoften cannot be properly understood if not read in parallel with theNews Department files for the same period. Exactly what, in detail,Burgess did in his years with the f)epartment will have to await closestudy by a l'uture biographer;but hc woulcl have scen evcry :rction of'

ll4 Part Two: The World of Spies

the war up to the surrender of Nazi Germany, both as they appearedto the Foreign Office when the news arrived and as they werereleased to the public after the politicians had decided on their policyover them. As the cold war came into the open with the seizure ofparts of ruined Germany by the Allies and its rapid division intozones, Burgess would have been able to follow in the greatest detailexactly what was happening, without actually gaining access to thecentres of policy-making. His position can perhaps be illustrated bywhat happened when news of Churchill's Fulton speech which firstgave wide currency to the term 'Iron Curtain' was released, asBurgess told it to Driberg:

Guy was on duty that day [5 March 1946] in the Foreign Office NewsDepartment [i.e. was holding the Press briefing]. The more perceptivecorrespondents asked him if Bevin had approved the text of the Fultonspeech. Guy went up to the private office and consulted Bevin'ssecretaries. 'Look here, old boy,' said one of them, 'you just tell the press hehasn't even read it yet - it's only just coming through on the tape - andwhat little he has seen he doesn't think he agrees with.' Then he added:'Between you and me, of course, Winston shdwed him what he was going

' to say before he went, but don't you tell them thatl'

Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether this story istrue in itself - Driberg's book and its authenticity, after it had beenvetted by the KGB and by Hollis at MI5, will be examined in the finalchapter - it is quite clear what Burgess's job entailed. The fact thatamong the 'more perceptive' journalists were many who had knownhim in his previous job as a man with the BBC who was always in theHouse of Commons press lobby was significant, for it was they whofirst thought that Burgess must have been part of some inner circlewhose overall power could be the only explanation for his almostunbelievable ability to move across normally inviolate boundariesbetween departments such as the BBC and the FO, from one plumjob to another.

The general election of 1945 produced one of the classic upsetsthat show the advantages of the democratic system in recording thetrue state of a nation's mind. Churchill, the great war leader, wasrejected by the electorate and a Labour Government under ClementAttlee set up in his place. A major factor in the election was the partplayed by radio. Throughout the war people had come to rely on theBBC as their main source of information, and it was largely due tothis that a report such as that compiled by Beveridge becameuniversally known and could come to be seen by the electorate as amodel for a future Britain. We have remarked how Hilton'sbroadcasts on the report were seen even within the Army as testing

1 1. Prelud,e to Defection 115

the waters for the most radical post-war changes. For Burgess theeffect of radio and his part in the wartime political broadcasts waseven more direct, for two of the 'radio personalities' he had created,Hector McNeil and John Strachey, both obtained office in the newGovernment. Strachey was already well-known in the Labour Party,although his radio personality as 'Wing Commander Strachey' nodoubt gained him greater recognition with the public and led directlyto his choice as Air Minister. McNeil, on the other hand, was analmost unknown quantity. It was Burgess who had seen McNeil'spotential as a public personality and shaped both the form and thecontent of the talks he gave over the air. Burgess's detailed editorialwork made him, in fact, closer to the American idea of a personalassistant and speech writer.

When he entered the Foreign Office under Bevin McNeil soonbegan to feel the need of Burgess's help on a wide variety of matters

- help which Burgess happily gave, unofficially, in spite of hisrelatively junior work in the News Department. The situation wasclearly irregular, and McNeil soon realised it. After two months inoffice he persuaded his staff to allow him to appoint Burgessformally as his personal assistant. At the same time Warner, thesenior official in the News Department below Ridsdale, was madeMcNeil's private secretary, no doubt to keep an eye on Burgess.Although the creation of this post was irregular, it was not withoutprecedent. A notorious example was that of Francis Williams, whooccupied an exactly similar post under Attlee himself in the yearsafter the war. Williams, who was later to write a biography of Attlee,was soon rumoured to be the 'eminence grise' at l0 Downing Street.His role.was greatly exaggerated at the time, but Burgess's situationvis-i-vis McNeil was indeed that of an eminence grise. He did a greatdeal of McNeil's work for him and was in a position to see all but afew of the papers that crossed the Foreign Office portals on their wayto Bevin's desk. When Bevin was away McNeil became the actinghead of the Office. Burgess then saw everything.

Those who have speculated in later years on which of the Sovietagents so far revealed caused the greatest damage have tended toconcentrate on Philby and Maclean. This has suited those who havewished to preserve the amour propre of the security services, forboth were not in the least obvious externally and were difficult todetect, even when their loyalty was in doubt. Burgess did not fit intothe pattern of a secret agent. His position and role in contemporaryaffairs were all too blatantly clear to those in authority, and to a greatmany in the journalistic world and beyond. This was why the mostdeterminecl cf fort at il'cover-up'was made after Burgess's defection,

116 Part Two: The World of Spies

His well-known eccentricity was played up for all it was worth, whilethe secret activity he had been involved in before the war remainedunknown. His position on McNeil's staff was unusual, and his actualposition was concealed by describing him as a relatively juniormember of the Foreign Office, which was literally true. But whenPetrov defected in Australia in 1955 one of the stories he told whichhelped produce the White Paper on Burgess and Maclean's activitieswas concerned with what Burgess had actually been doing. Hedescribed how the staff at the Soviet Embassy in London had beenkept working right through the night coding and transmitting thevast amounts of material Burgess was supplying every day. Whatexactly was this material?

The scholar or researcher looking through Foreign Office papersof the time will find Burgess's notes or initials on countlessdocuments of vital importance to the shaping of the post-war world.These range from material gathered when he was the secretaryresponsible for drawing up accounts of meetings prior to theestablishment of the 'Brussels Treaty Organisation' to an hour-by-hour knowledge of the British position during the Berlin airlift.Details of both were provided in Driberg's book and seem to havebeen correct; we shall examine shortly Burgess's role in the evolutionof Britain's policy towards China in which a fresh study of therelevant Foreign Office papers, revealed here for the first time,establishes that on that question he was consciouslymisleading, while Driberg, and Hollis who authorised thepublication, apparently connived at it. Petrov's account of the massof material that was to be copied suggests that Burgess was literallytaking every paper of interest out of the office for copying. There is apointer to this being so in some cases, where he apologises forkeeping papers unduly. In one of the most important, involving theChina question, he kept papers for over four months. The delayitself significantly affected policy, as the paper was vital and itscirculation at Cabinet level could have caused changes in Britishpolicy.

With such intense activity it is more and more surprising that thesecurity services did not gain sorne inkling of what Burgess's positionwas. But defenders of Hollis have pointed out that without someinitial clue such activity is exceedingly difficult to detect. With this inmind it is odd, to say the least, that Driberg happily describedBurgess in these yearsias discussing questions of foreign policy withfriends of his such as zu Putlitz. Hollis knew that this was in the textand passed it, and yet the text makes it quite clear to us in retrospect,as must have been clear to Hollis in 1955, that Burgess after the war

11. Prelude to Defection II7was still closely involved with the group we have looked at during andbefore the war, all of whom were known in the final analysis to beSoviet agents. Only Cockburn was absent, 'burnt' by his wartimeactivities and spending much of the immediate post-war years behindthe iron curtain before finally settling in Ireland.

The personal strain on Burgess caused by his double life began totell at this time. McNeil used to claim that he never knew Burgess tobe under the influence of alcohol before six in the evening; but as anhabitu6 of his social circle as well as his Minister, he might haveadded that Burgess was never anything like sober afterwards.Burgess may have sensed that his position was being questioned, orhe may even have created the situation himself, as he was to do laterto initiate a move he wished to make. However it was done, heterminated his extremely important position, from his Sovietcontrollers' point of view, with a move to an entirely new departmentin which they were greatly interested, the Information and ResearchDepartment, formed by Christopher Mayhew.

Although Britain under a Labour Government was transformedinternally into something resembling a socialist state, her externalaffairs remained relatively unchanged. Burgess must have felt theposition acutely as Britain fell more and more under Americaninfluence. The situation in post-war Germany, after the brief fusionof the British and American zones of occupation into the artificialstate of Bizonia, rapidly moved towards an American rather than aBritish, let alone a Soviet, model. Whereas the British steel and coalindustries were nationalised along with many other branches of theeconomy, in Germany they were set up as capitalist enterprises underthe umbrella of great American business empires. These develop-ments were highlighted by a barrage of Moscow propaganda andespionage which Mayhew felt needed to be countered, especially as

they could well have had effects in Britain which the Labour Party,particularly old union men such as Bevin, wished to avoid at all costs.

Mayhew's idea was to set up a department that would mount an'ideological offensive against Stalinism'. It had been taken up byBevin, and at Attlee's suggestion a paper was submitted to theCabinet, where it was received with approval. Its activities weresecret, some so secret that the relevant entries have even beenremoved from the printed Foreign Office indexes. A pointer to whatthese may have been can be seen in the title of the organisation, theIRD, or Information and Research Department. Although LordMayhew was not aware of it at the time, one of the most feared andsecret of the internal security systems during the war had had thesame title, 'Ihe head of this department had at one point attempted

1 18 Part Two: The World of Spies

to resign, saying in a letter that if it was ever discovered what thedepartment was doing it would be called the English Gestapo. Itsactual activities (which will be the subject of a future book) were notin fact quite so terrifying, but every civil servant during the war yearswould have known of its activities. Mayhew placed at the head of thenew IRD Ivone Kirkpatrick, who was fully aware of the wartime IRD,and it may have be-en he who gave the new department its title.Burgess, who was later to refer to Kirkpatrick as a 'black catholic'who gave the world Adenauer, was intensely interested in what theIRD was doing, and it was to this department that he now moved'

Lord Mayhew has candidly remarked in his autobiography:

IRD seemed to have made a good start, but I now made an extraordinarymistake. One day Hector McNeil came into my room, congratulated me onthe progress we were making and said he had someone available who was

uniquely qualified for IRD work. I replied that I was now only taking onpeople with exceptional knowledge of Soviet Communism. Who was hiscandidate? 'My personal assistant Guy Burgess. Just your man.' Iinterviewed Burgess. He certainly showed a dazzling insight intoCommunist methods of subversion and propaganda and I readily tookhim on.

There can be no doubt that Burgess relished the task of getting thebetter of Kirkpatrick, just as he had during the war with the help ofSmollett at the MOI. But the job also marked the beginning of hiscomplete disintegration, which in the end was to reveal the fullextent of Soviet penetration in British institutions. Clearly he saw theIRD in a similar light to the JBC of his pre-war days, and gavehimself the task of going round Europe and the Middle East toacquaint diplomatic, and even MI6, officers with exactly what it wasthat his important new department was doing. But ten years hadpassed since his JBC days and they had taken their toll. By the timehe reached Istanbul, where he had arranged to call on Philby, he was

existing on alcohol and a wide range of drugs (which had becomeavailable after the war largely through American sources). Hisconduct was blatant, and produced a string of telegramscomplaining of his behaviour, which included joking references inpublic bars to the identity of MI6 agents. In Istanbul he did relaxwhile giving Philby the fullest possible . breakdown of Mayhew'sattempts to counter the Communist menace and the methods he was

using. According to an FBI report released in America under theFreedom of Information Act, he also became close to Philby'ssecretary during his stay. He was to meet her again when he movedto Washington and stayed with Philby.

Wherr llurgcss retut'ned t<l l,ottrl<ttt Mayhcw had already been

I1. Prehtde to Defection

alerted to his behaviour. He removed him from his post, marking hisfile 'Burgess is drunken, idle and dirty', as damaging a reference ascould be imagined. Nevertheless Burgess was kept within theForeign Office and moved to yet another department. This seemsnow to be incomprehensible except in terms of a great departmentlooking after its own. Yet there were other factors. There is no doubtthat Burgess's knowledge of Britain's pre-war activity in Germany onthe ground, involving illegal broadcasting against the Nazis, placedhim in a powerful position despite his lowly place in the hierarchy,particularly since the Nuremberg trials when such activity had beenascribed as a War Crime to Goebbels and his men. In addition heunquestionably did have great brilliance and knowledge. Expandingon the brief remark about his interview with Burgess cited here,Lord Mayhew has observed that you only had to listen to him fortwo minutes to realise that he knew an exceptional amount,particularly about modern history. Thus it was Burgess who actuallywrote the article on the Labour Party between the wars ascribed toMcNeil in a widely circulated history of the Labour Party. In abroader perspective he was an authority on the great Lord Salisbury,of whom he contemplated a biography, discussing it with the thenHeadmaster of Eton on the very duy before he defected.Nevertheless it must have taken the most extraordinary powers ofpersuasion to talk himself into his next post in the Far EasternDepartment dealing specifically with China.

The day Burgess took up his post at the China Desk, I November1948, was the day Mao Tse Tung's troops overran Mukden. In astory filled with ironies and strange, often incomprehensibleconjunctions, this is perhaps the most unusual. Barely a decadepreviously a Communist ring had been discovered in Hollis's firm inMukden. Now Burgess, a Communist agent, was the Foreign Officeman dealing with affairs in Mukden and their implications forBritain, while Hollis was part of the British Security Service MI5dedicated to tracking down his own colleague in the Foreign Office!It is even stranger that both before the war and later while themolehunts were'in progress Hollis would clearly have agreed withBurgess's view of the situation there.

The importance of China in the post-war world was vital, and thedivergence of views between Britain and America which took place atthis time was of the greatest significance. General MacArthur'sbiographer, C.A. Willoughby, alleged that Burgess materiallyaffected events leading up to the Korean War and its progress byleaking vital information to the Chinese. Driberg was at pains toconvey Burgess's explanation of what occurred. While this is

119

120 Part Two: The World of Spies

plausible, in fact it draws attention away from Burgess's actual rolebefore the vital recognition of Communist China by Britain. Burgesscontributed largely to Britain's decision to recognise China when theAmericans were adamant that they would not, which in turn led toinsufficient attention being paid to a warning that China wouldintervene in Korea. That Burgess and his controllers at the KGB tookthe matter seriously is obvious from the prominence given it inDriberg's book, but later commentators have cast doubt on it. Indeedit seemed odd that someone as Iowly in the Foreign Office as Burgesscould, among so many other things, have been a commentator onChina or, if he was, that anything he said could have had the influencesuggested by MacArthur's biographer. We shall now examine one ofthe key position papers prepared by Burgess, to show that Willough-by's suspicions, with only slight alteration in detail, were correct.

The file examined here, containing some of Burgess's most reveal-ing comments, is based on a paper sent to the Foreign Office fromChina by the Indian Ambassador to China, K.M. Panikkar' Theburden of Panikkar's analysis, repeated on a number of occasions, was

that the revolutionary movement in China under Mao Tse Tungshould not be seen as an equivalent of the Soviet movement underLenin and currently under Stalin. He suggested that in reality it was anagrarian reform movement, and that only Mao and a few of hiscolleagues had any knowledge of Leninist writings and theories'Indeed it is clear now that few of the central works of the Leninistcanon would have been translated at this time, and that such as existedwere not widely understood. Panikkar's position was unusual in thathe was a central channel of communication between China and Britainand America at a time when America had no effective mission andBritain's officers on the ground rvere not in close contact. Panikkarwas an Oxford man, an able historian, who took a double first at ChristChurch. His paper was perhaps theoretical, but it provided vital cluesto what was going on in the minds of the Chinese.

It was this paper that Burgess detained for four months, therebypreventing discussion of Panikkar's thesis, which was very close to theAmerican vierv. Burgess did make a fleeting apology for'holding thisup very badly' and the next official to comment remarked on the fact,though without fully understanding what had happened. Burgess'sposition is given here, followed by his detailed comments on thepaper.

'l'ltc llallcl is... rr'cll u'orth lcarling ils olle of the trrnrpletest stirtenretrts ofillusions irs to tlrc'sprr:i;rl'rriltulc o1 (lhirrcsc (lontntutristrt and why it willlx.'rlilli.tr,rrt'tlritt t\'('lurvc'r't.t lcccivt'rl. Wt'ktt<'rl tlltt tltese illttsitltts u'et'e

11. Prelude to Defection r21

particularly cherished in India and particular attention has been devoted tocombatting them there. The case is argued at greater length within and witha greater display of illustrative reasons than elsewhere but the very displayof the arguments reveals their weakness. Some marginal comments will befound within fextracted and printed below] on these points of detail. Theywere written at the time of receipt of the memorandum. Subsequent eventsand speeches by Chinese Communist leaders have only reinforced the rigidand essential orthodoxy of Chinese Communist policy and further exposedthe illusions within.

The Indian Ambassador has two main lines of thought. The first is todifferentiate sharply between China and Russia and to maintain thatbecause of these differences China will not go Communist. Pushed to itslogical conclusion this means that no other country can go Communist sinceno other country is identical with Russia. In fact the social differencesbetween China and Russia are less marked than in many other cases and onewould have thought, therefore, that Marxism being a social theory similarresults might have been expected. However that may be, the main differen-ces between the two countries (degree of indusrialisation etc.) have for longbeen taken into account in formulating the orthodox policies recommendedby Russian and Chinese Communist leaders. Stalin formulated them veryprecisely in 1927 and the CCP has since followed his line. In Mr Panikkar'seyes, however, this differentiation finally leads, though via more sophis-ticated hoops than others go through, to the familiar and dangerous wishfulthought that Chinese Communism is basically a movement of agrarianreform.

The 'turn to the cities', the advocacy of the builcling up of Chineseindustry as the primary task of the Chinese revolution, the insistence thatthe Chinese dictatorship is'led by the working classes'that has featured in allrecent Chinese Communist pronouncements since this analysis was written,shows that whatever relevance it may once have had no longer exists. H.M.Ambassador indicates one of these developments in his paragraph 4 withinas modifying Mr Panikkar's conclusions. Subsequent developments haveabolished them.

We can, of course, agree that because of the difficulty of their task theChinese Communists may in the long run failjust as for very similar reasonsit was always said that the Russian leaders would fail in their task of imposingCommunism in Russia. But I do not think this conclusion helps very much.

Mr Panikkar's second preoccupation in his short concluding section is theimpact of Marxism on Asia. Undeterred by the fact that he has earlier saidMarxism is not applicable to China he concludes that Marxism'has come tostay' for no acceptable alternative has been offered to the Asian people,From this conclusion he however partly excepts India. Here he traversesfamiliar ground and in his differentiation between Chinese and Indiarrconditions his short restatement of the position as outlined sometimes (butnot always) in Nehru's books and more confidently in Nehru's recettt policy,is one that it can only be hoped is sounder than is the previous differen-tiation beween China and Russia.

(i. Burgess5th Augtrst, l1)4{f

Panikkirr's papct'is crrritlccl Kttrl Mttrx itt Asfut, or Oltirtr.rt'Oottttttttttisnt

t22 Part Tuo : The World of Spies

in its Relation to Asia. The extracts are set out here as though part of adialogue:

Panikkar:

Burgess:

Panikkar:

Burgess:Panikkar:

Burgess:

Panikkar:

Burgess:

Panikkar:

Burgess:

Panikkar:

Burgess:

Panikkar:

Burgess:

Panikkar:

llulgess:

It is safe to predict that no political doctrine howeverclearly planned beforehand and however rigid itsdogma can remain unchanged or unaffected when itspreads ovel'so vast a territor-1 ...One of the tenets of the dogma in question is that it isaltered to suit circumstances.The geographical character of the Russian Empirehas had an influence in the development of theLeninist doctrine which is but insufficientlyappreciated.Not by Lenin.The economy of China as in the rest of Asia ispredominantly a small peasant economy... Capitalismis mainly foreign, compradole or bureaucratic andtherefole not national. The anti-capitalist feeling istherefore nationalist and not based on a class feeling. . .

No; the peasant question is in China as in Russia aclass question. Industry it is true is partially foreign,and the question therefore national. But so it rvas inRussia [with] French capital etc. 'Russia is asemi-colonial countrl': Lenin.The problem of liquidating the kulaks does not existin China for the hulalu do not exist as a class.In Russia this was not raised until the late 1920s. Andmany Russian Kulaks had been created by the l9l7refolm.The peculiarities of Ithe Chinese ideographic]language considerably changes the thought of othercountries when it is conveyed through its medium.Mao's utterances in translation read pretty familiarly.Marx does not appear to have been much altered bytranslation into Slav.The terms Marxist-Leninism and Leninism andLeninist-Stalinism themselves go to prove thatCommunist doctrine is a changing one.As Ler-rin ahvays said it shoulcl be. Hence it can beapplied to China.Essentially n'hat has been achieved in the EasternEuropean countries is a national revolution underCommunist leadership and not a Communistrevolution.No. An imposed revolution with Russian forcebehind it.Todat China is dependent ort thc sea for her llfr and thisnrust inevitably moclifl hel approach t<t lhe contincnlalintelpretation of Oonrnrrrnisrn AS favoured inMosc<lrv.'I'lro' r'orrceivcrl in Finglarrrl.

11. Prelude to Defection r23

Burgess's annotations dispel once and for all the attempts made inthe 1955 White Paper (below, p. 202) to suggest that Burgess tried inany way to conceal his Marxist-Leninist views. Not only are hisremarks couched in Leninist terms, they are resolutely anddeterminedly partisan. Moreover this vital paper of Panikkar's andothers like it did not come to him by chance but because he was theperson who dealt with such matters and was regarded as theauthority. His line, that Chiang Kai Shek was finished and that Maowas to be recognised as the leader of a Soviet revolution in China, wasalso the British line followed by his department heads Sir PeterScarlett and Sir Esler Denning. As Burgess remarked to Driberg, hissuperiors had 'got the whole thing taped' and 'persuaded Bevin torecognise the People's Government in Peking'. But they were relyingon Burgess's position papers. He then followed this up with acollective pat on the back that must have infuriated his old colleagueswhen they read it:

Anyone could be proud of the wisdom, the knowledge and the lack ofprejudice of that department, and the people in it. It was also agreeable tofind that all but one of [his] colleagues in the department were oldEtonians.

The denigration of Panikkar's views continued in the Foreign Office,where the joke was 'Ah yes! Panikkar! Aptly named, we alwaysthought!': precisely the attitude that Burgess and sympathisers ofMao Tse Tung and the Soviet view of him wished to encourage.Peter Lowe, an authority on the origins of the Korean War, hasremarked that Panikkar's opinions were indeed suspected by theForeign Office. This became particularly important when thequestion of possible Chinese involvement was considered.

Initially Panikkar thought that the Chinese would not becomeinvolved, basing his opinion on an interview he had had with ChouEn-lai in September 1950. But further investigation swung himround to the view that they would indeed act. As Lowe remarks:

Panikkar had seen Chou En-lai on 2l September and had deduced thenthat China would adopt a more aggressive policy... The British feltPanikkar's appraisals had to be viewed with caution given his volatile andnot always reliable nature. At the same time, the warnings must be givenserious consideration.

In fact, while the British Chiefs of Staff appreciated the position, theForeign Office and Britain took the view that Panikkar's opinion waswrong, 'Panikkar panicking again', with the now well-knownconsequences. There is no doubt that Bttrgess's view was echoed

I24 Part Two: The World of Spies

widely on the left of the Labour Partyi as we have seen China hadbeen a rallying cry from the days before the war and there were thosewho saw the cradle of that conflict there. The other major area inwhich Burgess's knowledge of Foreign Office policy was of use to theChinese, and in real terms by far the most important, was over thequestion of the major trading firms in China. Burgess referred tothem in Driberg's book:

The Ambassador also sent admirably objective reports, not concealing hisconviction that Chiang Kai Shek was done for. This - and the corollarythat the communist regime must be recognised - was the establishedBritish line; and the 'old China hands' of the China Association, thecapitalists concerned with the f300 millions of British Money invested inChina, worked loyally with the Foreign Office and (unlike the ChinaLobby in Washington) did not attempt to dictate policy.

This statement was as far removed from the facts as possible andreflects little more than Burgess gloating openly over one of hismajor triumphs, a direct blow at the capitalists he hated. The factwas, as he well knew, that the British companies involved, of whichthe largest was BAT, Hollis's old company, suffered grievously overtheir withdrawal from China and had made every effort to come to acompromise solution, as they had in the past wherever thei traded.Unknown to them, Burgess had been closely involved in thenegotiations throughout. He was, in fact, the person who actuallytransmitted BAT's own communications to and from its employees,and saw the censor intercepts of all cables sent privately fromShanghai to their Directors in London. He frequently wrote theposition papers needed, and there can be no doubt whatever thatthrough him Mao Tse Tung must have been completely informed ofall the moves the company intended making. The idea that there wasno China lobby in London was the sheerest nonsense. Theastonishing thing is that Hollis had complete control of Driberg'sbook, as we shall see, and yet he let these statements pass. Burgess'sview expressed in these papers, and his action as an 'agent ofinfluence'must have been at least as important as the fact that he wasable to keep the Soviet Government informed of what Britain'sintentions were.

It has always been suggested that Burgess in some way dissembledhis political views. His defenders have said that he made no secret ofhis beliefs. We can see that the latter case is unquestionably the rightone, though there is no doubt that his earlier memoranda were lessfi'ankly l,eninist in their terrns. "fhe conrments we have examined inrlctail wcre Lcninist, arrcl thc {act that he was rnoving rnore and rnore

11. Prelude to Defection 125

towards open avowal, as, in general terms, Britain moved more intoAmerica's orbit and the likely alignment of the post-war worldbecame more evident, must have placed an intense strain on Burgess.His behaviour, never good, deteriorated so badly during one holidaythat on his return he faced a full-scale inquiry into his actions fromwhich he barely emerged unscathed.

Washington would hardly seem the sort of posting for a man whohad just survived a disciplinary hearing by the skin of his teeth; butBurgess showed once again his old flair for falling on his feet andgetting the job he would have wanted, that of China expert, given thelimited options open. A major factor in his move must have beenPhilby's intimation that he would keep an eye on Burgess, who wasknown to be an old friend. In fact when Burgess arrived inWashington he moved into Philby's basement. This was also home toPhilby's secretary whom, according to FBI files, Philby had broughtwith him from Istanbul, where Burgess had also stayed.

If this posting was indeed a last effort to get Burgess back on therails, using his undoubted knowledge of Chinese affairs and ofprecisely how Britain's views differed from those of the Americans, itfailed. Apart from his drinking, he also found the temptation of fastcars and American roads irresistible. It is ironic that the Lincoln carswhich were used in Russia to sweep Intourist guests around thecountry, and which Hollis had remarked on in his letters home, wereto be Burgess's downfall. He chose a massive twelve-cylinder Lincolnconvertible shortly after he arrived and then began to collectspeeding tickets with tiresome regularity. Despite warnings he wasfinally brought down when he got three tickets in one day in a statewhere another diplomat had recently killed someone by dangerousdriving and then claimed diplomatic immunity. Later attempts havebeen made to link this chain of events with Burgess's subsequentdefection with Maclean. But even spy writers would not invent suchan absurd scenario. In fact, as has been shown convincingly byKnightley and others, the dates were entirely wrong and Burgessremained in America for a considerable time after the incident. Anadded detail from FBI files released under the Freedom ofInformation legislation was that a tape recording of Burgess givingan account of Churchill's presentation of a book to him was madeopenly at a party given for him before before he left by his old friendNorman Luker, hardly the action of a man embarking on a

clandestine operation.Much attention has been paid to the exact sequence of events

leading up to the actual clef'ection, ifhere is no doulrt that Macleatthad learnt thitt lte was under srtspici<ltt.'l'he lar:t that hc:rucl Rurgcss

t27126

.tx

Part Two: The World of Spies

had defected on a Friday, when the order for his interrogation hadbeen signed that very day, seemed to point to a tip-off by a third man- Iater thought to be Philby. On the other hand, it has been pointedout that, if Philby was the third man, he had no time to ger rherelevant message to Maclean, or to his Russian controllers.

The fallacy in these analyses is that the actual signing of the orderwas only the last stage in a relatively complicated process which hadbeen going on for months. There were other people who knew whatwas happening and would have known that the precise moment ofsigning would be the very last moment by which all relevantarrangements would have to be made. Philby has said that he sent aletter to Burgess warning him that moves against Maclean wereimminent by a reference to his car, which Burgess would haveunderstood. Blunt learnt of this through Burgess and may haveinformed Maclean, but there were othar possible roures .hich itwould be impossible now to test, including a leak through politicianswho knew of the impending action.

The choice of Burgess to accompany Maclean is not to beexplained by any danger to Burgess himself. Burgess hardly knewMaclean and had not seen him for years, which meant that he wouldnot be known to Maclean's wife or anyone they might meet. Moreimportant, he was capable of carrying out rhe difficult job of gettingMaclean out safely. There is a great difference between going abroadwith a post to go to and everything arranged, as Maclean had alwaysdone, and going illegally with every chance of slip-ups and the needfor rapid changes of plan. Burgess in his pre-war days with the JBCwas quite familiar rvith such escapades. When the day came, Burgessmoved according to plan and got Maclean clean away.

The evidence that Burgess was not intended to go with Maclean,apart from the mention in Philby's autobiography of his last remarkto Burgess, 'Don't you go too!', is apparent in details such asMaclean's giving Burgess a false name when he telephoned his wifethe previous day to say that he had invited a friend down for a mealthat Friday evening. He and Maclean suspected, correctly, thatMaclean's telephone was bugged. The only reason for giving a falsename would be that, when Burgess returned to England, it would notbe known that it was he who had been the escort. When Burgesscame back from the visit to Wystan Auden in Italy, which he hadapparently planned, there would be no link with Maclean's move arabout the same time. Burgess was already under suspension from theForeign Office after the debacle in America, and a visit to consult anold f'ricrrd on his lirturc would havc been cntil'ely understandable, Infitt:t hc obl:tinctl ull thc r:otrsultatiort hc ncc<lccl in r:onvcrs:rtion with

11. Prelude to Defection

Maclean just before the defection rvho, independently, had come toprecisely the same conclusion about the hypocrisy and dishonesty ofthe Labour Government as Burgess. One old friend of Burgess's hassuggested that he may also have made a fundamental misinterpre-tation of the political state of Britain and envisaged returning afternone too long a period to a Titoesque regime, perhaps underAneurin Bevan whom he regarded as a promising young leader,Whatever his reasons, the defection proved to be the single mostimportant action in his life. It is clear too that in following the logic ofhis position he precipitated the extended analysis of the politicalestablishment in Britain of r,vhich this book is a part. If Maclean hadgone on his orvn, a spy - albeit one with an ideological motivation - itis inconceivable that the event would not have been forgotten withina decade. Burgess's career if he had remained can only be guessed at.

Part Three

The Wilderness of Mirrors

T2

The Frontiers ofJournalism

Among the journalists whom we have seen listening to Burgess as heannounced Churchill's Fulton speech at the Foreign Office newsbriefing, and who remembered him swanning through the presslobby at the House of Commons during the war, there was littledoubt when Burgess defected that the story when it was told wouldbe the spy story of the century.

It was obvious from his risqu6 life style and the ease with which hegot any job he wanted that Burgess was part of some innerestablishment, and that his defection would be the subject of acover-up on a scale never before known. It fell to Chapman Pincherto deliver the most comprehensive indictment of all:

... Parliament and the public have been systematically misled by officialstatements and reports on security and espionage affairs... the truth hasbeen repeatedly suppressed, distorted, manipulated and, on occasion,falsified on spurious grounds of 'national interest' whilst the real purposewas to prevent embarrassment of departments and individuals... Britishgovernments hate to be accused of cover-ups but there is nothing of whichthey are more consistently guilty, largely because of their dependence onthe advice and testimony of officials over whom there is no effectiveoversight.

It is appropriate that it should be Pincher delivering this verdictmore than thirty years after the defection, because it is he who hasperhaps done more than any other journalist to keep that earliestsuspicion alive and bring out the truth. An earlier book by a fellowjournalist, John Fisher, perhaps the best before the cover-up ofBlunt's treachery began to break down, had introduced two chaptersentitled 'The First Cover-up' and 'The Second Cover-up', referringto the.initial response to the defection by Labour ministers in theHouse, and the clearing of Philby by Macmillan. In fact thepropensity <lf succcssive British ()overnments to take the easy wayout and issrre warnings ancl immunities hacl already lrcconrc

llil

132 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

apparent to the Canadian and American authorities from the firstdenunciations caused in 1945 by the defection of the Soviet cipherclerk Gouzenko in Ottawa. In Canada an entire spy system had beenrounded up, and a wide range of academics, scientists andGovernment officials had been put on trial without fear or favour.Some received substantial sentences, others shorter terms of a yearor so resulting in almost immediate release. In Britain it was obviousthat only Nunn May, against whom the strongest indications of guilthad been obtained and who had made a full confession, was to beprosecuted. The sense of unease both among knowledgeablemembers of the public and the press laid the ground for the scandalthat broke with Burgess and Maclean's defection. It then becameclear that many establishment figures must have been closelyassociated with the spies and that, as in the Nunn May case, all wereto be protected. Disgracefully it was in the erstwhile 'colonies' thatan honest clean sweep was attempted, while in Britain the discoveryof the truth was left to hard-won discovery after many years' work atthe frontiers of .journalism. As Burgess had spent much of hisworking life in the company of newspapermen and Philby washimself a working journalist both at the beginning and the end of hiscareer, first with The Times and finally with the Obseraer, this isperhaps appropriate.

Initially the stories were simply factual ones. Later, as revelationsucceeded revelation and each time the authorities merely movedtheir defences back an appropriate distance with yet anotheroff-the-record briefing which could be denied as soon as given, itbecame obvious that the 'cover-up', if that is what it was, could onlybe broken by the most determined efforts of investigative reporters.Unbeknown to the reporters the cover-up had gone on within MI5itself, both to protect Britain from American wrath at the securitybreakdowns and, it seemed, to protect senior officers within theservice. While journalists outside were trying to find out the truthabout Philby and seizing on the fact that he had been head of theanti-Soviet section of MI6, within MI5 teams of men were going overthe slightest actions of their colleagues to discover whether one ofthem had been a spy. Eventually, as the years passed, these twoseparate quests grew into one. The early reports gave way toinquiries by the investigative teams of the great Sunday papers.These in turn were overtaken by the triumphs of Chapman Pincherwhich finally brought the truth about MI5's internal war out into theopen. This we shall examine, with the main def'ence of Hollis, in thellcxt chapter.

'['hc prcss st<lrics rlcaling witlr tltc Rtrt'gcss attcl Maclcan clcf'ection

12. The Frontiers of Journalism 133

alone would require a substantial index if recounted fully. What isintended here is simply a presentation of the key events as theybecame known for certain through the press investigations, with anaccount of the most important books published in the field,culminating in the few from the universities, which began to showinterest as the 30-year-rule passed relevant documents into thePublic Records Office.

The stories of Nunn May and Fuchs, the 'atom spies', weresuperficially not unlike the classic spy stories of William le Queuxand John Buchan, but the reporters with scientific training soonpierced the surface and wanted to know how two men withCommunist backgrounds had managed to get through securitychecks to work on the most secure project of all. Though they did notknow it, the American authorities were equally keen to find out. Thefinal answer has only now become clear, but at the time there wereclues enough, if the molehunters and the press had been able to seethem. One clue the significance of which was not to be apparent fordecades was connected with the arrival in England of the CanadianPrime Minister, Mackenzie King, shortly after Gouzenko's defection.Roger Hollis had boarded King's boat as soon as it touched shore togive him an urgent message, and also to obtain the latest informationhe had from the defector. It was Hollis also who had gone over toCanada to interview Gouzenko, however briefly. These two incidentswould have pointed to another: that Hollis was the MI5 officer whowas dealing with Communist matters for MI5, and that it was he infact who had cleared May and Fuchs. The press men who followedthe aftermath of the Gouzenko enquiry in Canada awaited similardevelopments in Britain, but nothing happened. Further progress, itseemed, would have to wait on the next defector with freshinformation. But when the next defections took place the defectorswere going the other way.

The news that two diplomats were missing was first broken by theDaily Express. Others soon followed, and the great era of thecover-ups was under way. This was said to be the first time thatanything like this had happened in the closely knit world of thehigher civil service, and the effect was particularly traumatic. But themain lines of defence were soon laid down and were used to brief theLabour Ministers who had to make the necessary statements in theHouse of Commons. Understandably they were worried that theremight be a scandal of very large proportions, along the lines set bythe Zinoviev letter affair, if too many questions were askedsuggesting that Labour had let Comrnunists into positions of power.It is now clc:rr tlrnt Ministcrs, srrr:h as.fohn Strachcy, Hect<lrMcNeil,

134 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

Maurice Webb and others, were only too well aware how closeBurgess was to them, although the security services themselves,without access to BBC papers, may well not have understood exactlyhow thorough the infiltration was or how it had been carried out.The line of defence in the House rvas to deny even such suggestionsas those of Duncan Sandys that Burgess had been a well-knownCommunist sympathiser or, most embarrassing in retrospect, thatthere was any real evidence that there had been a defection. OneLabour MP even tried to suggest that there was no evidenceconnecting them with Russia at all. Neither the press nor theAmerican authorities believed this for a moment. The Americans inparticular knew that Philby had probably been involved, and insistedthat he be withdrawn from his highly sensitive security posting inWashington. If an enquiry at this level had been set on foot inBritain, much more of the saga would no doubt have come to light.As it rvas, the cover-up worked, as it had with Fuchs and Nunn May.

Two years later Melinda Maclean was spirited away behind theIron Curtain to join her husband, and her defection was followed bythe publication of the first important book about the affair, GeoffreyHoare's The Missing Macleans. Despite its early appearance Hoare'sbook still retains interest and is the source of a number of facts notfound elsewhere, as will be seen later.

The next development came with a defection in Australia in April1954 of a senior Soviet security officer, Vladimir Petrov. The storybroke as news in Britain, but Australia was still seen as a long wayaway and there was no great sensation. This would have pleased theauthorities, but the press intervened and effectively lit the fuse whichhas been burning ever since. The People, which shared the mainhonours in the story with the Express, arranged for details of Petrov'sstory to be serialised in Britain, and this was to coincide withpublication of a book, The Petroa Slor1, written by the Australiansecurity officer most closely involved, Michael Bialoguski. The mostimportant of Petrov's allegations was that Burgess and Maclean werenot merely defecting diplomats who had been cornered in vulgarmercenary acts of espionage - the Government line - but convincedCommunists who had been agents since they were recruited as

undergraduates at Cambridge together. Here at last was the first hintof the cover-up that the press veterans knew must have taken place.They were not the only ones to realise it, and the Governmentdecided that it would have to issue a White Paper on the defection inan attempt to answer some of the most obvious inconsistencies in thestory they hacl peddlerl so firr. "['his paper prccipitated the next stagein thc af'tair..f . F)rlgal HoovcL at tltc FIll s:rw att a<lvittrr:e r:opy. Hc

12. The Frontiers of Journalism 135

was so enraged that no mention was made of Philby that he set intrain a series of leaks to ensure that the allegation did become publicknowledge. The route he chose was complex and involved the press

- the Empire Nezus, whose editor Jack Fishman had good securityservice contacts. The story was finally leaked through his contacts inthe New York press, to headlines screaming ALL THAT ISNEEDED IS THE HARRY LIME THEME MUSIC 'WHO WASTHE THIRD MAN'? The story revealed that the defectors hadapparently been tipped off and that Philby was the most likelysuspect. The day after the news broke in New York a Labour MP,Marcus Lipton, named Philby in a question in the House. Not theleast surprising reaction was that of Hollis, by this timeffirector-General of MI5, who personal\ approached Lipton in thecentral hall of the House and asked him for his source ofinformation.

While the story was developing at the highest levels The People keptup the running with stories such as that of Maurice Webb, alreadynoticed, whose significance has only now been made apparent. Thepublication of the White Paper and the sequel to the questions aboutPhilby was finally to produce two of the classic pieces of theatre in thespy saga. First was the clearance of Philby by Macmillan in the Houseof Commons, a move thought only correct since there was in fact noevidence against him that could have been used in a court of law thatdid anything other than suggest that he had not chosen his friendswisely. Then came the press conference stage-managed by Philbyand held in his mother's London flat, at which he convincingly liedhis way around all the issues and suspicions under the eye of a

television film crew. His performance was so convincing that he onlyneeded to put his tongue in his cheek once.

The next major news break came from Moscow when, in answer toa journalist's request, the Times and Reuters correspondents werecalled to Room 101 of a prominent hotel - no doubt an Orwellianjoke - and there found themselves face to face with Burgess andMaclean. They handed out a press statement (see Appendix 2 (iii))and after brief courtesies left. An intense flurry of journalisticactivity followed, Burgess even writing a story and offering his fee tothe Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which patriotically declinedit. When this died down there was a possibility again that the storywould now finally sink. Instead there followed an extraordinaryincident which, for those who knew it, showed Hollis's hand clearly atwork.

One of Burgess's wartime broadc:rsters who was still keen to keepin tout:h with hirn was -fom l)ribcrg, r)ow a prominent .jotrrnalist,

136 Part Three: The Witderness of Mirrors

After Burgess's reappearance Driberg wrote suggesting an interview.This Burgess agreed to. After some months the visit took place, andDriberg returned, bringing with him not merely material for anarticle or two but an entire book. The text was of course vetted by theKGB and was in any case written by one who was deeply sympatheticto Burgess, as his introduction made clear:

In common with millions of other British newspaper readers I had foundthe Burgess and Maclean story one of the most fascinatir-rg news-stories ofthe century: doubly so, for it was not only a story of pursuit and escape,almost in the classic tradition of the 'Western' filmsl it also had a muchdeeper personal dilemma of two intelligent and gifted men, the plight of awhole generation caught in the confusions and contradictions ofmid-century Britain, with its chronic lack of philosophic purpose and its'mixed'- or muddled - economy.

But what has only recently become obvious is that the book alsoreceived the imprimatur of Roger Hollis. The significance of this willbe dealt with in the final chapter. It will be suggested that this wasMI5's first determined attempt to muddy the waters to prev€ntfurther developments in the story, most obviously by an extension ofit to Blunt - at this time not known to have any connection with theaffair at all - and, beyond that, the ghastly possibility that the pressmight sense that the most senior figures in MI5 were not withoutstain. Again it was the press who wrecked this carefully laid plan. ThePeople arranged to publish a series of articles by a friend of Burgessand Blunt, Goronwy Rees, a Welsh academic. There was no vulgarnaming of names, but the story, which can be followed in aconvenient form in the cuttings collection in the FBI archives by anywho happen to be visiting Washington, made it quite clear to those inthe know that a serious break had occurred in the wall of silence.Rees found himself disgraced and removed from his academic post.His purpose in getting his story printed had been to forestall anyverdict that might have been in Driberg's book - or so it was thought.In fact, like Maurice Webb, he had little to fear but fear itself.

The impact of Driberg's book was considerable, and it did have theeffect of drawing a line under one aspect of the story, for clearly noother book with this level of authenticity could be expected. Thequestion of Burgess did not arise again until 1962, over his possibleliability for prosecution, when it was suddenly made known to thepress - ten minutes before the London Euening Standard's deadline -that warrants had been issued for the arrest of both Burgess andMaclean, who were rumoured to be thinking of returning fromRussia. An explanation for this bizarre incidcnt, il rnystery at the

12. The Frontiers of .lournalism t37

time, will be suggested shortly, but it had the effect of providing apeg on which was hung yet another book on the spies, by AnthonyPurdy and Douglas Sutherland, entitled, appropriately, Burgess andMaclean.

The year that saw the publication of Purdy and Sutherland's book,1963, also saw the first of a new kind of book - an account of MI5itself written by the distinguished Foreign Correspondent JohnBulloch. Called simply MI5, it was only published in a censoredversion approved by Hollis (see below, p. 176).

The first sign that Philby might be playing a constructive part inthe literary spy game, apart from being de-briefed on a massive scale,was a story that he had ghosted a book by Gordon Lonsdale. Therumour reached the ears of a Sunday Times man, David Leitch, whohad made an attempt the year before, while in Russia, to interviewKruschev in order to see Philby. Bruce Page, editor of the SundayTimes lnsight team, was aroused, and a two-year secret projectinvestigating the life of Philby was set in train. In 1967 news reachedthe Sundq Times that their rival paper the Obseruer was working on abook with Eleanor Philby, and a classic Fleet Street struggle beganwhich ensured that as much as could be known about Philby and hiscircle would be known. A not inconsiderable element in the puzzlethat made such investigations easier to undertake was that one of themost important senior figures who had been handling affairs fromthe official side, Roger Hollis himself, had retired in 1965.

The investigation that produced Philby: The Spy Who Betrayed aGeneration was thorough, but there was a single breakthrough whichremains one of the great moments in the trail through the wildernessof mirrors: whereas Philby had long been known to have worked forMI6, still a shadowy organisation whose existence was officiallydenied, it was now discovered that he had in fact been the head of itsanti-Soviet section! Here was evidence of incompetence that wouldhave been grounds for any kind of cover-up. It was also, though thiswas not understood fully at the time, an indication of the profoundlypolitical nature of the struggle which had been going on rather thansimple 'spying'. Knightley's description of how he found his sourcefor the story is worth giving, not only in itself, but for its uncannyforeshadowing of a later informant, Peter Wright:

Trying to find former colleagues of Philby's I managed to track downLeslie Nicholson, an old time SIS [M16] officer who had fallen out with theservice over his pension and who had written a book about his career,British Agnt, under the name of .fohn Whitewell. Nicholson was broke...and living in reduced circumstances in a room over a cafC in the east end ofl,otrdott.

1 3 8 Part Three : The Wilderness of Mirror,r

Although largely forgotren now, Nicholson's book had included apreface by Malcolm Muggeridge, himself an ex-MI6 man and one ofPhilby's staunch defenders before his defection, and an epigraph onits half-title page by Captain Henry Kerby MP which proudly, andprovocatively, stated :

This is a piece of publishing history. For the first time ever a seniormember of the service which officially does not exisr tells the true facts oflife as a secret agent.

It was a precedent which others were soon to follow, notably philbyhimself, who, as we shall see, was provoked by the chain ofcircumstances which this book set off.

The Insight team's book began to be serialised in the Sunday Timesat the end of 1967. The first response, fortunately for the team, was aletter that gave them a vital clue to Philby's first serious problem, theplanned defection of Volkov in Istanbul. Insight splashed rhe storyin the next issue, and Philby was sufficiently provoked to telegraphthe paper offering to discuss terms for his memoirs. Though Uoltishad retired, the success of the ploy of the Driberg book in quieteningdown the story no doubt suggested that it might be used in this case.Philby, of course, was quite capable of writing his own book, whereasBurgess, with his connection with Driberg, naturally looked toDriberg to write a biographical study rather than expose his own soulin an autobiography. In addition much time had passed, and theghosting of Gordon Lonsdale's book, a kind of writing which philbyhad essayed before in ghosting a company history in lgbT , rogetherwith the publication of British Agent had creared a suitable lilerarygenre that he could work within.

Philby sent out a request for someone to see him, much as Burgesshad agreed to Driberg's presence more than a decade before. Thejournalist who went, Murray Sayle, duly returned both with a story' and with the rights to Philby's book. It was published by MacGibbonand Kee as My Silent War, with a preface by Philby's old friendGraham Greene. A quotation from the preface was displayed on thecover of the paperback edition: 'More gripping than any novel ofespionage I can remember.' A shrewd comment, for the book didindeed mark the point at which the ,real world of spies moved thefictionalJames Bond world from centre stage.

_ Although apparently an autobiography, and based on Philby's ownfirst essays that he wrote when he was debriefed, the book was also asmuch a cold war text as Driberg's biography of Burgess, philby washimself a KGR General, but he no doubt consulted closely'witht:ollcagucs ovcr his final tcxt. Whcn it arrived in England it was

12. The Frontiers of Journalism 139

vetted by MI5. According to his own account, Peter Wright was atleast partly responsible for carrying this out. Wright's fanaticallyright-wing views would suggest that the vetting as far as he wasconcerned was thorough. At the same time his obvious politicalignorance and naivety, ruthlessly exposed when the spotlight fell onSpycatcher, meant that Philby's book remains as a significant text.

Eleanor Philby's The Spy I Loaed, backed by the Obseraer, a personaldocument of intrinsic interest, came out in the same year. There alsoappeared a book by the veteran journalist E.H. Cookridge, The ThirdMan, which showed signs of the link-ups between MI5 and outsidepublishers and authors that had been established with Driberg's bookand, as will be seen, Bulloch's MI5. The main reason for thisconclusion was that its author had the benefit of letters and advicefrom Guy Liddell, Hollis's colleague and a shadowy figure who hasbeen identified, most recently by John Costello, as a possible Sovietagent, on the basis of his friendship with Blunt and Burgess.

These books created an obvious resting place for the story whichhad already outrun all other comparable stories, and there was noshortage of people who would have been huppy to see it finally die anatural death. Prominent among these must have been AnthonyBlunt, who had been granted immunity from prosecution in 1963, ina deal organised by Hollis after final proof of Blunt's Sovietrecruitment at Cambridge had come by chance, as we have noted,through an American, Michael Straight. It took the greater part ofthe next decade for Blunt's story to rise to the surface and, while thisslow process continued, a further, even greater scandal was beingprepared in the real world inside MI5 - marked, in the first year ofthe new decade, by Hollis's recall from retirement to face a furthergrilling from the joint MI5 and MI6 committee, known as theFluency Committee, to establish once and for all whether he was aSoviet agent himself.

The early seventies produced little that was new. Goronwy Reespublished a volume of autobiography, A Bundle of Sensations, whichgave his side of the affair that had ruined his academic life,mentioning Blunt again, indirectly. In 1973 a good restatement ofthe Philby story was published by two journalists, Patrick Seale andMaureen McConville, as The Long Road to Moscow. That same yearHollis died; this had the effect of opening up the Blunt casecompletely, although it was to be the end of the decade before thefinal unmasking took place. In 1974 Malcolm Muggeridge added hisautobiography to the growing number of accounts by contempora-ries who had an interest in the affair or knew those involved.Muggeridgc:'s intcrest had bccn shown as very much alive when he

r40 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

wrote the preface to Nicholson's book, though his observationsadded nothing of moment to the main story. In L977 anotherjournalist, John Fisher, wrote a resum6 of all that was known so far,using the ubiquitous title Burgess and Maclean but with the subtitle'A New Look at the Foreign Office Spies'. In resurrecting theMaurice Webb story and a number of others he provided the firstclues towards the revelations about Burgess and his activities in theJBC and BBC which became known a decade later in Truth Betroyed;however, he missed the Blunt story which was about to break.

Sir Anthony Blunt, as he then was, had by the time of his exposurerisen to great eminence. He was of course Surveyor of the Queen'sPictures, but it was his position as head of the Courtauld Insrirute,known in society simply as 'The Courtauld', which gave him thegreatest status. The cachet attached to the institute was almostunrivalled, and gave access to many of the most sought-after posts inwhat has come to be called the arts establishment. When he retired in1974 the praise heaped on him reached new heights. Blunt'sbiographers, the Sunday Tirnes journalists Barrie Penrose and SimonFreeman, remarked:

In September lg74 the Burlington magazitne ran a lengthy article thatverged on sycophancy. The magazine was edited by Blunt's close'friendBenedict Nicolson, son of Harold Nicolson and deputy surveyor at rhePalace from 1939 until he joined the Burlington in 1947... with its emphasison Blunt's integrity and devotion to truth it seemed, after 1979, heavy withlrony...

In fact a large group of influential people in the u., *-ld hudsprung up around Blunt as he grew older who owed a great deal tohim. They could well be seen as members of a coterie who wouldcarry on his views, which were not at all different from those whichhad led him to Marxism, as former students testified whoremembered his lectures on Picasso's'Guernica'. But keeping trackof this exalted group, if the security services had been so minded,would have become an expensive and embarrassing business. Possiblyfor this reason, or because it was considered a growing scandal thatBlunt should remain in the social position he had acquired,particularly after his retirement when he had far more ample leisurein which to cultivate his circle, leaks about him began to emanarefrom within the security services. There was no shortage ofjournalists willing to follow the story, but two were particularlydetermined, Richard Deacon and Andrew Boyle. Richard Deacon'sThe British Connection went a long way towards identifying Blunt as aSoviet agent and establishing the truth abnut his immunity.

aL** .r-,.,.,

12. The Frontiers of Journalism L4t

However, he experienced one of those catastrophes that authorsdread: he identified as a possible Soviet agent a scientist who was stillalive. The accusation was untrue and the person concerned was as

alive as his solicitors, both to the libel and to its consequences. Thebook was pulped. It remained for Andrew Boyle in The Climate ofTreason to give the account that resulted directly in the unmasking ofBlunt, an event which took place in the House of Commons itself,when Margaret Thatcher, speaking from the same place as

Macmillan when he had cleared Philby, branded Blunt and gave afull account of the immunity granted to him. The withdrawal of hisknighthood followed immediately.

Surely, at last, this was to be the end of the saga. But, as we nowknow, even as Blunt was giving his famous press conference at theTimes offices, a somewhat calmer and more distirrguished example ofthe genre than the conference given by Philby, the most detailed andcomplex series of revelations of all had become detached from therock of MI5's most secret archives and begun a slow ascent to thelight which would take almost as long as the unmasking of Blunt.Here again it was the press that provided the impetus.

The Daily Express had made much of the running on the spy storyfrom their first disclosure, and it was, in a Fleet Street sense, theirstory. Lord Beaverbrook himself was rumoured to have suppliedsome of the leads at an early stage, identifying, for example, themeans by which funds had been channelled to Maclean's desertedfamily. It was therefore entirely appropriate that the next stageshould be ushered in by Chapman Pincher, a veteran Expressreporter from those days who was now a freelance author with manybooks to his credit. It was also appropriate that the Prime Minister ofthe day, Margaret Thatcher, should first have been alerted to thenew developments by a letter from Jonathan Aitken, a scion of theBeaverbrook elan. The letter began ominously:

I am writing to you in your capacity as Head of the Security Services toalert you to certain developments and possible new disclosures arising outof the Blunt affair. As you are aware a great deal of information about thissubject is still circulating on both sides of the Atlantic. Some of it hasalready been published, but the most dramatic disclosures may yet beforthcomir-rg...

After the allegations and suspicions that had gone before it mightwell have been asked what more could possibly be left to be told. Theanswer was indeed shocking, that both the head of MI5, RogerHollis, and his cleputy, (l'raham Mitchell, had been suspected by theircollcagucs ol' being Soviet agents and had been the subject of

t42 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrorsfull-scale enquiries into their actions and motives over their entirecareer by a committee of their peers drawn from MI5 and MI6.Although rumours were circulating among London journalists basedon remarks by a friend of Blunt's that there had been a fifth man whohad died 'covered in honours' more important than Blunt or any ofthe other spies, anyone reading Aitken's letter in full would haverealised that the allegations had originated from within MIb itself andn9t frgm any leak on which ajournalist had made an informed guess.This alone should have alerted the authorities to expect some-thingmore than another'revelation'. It should have given i clear warninfthat they were dealing with a political phenomenon. It was as a direclresult

"{ r.h: neglect of this warning that the disgrace of the equitycourt trial in Australia involving spycatcher and its author peterWright, head of the Fluency Committee, occurred.

chapman Pincher has revealed that Aitken's information came tohim-fromJames Angleron, 'rhe former chief of counter Intelligencein the CIA', who had then put him in contacr wirh two fo-rmerintelligence officers in Britain, one from MIb and one from MI6. Bothknew of the Fluency committee from their own personal involvementin. its proceedings,-and it was their information which promptedAitken's letter. confusion was caused in the unravelling of subsequenterents by the fact that Pincher, who had first heard of:the storythrough these sources, did not in fact rely on thgm when he wrote hisfirst book on Hollis, Their Trade is Tieachery, but on an entirelydifferent source, Peter Wright himself.

In due course Pincher visited Wright in Tasmania. Rarely can ajournalist have found himself in posiession of such material. HadPincher relied on the original Aitken sources alone, as some otherauthors were to do, he would no doubt have come up with most of thestory. But having wright as a source, the very man who had debriefedBlunt over hundreds of hours, he could recreate the entire Fluencycommittee saga in all its aspects. Leslie Nicholson, having once brokensilence.in British lgtnt, found that his knowledge of phil6y's treacheryproved too much for him to contain when he was co.tfronted by adetermined journalist who already knew a good part of the story.Peter wright's knowledge was on an altogether different scale, but thesame truth applied, for, like Nicholson, he had ended his service atodds with his employers, in his case MIb. Malcolm Turnbull, wright'slawyer in Australia, provided a graphic description of the s..ne o? hi,first .meeting ytlh wright whictr- has echo-es of Knightley's firstmeeting with Nicholson:

12. The Frontiers of Journalism 143

,.. Peter had chosen to live as far away from England as he could withouttravelling to Antarctica. I asked for directions... and was confronted with avision of rural poverty rarely seen in Australia... the whole place was indisrepair, and the house was a two roomed hovel which comparedunfavourably with some swagman's shacks I had seen in the bush... WhenWright left Ml5 in 1976 he was a bitter man. On a personal level he wasbitter that his pension was as low as it was...

As Turnbull went on to explain in his book on the Spycatcher $iaI, afar more important motive for Wright's actions had been his chagrinat having to leave the service without being able to prove his centralthesis that Hollis had been a Soviet agent. Further 'he believed thatthe British establishment had joined ranks to protect Hollis bothbefore and after his death'. Here was an echo of George Orwell's oldcharge that Britain was like a family with the wrong members incontrol, to which Nicholson and Wright would no doubt have added,'And who don't look after their own.'

In going to live in Tasmania Wright's purpose had really been robe near a member of his family, where he could run a small studbreeding Persian horses - ill-advisedly as it happens, because, apartfrom odd freak transactions, this was known as a hobby only the richcould afford. But as soon as he spoke to Pincher his position wastransformed. It came to resemble nothing so much as tliat of Philbyhimself in Moscow, or of any other defector. Pincher's visit toTasmania parallels Knightley's visit to Philby in Moscow, for whereasPhilby was undoubtedly a defector, Wright's predicament and themoves of the British Government's advisers, unaware that they were ina wilderness of mirrors where their actions would have politicalrepercussions of an unpredictable kind, made Wright's move toTasmania seem like a defection itself. It needed no announcementfrom the Metropolitan Police, as had been made in Burgess's case, tomake Wright aware that the Official Secrets Acr would be broughtinto operation with full force if he ever returned to Britain. And if ayoung clerk like Cathy Massiter could be awarded a prison sentencefor leaking a single photocopy, the chances of Wright's spending therest of his frail life in a British jail were high.

It was perhaps inevitable that, if the story of the defectors ran forlong enough, those pursuing it would themselves become part of it.When Pincher began his long debriefing of Wright in Australia heentered the story as a participant; a rubicon had been crossed. Just asthe publication of Philby's book had marked the eclipse of spy fictionby the life of the spies themselves, so Chapman Pincher's books basedon what Wright told him - often more reliable than the later versionput out urrrler Wright's nanle - marked the emergence into the light

t44 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

of day of the struggles which had been going on within the securityservices as they reflected the political contradictions of the twentiethcentury. Burgess, Maclean and Philby could be seen as people who,in Lenin's phrase, had voted with their feet, but they could also beseen as figures from an earlier century, recusants fleeing to thecontinent from persecution in Britain, or Protestants fleeing theinquisition and finding refuge in Switzerland. In the introduccion rohis book on Petrov Michael Bialoguski wrore:

... in any country with a totalitarian form of Government the secret serviceplays a far greater part in the framing of policy than in the WesrernParliamentary democracies.

Although Britain was throughout the war a parliamentarydemocracy there was more than a hint of truth in Burgess'sdescription of its form of government as administrative totali-tarianism. And there was a tendency for Bialoguski's tenet to beexemplified within the security service during those years. There wasof course little way in which they could openly affect policy except asagents of influence, and perhaps Burgess, only an agent, was in abetter position to play that role than full-time officers such as Blunt,Fulford or Hollis. On this view when Wright denounced Hollis andbrought the whole conflict within MI5 into the open he was doing nomore than exposing the political history of the twentieth century as ithad been reflected in the beliefs of its members. Ir was rhis politicalaspect that was ignored or misunderstood by the Thatcheradministration right through to the Spycatcher case itself.

In the next chapter the case for and against Hollis will beexamined as seen through the eyes of Chapman Pincher and Hollis'smain defender, Anthony Glees. Finally, the question of the truthabout Hollis will be addressed.

The Cases

r3

For and Against

It was the intense conflict in MI5 between those who believed inH'ollis's innocence and those who were convinced of his guilt that led,finally, to the court scenes in Australia. The cynical might view thewhole episode as a supreme example of office politics carried topreposterous lengths after the leader of one faction had actually diedand the others had long retired. Such a simple view is discounted byanyone examining the matter, which was one of the greatestseriousness in modern British political history. However, the officialresponse was never one of formal denial of specific charges. Internalcommittees and enquiries, notably that of Sir Burke Trend, hadreported to the Prime Minister, but in public the response wasstrangely reminiscent of an internal dispute. All reference to theallegations against Hollis were banned on principle. Anyonespeaking about what had gone on within the security service whoseknowledge was in any way based on inside information wasautomatically in breach of the Official Secrets Act, and any bookwritten with such knowledge was to be banned. The case in Australiawas thus seen, on the Government side, simply as a justified anddetermined attempt to prevent an ex-employee from breaking hisduty of loyalty and confidentiality, which was held to be lifelong as

part of the condition of his service. The case for Hollis at this level issimply that the case against him should never have been put. At thislevel also it is clear that nothing more can be said on the subjectwithin the United Kingdom, or in a book to be published in theUnited Kingdom, as this book is, without infringing the terms of theOfficial Secrets Act.

Fortunately this is not the end of the matter. As was pointed out inAustralia, Sfucatcher in its published form had been stripped of anyfact which had not previously been mentioned in his books byChapman Pincher, notably in Their Trad.e i.r Treachery and Too Secret

Too l.ong, Indeed Pincher f'requently has a more accurate versinn of'a

I'15

t46 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

story than appeared subsequently. The case against is thereforetaken here as Chapman Pincher's case. Nor does the case 'for' have togo by default in the absence of the Trend report, or any other officialanalysis. By an extraordinary series of connections and coincidencesa competent defence was mounted by an academic living in Oxford,Anthony Glees. Neither of these cases, for or against, has anyknowledge of the mass of new material which has been brought tolight in the present book. However, the examination of them is anessential prerequisite for an understanding of the significance ofwhat has now been discovered.

Their Trade is Treachery created a sensation when it was published,and established a benchmark for subsequent publications. A newplane had obviously been reached, since the book appeared to havebeen written with massive cooperation from persons within thesecurity service itself. Apart from the 'recognised'books on Burgessand MI5 published during Hollis's time, the book by E.H.Cookridge, which had the benefit of help from Guy Liddell, acolleague of Hollis's in MI5 who some have suggested might havebeen another mole, as we have noted, and a few other trivial eases,there had been hardly any comparable accounts. With its opendescription of the most traumatic events within the heart of thecount;y's most secret services, it was astonishing that it had beenpublished at all without an injunction being served both on theauthor and the publisher. The point was to be made repeatedly inAustralia, but the real reason why publication had gone ahead wasnot known in detail until Chapman Pincher himself published hisaccount of it. Pincher explained that the book had been shown to anintermediary, 'the Arbiter', who had approached the authoritiesbefore publication to learn if there would be any objection. Bothauthor and publisher expressed complete willingness to be bound byany decision made. But someone along the way appears to haveover-dramatised the situation, and those in authority, up to Cabinetlevel it would seem, were under the delusion that the document theywere reading had been come by illegally. They therefore could notapply for an injunction banning the book without revealing how theyhad obtained it, or so the story went. The book had been publishedcreating a sensation at least equal to any caused by the previousrevelations and cover-ups, from the original defection of Burgessand Maclean to the exposure of Blunt. The existence of Wright wasas yet unknown to the general public and was to remain so for someyears. On the face of it the book might have been the wildest of anyconceivable allegations, as indeed many ordinary people reading itmust have thought it was. The security service knew differently, of

13. The Cases For and Against r47

course, but kept silent, leaving refutation to a formal statement bythe Prime Minister clearing Hollis's name and referring to the Trendreport.

The first actual evidence that might serve to refute the allegationsin Pincher's book came the year after its publication, when The Timespublished a series of letters by Roger Hollis written before he joinedMI5 which had been brought to the attention of Anthony Glees byHollis's son, who happened to be his next-door neighbour in Oxford.They had been found among Hollis's mother's effects after herdeath, in circumstances that suggested that Hollis himself may nothave realised that they had survived. Certainly he never alluded tothem when he was being interrogated, and MI5's molehunters neverlooked at them.

It was thought at first from the excerpts published in The Timesthat any idea that Hollis had become involved in a Communist circlewhile in China as originally suggested by Pincher would have to bedrastically modified, if not rejected altogether. The letters seemed tobe those of a typical product of a distinguished public school living anarduous and interesting life in China. There was of course no 'Raj' inChina, although the privileges extended to companies in the treatyports, known as those of extra-territoriality, were in some waysequivalent and the Hollis letters savoured of that world rather thanof the internationally famous cosmopolitan atmosphere of Shanghai.The very fact that they had continued in an unending sequencesuggested that Hollis had not gone off the rails, as he had at Oxford;rather the reverse. It seemed impossible that anyone sending suchletters could, at the same timen be turning into a dyed-in-the-woolCommunist activist. As Glees has pointed out, Wright himself, in atelevision interview in 1984, seemed to have been impressed by theseletters and to have shifted his emphasis from China to the next twoyears, the so-called two missing years, in his search for the most likelydate for Hollis's recruitment to some Communist secret service whichhe was convinced must have taken place. Chapman Pincher stuck tohis guns with a journalist's intuition that China was a long way fromBritain and that letters home tend to fall into a special category with atone and content of their own, a natural extension of letters writtenhome from boarding school, though in an adult form. Certainly, ashas been remarked, it is unlikely that Hollis would have includeddetails of Comintern infiltration of the firm he worked for, let aloneof the fact that large numbers of his fellow workers had beenarrested.

In the srme year that the letters appeared in The Times (1982)Glees's nwn llook, Exile Politic.t du,rhry the Second, World War: The

t48 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mi,rrors

Gennan Social Democrats in Britain, was published. At first sight thebook might seem to have little to do with Hollis and the allegationsmade against him. But, as Chapman Pincher immediately realised, itcontained a great deal of information about German Communists inBritain during the war when they had been the bitter foes of theGerman Social Democrats, though, as we have seen, not above tryingto get them into a variety of joint front exercises. Roger Hollis hadbeen the officer in MI5 responsible for monitoring the activities ofthese people, and it was Glees's discovery of some MI5 reports in thePublic Record Office signed by Hollis that had led to his interest inthe Hollis case, and to his publication of the Hollis letters that hadfallen into his lap. These documents in the PRO, together with othersnot known to Glees cited here, provided the key to much that hadbeen unknown about Hollis's wartime activities. The molehunters ofthe Fluency Committee, coming on the scene a generation later,seemed to have misinterpreted great areas of Hollis's work and tohave known little of it generally. Glees's book helped fill in some ofthe gaps, and it was one of the first books written by someone with anacademic background in a field which had hitherto been the preserveof journalists. Pincher abstracted a good deal of information fromGlees's book and, at one stage, freely exchanged information withGlees that he had obtained from American archives and elsewhere.

In 1984 Pincher published a greatly extended and far moreconvincing, if circumstantial, account of the case against Hollisentitled Too Secret Too Long. On reading this work Glees felt that hisown book had been misunderstood and that some remarks had beentaken out of context or actually distorted. His own opinion aboutHollis was that, far from ignoring Communists as Pincher appearedto suggest and actively protecting them, he 'seemed to be the onlyperson in MI5 actually doing his job'. Glees had been working sincethe late seventies on British intelligence and Communist subversion.After the publication of Pincher's book he concentrated on thequestion of subversion, and the secrets of MI5 generally. In his nextbook, The Secrets of the Seruice, he focused on the Hollis question interms of a strict refutation of Pincher's case. This was extended to ageneral defence of Hollis against all those who used what he referredto as the'Pincher-Wright' approach,'that of accumulated circumstan-tial evidence, contained in his last two substantial chapters.

At first sight this situation as it developed produced a very unusualencounter between a book fought for on the frontiers ofjournalism,Too Secrel Too Long, and a scholarly covering of the sarne ground inThe Secrets of the Service brought about in large part by the chancepropinquity of (ilees to Hollis's son. However, an examination of

13. The Cases For and Against r49Glees's book and its sources, as revealed in his footnotes, establishesthat he too had been drawn into the 'wilderness of mirrors'. Few ofhis references in the chapters refuting Pincher are to contemporarydocuments. Instead there are numerous references to other bookson a par with Pincher's, or of lesser standing - Pincher is a reliableand thorough practitioner. The final chapters of The Secrets of theSeraice in particular contain a large number of references topotentially the most distorting mirrors of all, witnesses, some fromMI5 and MI6, who had insisted on remaining anonymous. It isarguable whether they or defectors with deliberate disinformationare the greater problem for anyone trying to reach an understandingof espionage matters. The reader is obliged ro accept the judgmentof the author in evaluating the evidence and, even if he does, he hasabsolutely no way of testing it against other evidence, since he has noidea of its background. He may easily arrive at a totally erroneousconclusion, or at the correct conclusion for entirely the wrongreasons. Indeed he is in the'wilderness of mirrors'.

Glees points to three main areas of suspicion in the case made outby Pincher and Hollis's detractors generally. First, there was theinformation provided by defectors, notably the cipher clerk IgorGouzenko who defected in Ottawa in 1945, bringing with himinformation which resulted in the arrest of Nunn May in Englandand of many others in Canada, coupled with information derivedfrom the interception of coded wireless traffic known as 'Venona'and 'Hasp'. Secondly, there was the undoubted penetration ofBritish security services and other institutions, with resultantsubversion. And lastly, 'the most testing of all, there is the question ofmotive and the assertion that Hollis was himself a secret Communist'.

The evidence of defectors, which Glees examines in detail, mightseem to the layman to be of the first importance: after all, if a Sovietspymaster, or someone with inside knowledge - such as a cipherclerk who while doing his job has inevitably had access to informationgoing to and from spies * comes over and talks freely, surely he mustbe able to give vital clues? Things are not that simple. Soviet spycraft,based on the deep wisdom of Czarist predecessors, made absolutelysure that secure sources stayed secure and that they had code namesknown only to the man running them. Gouzenko was thus only ableto identify a spy called 'Elli' in London. Volkov, the intendingdefector in Istanbul whom Philby had removed just in time byinforming his Russian masters, identified only someone in'Five ofMI (Military Intelligence)'. This example became notorious, becauseit could mean either MI5 or department 5 of MI6! The latter wouldhave been l'hilby, the former mighthave been Hollis. In fact this area

150 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

is the classic example of the wilderness of mirrors: endlessspeculation on data that anyway were so thin that a true explanationwas impossible even for those who got the clues first-hand. Pincherdeals with the allegations at third hand, and Glees's refutation is atone remove agaln.

Intercepted wireless traffic is another matter entirely. It was thebreaking of coded messages taken down during the war and onlydecoded years later that identified a spy in the British Embassy inWashington known as'Homer'who turned out to be Maclean. Thisrecorded radio traffic was known as'Venona', and for many years itsexistence was a closely guarded secret. It did not become at all widelyknown until the 1970s. There was a further quantity of recordedtraffic found in Sweden mentioned by Peter Wright, who gave it thename 'Hasp'. The fact that Soviet agents have to communicate withtheir controllers in Moscow by radio, and the presence or absence oftraffic, are central elements in Pincher's thesis in Too Secret Too Long.As Glees remarks, 'Chapman Pincher has, of course, used "Sonia"

fKuczynski] as the fuse for his massive work.,.' Pincher suggests thatSonia was running agents from her house in Oxford during the timethat Hollis was living in Oxford and leading the counter-espionagesection of MI5, located for the duration of the war at BlenheimPalace. Drawing on her autobiography, published in Ea6t Germany,Pincher makes a case for saying that Sonia had Hollis himself in herstable of agents, while confirming that the main agent she dealt withwas Klaus Fuchs. Pincher adds to his case by pointing out a numberof remarkable coincidences, not least the fact that Sonia had been inChina at the same time as Hollis and that they had mutual friendsincluding, allegedly, Agnes Smedley and Arthur Ewert, although heknew nothing of the one person who certainly knew both Hollis andSonia, Claud Cockburn.

Glees's first attack against Pincher's case is on both these points. Hefirst makes a substantial assault on the reliability of an account Putout behind the iron curtain which, like Philby's autobiography,would of its nature be self-serving and liable to contain the mostsophisticated kind of disinformation. But all literature in this fieldautomatically has that charge against it; this is a basic element in thewilderness of mirrors which journalists have to live with all their lives.What is done is to remove a substratum of facts common to allacccounts and then look around for any information which confirmsor controverts the most obvious provisional conclusions. As in strictscientific method one looks at the facts, forms a hypothesis, makespredictions on the basis of that hypothesis and then looks forconfirmation or otherwise of these predictions, If none is fbund thequestion rentaitts open; if contr:t<lit:tory nt:ttcrial elrlerges the

13. The Cases For and Against l5thypothesis fails; if the predicted fact is found, this constitures newevidence for the theory, a new hypothesis is set in place of the old oneand the process is begun again. Pincher (a trained scientist) is betterat this than Glees who unfortunately mounts a central atrack, on thecredibility of Sonia's evidence that she ran a wireless station inOxford, that is immediately refutable on scientific evidence wellknown at the time.

His attack is based on the fact that a lookout was being kept forillegal wireless transmissions during the war. 'Someone,' he says,'sending wireless traffic from an illegal source would have beenpicked up before they cleared their throats.'This was far from beingthe case. Morse transmissons during the war were monitored by iteam of about 1500 amateurs who were very efficient; but for muchof the time they were tracking consistent known sources. Illegaltraffic originating within the United Kingdom had been zealouilysought out, both when war broke out and at the time of threatenedinvasion when Germany dropped some parachutists, each with aradio, and even then when nothing was found attention for this kindof source waned. But the main reason why Sonia Kuczynski couldhave been transmitting without being detected, even if someone hadbeen listening, is that the volunteers were entirely without recordingequipment, in the days before tape recording, and took down alltheir morse by hand. The Soviets were able to defeat any attempt atmonitoring by the simple process of transmitting morse with a tapemachine run at a speed which prevented its being taken downmanually. There is no doubt whatever that the Russians used suchmachines, since there is an illustration in Peter Smollett's FortlThousand Against the Arctic which actually has a phorograph(see Plate 7) of the interior of a transmitting station showingtape machines and describing their use. It also shows, incidentally, icomrade playing radio chess, a favourite pastime which must havewasted many hours of the codebreakers' time before they realisedwhat it was.

The problem of how to detecr high-speed rransmissions was stillunsolved decades later when the Krogers were able to transmitGordon Lonsdale's messages from their suburban house in Londonby the same means without being derected, despite the much moresophisticated equipmenr then available for the job. It is quite clearthat Glees is wrong here and that it would have been perfectlypossible for Sonia to be running the agents she claimed. Glees makesa subsidiary point that, if Hollis had been one of her agents, he wouldhave advised her to use the London Embassy tranimitters which,Glees saysi were transmitting freely, no attempt being made to<lct'iphcr thcir traf'lic its rt t'esttlt of'alr or'<lcr givcn wlrcn Rrrssiir (:lrr)(.

t52 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

into the war that all such deciphering was to cease. But the reversewould have been the case. It was the ordinary coded traffic from theEmbassy that was being taken down, even if it was not beingdeciphered, and the rapid advances of the ENIGMA machine andthose using it at Bletchley would have made it perfectly obvious that,if there had been any further change of allegiance, or a decision tostart deciphering again, it would be very probable that the Embassymessages would be read and Sonia's traffic quickly understood.Hollis would have had to tell her that she was much better off usinghigh-speed transmissions of her own at irregular times which werehighly unlikely to be taken down, let alone decoded. It is not knownwhether the Soviet Embassy in London used high-speed, machinesduring the war, but if they did they would be the ones most likely tobe recorded using the primitive disc methods of the time.

Going beyond the technical details of whether Sonia did or did nottransmit Fuchs' and other traffic from Oxford, Glees makes afull-scale assault on the question of Hollis's putative responsibility forthe clearance of Fuchs, the most damaging of the atom spies, as

suggested by Chapman Pincher. As his first line of evidence, Pincherrelies on the minutes of a talk given by Hollis to a TripartiteConference on Security Standards at Washington inJune 1950. Theopening paragraph of the official record of Hollis's cohtributionmakes the position quite clear:

Mr Hollis began by pointing out that he had not been briefed in detail forthis discussion and was speaking 'off the record', but he had, throughout,been concerned with all the security clearance aspects of the case and, wesconfdent that the facts as he would report them were substantially correct andrepresented all that uas known at the times in question.

The words printed here in italics are unaccountably omitted byGlees, without any indication of their omission. The significance ofthis document (which is reprinted in full in Appendix 2 (i)) isthat Hollis was without question the officer who was responsible forthe vetting of Fuchs. In his remarks Hollis goes on to say that amistake had indeed been made, but that there had been only twooccasions when Fuchs had showed any possible Communist links.One was the report sent to the Bristol authorities in 1933 when Fuchsfirst arrived saying that he was an active Communist, but since thereport came from the Gestapo it was thought proper to discount it.The other was when Fuchs was deported to Canada and spent timewith what Hollis called 'a well known Communist', though withoutidentifying him as Hans Kahle. As we now know, this was incorrectand there werc other links, Hollis probably did not identify the'well

13. The Cases For and Against 153

known Communist' because someone in his audience would haverealised immediately that the statement was suspicious. Pincher,without the detailed information that has been assembled here,merely remarks in his book that from the circumstantial evidenceHollis had either been extraordinarily negligent or had actuallyallowed Fuchs through.

Glees's defence of Hollis on this question involves the account ofthe Fuchs affair given by Professor Margaret Gowing in her officialhistory of the Nuclear Weapon and Atomic programmes in Britain,in which it was pointed out that the final responsibility for employingFuchs was Sir Edward Appleton's. Glees is very conscious of theimportance of the matter for Hollis:

In short, what this issue hinges on is whether Sir Edward did ultimatelyclear Fuchs, as Professor Gowing has alleged, or whether Hollis providedthe full version of events in America [where he made no mention ofAppletonl. If it was the latter things look very bad for Hollis, but if it u'asthe former, it suggests not only that Hollis had behaved responsibly andproperly, but that he was so totally unaware that anyone might adducesinister motives that he missed out a vital piece of evidence in the jigsaw.

However, Glees's restatement of Professor Gowing's remarks in hisdefence is selective, both on the Fuchs question and on the relatedcase of Niels Bohr, the famous father of nuclear research, in the fieldthat led to the making of the bomb. The details of the Bohr case castlight on that of Fuchs, and on Hollis's response to it. I shall deal withit here first before proceeding to the specific defence which attemptsto shift blame onto the shoulders of Sir Edward Appleton.

Niels Bohr was a far more important figure in 1944 than Fuchs. Itis therefore of great significance that he was warned most severelyagainst betraying nuclear secrets to the Russians and that MI5 andHollis were fully aware of this warning. Glees remarks:

In April 1944 Bohr returned to London from America and found waitingfor him a letter from a Russian scientist who had been part of theCambridge Cavendish Laboratory team in 1934. Bohr formed a 'strongimpression' that the Russian knew about the Tube Alloys project [the atombomb cover name] and Bohr was invited to visit Russia to discuss his workin detail. Bohr replied in a non-commital letter uhich had the ftill agreementof MI5 [my italics].

What Glees does not say is that it is clearly stated in ProfessorGowing's account that the letter was waiting for Bohr at the SovietEmbassy and that the scientist writing was Peter Kapitza who, itseems from the letter, was running the Soviet bomb programme andwas truste(l by Stalin, Bohr knew Kapitza well. He had been

.t

r54 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

corresponding with him and, though his previous correspondencewas apparently clandestine, conducted through the Soviet Embassy,he showed his reply in this case to MI5. On the Russian side it iscrystal clear that they were using the most secure method ofcommunication they had, letting the letter rest for six months in theirLondon Embassy rather than risk getting it to Bohr in America. Afterseeing MI5, according to Professor Gowing, Bohr tried to convinceChurchill that the bomb should be given to the Russians. As we haveremarked Churchill was so angry that he threatened Bohr withinternment, saying that it would have to be made clear to him that hewas on the edge of 'mortal crimes'.

Two things are obvious from these events. The first is that Hollismust have been absolutely clear in 1944 that the atomic bomb projectwas of the greatest seriousness, and not merely another wartimescientific project. The second, even more important, was that heknew that Churchill regarded any possible leak to the Russians as acapital offence and was prepared to threaten even a relativelyapolitical and highly respected figure such as Bohr with internmenton the question. Yet Hollis went on clearing Fuchs, by his ownaccount no less than six times, knowing that Fuchs not only had thecontacts with the Communists he described in America in 1950,without naming Kahle, but that Kahle had further directly involvedFuchs in Communist affairs in Birmingham in November 1943 insetting up that branch of the Communist Free Germany Committee.He must also have been aware that any assurances given byBirmingham police or Special Branch that Fuchs had not beeninvolved openly with the CPGB in Birmingham were worthless, sincethere was an actual committee member of the CPGB in theuniversity, the Professor of Greek, George Thomson, making opencontact with the local CPGB branch not only unnecessary but infradig'

The specific defence that Glees takes from Professor Gowing isthat initially MI5 did express reluctance to clear Fuchs, citing theearlier report made in Bristol and his time in internment with Kahle.However, the Secretary of the DSIR (Department of Scientific andIndustrial Research) running the project, Sir Edward Appleton, hadurgently needed Fuchs for highly specialised work. He had made thefinal decision over MI5's caveat, and of course relying on the reportsHollis showed him. This is the ploy we have seen used overCockburn's request to go to Algiers where the ball was put back in theForeign Office's court by the very people who were supposed to beadvising them. When the ball is put in the other man's court in thisway he is given the illusion that he is making the decision, when in

1). The Cases For and Against

fact there is only one stroke he can play and all the rules, the entiregame, has been set up by the person affording him the stroke. Hollisknew perfectly well that the Communists with whom Fuchs had beenassociating were not merely Communists but the leading Commu-nists from Germany in Britain whom he himself had placed on a listof dangerous Germans in Britain which he had forwarded toAmerica at the time. Later, at the actual moment of the Bohrincident, rvhen he was clearing Fuchs afresh for the Americansbefore Fuchs's departure for the final stages of the project over

.there, he again knew perfectly rvell that Fuchs was part of the FreeGermany Committee movement which was effectively run by Kahleand whose chairman was Robert Kuczynski, Sonia's father.

Glees finally suggests that Hollis omitted Sir Edward Appleton'srole in the account he gave in America simply through forgetfulness,as he was speaking without notes and off the record. Others havesuggested that he did not mention Sir Edward for good reason: as itmight have led to an investigation which would have thrown toomuch light on his own role in the matter. Glees dismisses this idea outof hand, although it seems plausible, particularly as, though Gleesdoes not mention it, Sir Michael Perrin, who had debriefed Fuchsafter his confession of guilt, was sitting next to Hollis when he gavehis talk and would have noticed any attempt to shift blame ontoAppleton. Appleton's decision was made under the stress of wartimeadministrative responsibilities, and once made it was not recon-sidered. Hollis's clearances were indeed made on six differentoccasions, several of which were after it had become as clear asdaylight that the atomic project was of absolute importance, and thatthe Prime Minister himself had shown that any danger of a possibleleak to Russia, which had been openly discussed by Niels Bohr withMI5, must be treated as an offence of a capital nature - in fact, in aBritish subject, as treason. It has always been possible to suggest,though Glees does not do so, that Hollis may simply have beenunaware that he had made a mistake, or that someone in hisdepartment had, and that in America he felt he should accept theblame while toning down what had happened and avoiding names.But bearing in mind his detailed account, the Niels Bohr affair,which made the position absolutely clear on nuclear espionage toMI5 as early as L944, and the repeated clearances despite it by Hollisover the years, this seems the least likely hypothesis of all.

Mention of the Kuczynskis in this context is made by ChapmanPincher and taken up by Anthony Glees in a way which shows evenI'urther the fragile basis for his defence. Pincher was the discovererof the rcpolt on clangerous (lommunists menti<lned above which was

155

156 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

sent to America. He points out in Too Secret Too Long that theKuczynskis are absent from the list, which seems unaccountable, andsuggests that this was because Hollis, responsible for the list, wasprotecting them. He goes on to cite Glees's own book on Germanpolitics in exile as a source of the statement that MI5 reports neuermentioned the Kuczynskis. As Glees correctly points out, he makesno such statement. Although there is only one reference toKuczynski pire in the index to the book this index is very seriouslydefective and he does in fact make reference to the Free GermanCommittee and directly mentions Robert Kuczynski, with otherallusions. However, Glees admits that he has found no reference toSonia Kuczynski in MI5 reports, all of which, he implies incidentally,were by Hollis, although in fact many of the reports cited by him as

mentioning the Kuczynskis were not prepared by Hollis at all but, forexample, by Capt. Brooke-Booth, who compiled the report of thefirst meeting of the Free Germany committee at which RobertKuczynski had taken the chair. Glees suggests that Hollis may nothave mentioned Sonia because'he probably did not know about her'.To those who have read many reports by MI5 on exile politicians,particularly on leading Communists such as the Kuczynskis, thelikelihood of a close family member such as Sonia escaping noticewould be remote; but there is a particular reason why it was mostunlikely that Hollis would not have known of her when she was inOxford. This is worth examining.

The house that Sonia took when she came to live in Oxford was infact the coach house of a large residence in North Oxford which wasoccupied throughout the war by Neville Laski, a judge and thebrother of the Chairman of the Labour Party, Harold Laski. Besideshis formal duties Neville Laski had been for many years engaged inhighly dangerous and indeed courageous work which had made himwell-known to the authorities, including the police, Special Branchand MI5 itself. This work consisted of conveying to those concernedthe results of surveillance of the British Union of Fascists and otherright-wing anti-Jewish organisations. He came by some of thisinformation through his position as secretary of the Chamber ofDeputies of British Jews, but a great deal of it he acquired himself.His numerous reports in files in the Public Record Office dealingwith Sir Oswald Mosley and his followers establish that he wouldhimself attend meetings and make a full report of what was said towhoever he thought was the proper person to receive it. It is clearthat he was one of the best informants on such matters. It would bealmost impossible for Hollis not to have been aware that he was livingin ()xfirrd less than a mile :rway from hirn. Had he been an agent of

13. The Cases For and Against I57

the kind run by Maxwell Knight there might have been some doubt,but Laski acted on his own. The MI5 man said to have been respon-sible directly for monitoring Fascist movements in Britain wasGraham Mitchell, but Hollis was his superior for a considerable part ofthe relevant period, and this eminent and courageous anti-fascist musthave been known to him. Further, there would have been particularreason for Hollis to know of him personally, for both were keenmembers of the Old Cliftonians, Laski having attended the JewishHouse at Clifton. It seems unlikely, to say the least, that over the yearsthe presence of Sonia Kuczynski in his coach house would not havebecome known both to MI5 and to Hollis himself as she often visitedthe house. Neville Laski may well have vouched for her, and this mightin itself have been reason for her to be deleted from reports alto-gether. Nor did Sonia keep her interest in wireless particularly secret,since one of Laski's daughters has recounted that Sonia used to puther aerial up across the garden, though naturally this would have beenthought to be for better reception rather than transmission.

This failure to identify Sonia Kuczynski, whose role is seen inretrospect to have been so important, does cast doubt on Hollis'sabilities and the extent to which he kept watch on German exiles inBritain, if nothing else. Glees is aware of this and to counter it makes a

detailed case for the fact that MI5 and by implication Hollis, far frombeing negligent on the question of Communist subversion, wereacutely conscious of it to the point of being ridiculed by the ForeignOffice. While such feelings may have been common generally in MI5in the years between the wars, they are so out of keeping with what is

known about MI5 during the war years that Glees's statement requirescareful scrutiny. Glees bases his case on a quotation from ForeignOffice papers relating to the granting of a licence for a Social Demo-cratic newspaper. It is manifestly a selective quotation:

MI5 exaggerates the danger.., of Communist influence... and suffersfrom so many delusions... that the Foreign Office will have to educatethem.

The first two phrases are not to be found in the minute cited by Gleesbut in an earlier one by a different author; the latter part of thisquotation actually reads, in the original minute by a Foreign Officeofficial, A.W. Harrison:

Mr Robson-Sccltt and Mr Thwaites seem to be suffering from so nratrydelusions hotlr about the (lernran and Austriarr enrigrants that I feal thatMr Allen and I will have to ask them atound f<rr a talk itt order to educatethem.

158 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

Robson-Scott was the MI5 officer dealing with the matter, andThwaites was his opposite number in the Ministry of Information. Itwas Thwaites who was particularly worried that all the newspapersbeing put out by the exiled German groups would be dominated bythe Communists of the Free Germany Committee. After they calledround to the Foreign Office A.W. Harrison added a note to hisoriginal entry reading: 'As a result of our talk I think the delusions[of Communist influence] are all Mr Thwaites'.' This completelydestroys the force of Glees's argument, since it is quite clear that itwas the MOI officer that was taking an alarmist, but in fact correct,view of Communist activity, not MI5. The view expressed by MI5 wasclearly the reverse of what Glees said it was, and in any case was notgiven by Hollis, as is implied, but by another MI5 officer entirely,Robson-Scott. About one document that Hollis did sign which Gleescites, written in September 1945 warning of Soviet aims in Germany,Pincher has remarked; 'It has been suggested that this is prima facieevidence that he was loyal but there was little else he could have saidat the time because it was self-evident.'This is quite true and appliesalso to the MI5 documents cited by Glees from Brooke-Booth andRobson-Scott for which Hollis would have had general responsibilityas head of the department. The days when Hollis was dealingpersonally with such matters as the Daily Worker suppression, with thefiles on this and Cockburn his sole domain, were gone. His positionwas already a senior one and, like Philby, his opposite number inMI6, he would be spending a lot of his time at Joint IntelligenceCommittee meetings where direct intervention, if he was a spy,would have to be very sparing and discreet.

The second major g.or[ of allegations by Pincher are thoserelating to the undeniable failure to spot the so-called 'moles' in theForeign Office, the security service and elsewhere: that is, Sovietagents acting under cover, either outright 'spies' taking outinformation as fast and as safely as they could, or agents of influencervho would unobtrusively steer policy in a way that could benefit theSoviet Government, as Burgess did over China, or frustrateoperations, as Philby did over plans for revolt in Albania. Pincher'sattack, not surprisingly, is all-embracing. He has after all livedthrough a period of forty and'more years when time after timestatements by senior civil servants to the press in briefing afterbriefing have been found to be nothing more than a stream ofdisinformation and lies. The national shame of people in suchpositions lying with apparent conviction in the most austerernandarin English in accents echoing the last refinements o{'uppcr-rnirlrllc-r:litss ()xbriclge rnust incvitably' t:rkc its toll. Pirrchert't:nrlrks:

13. The Ca.ses For and Against 159

The confusion and shame fof the Burgess and Maclean defection] were sogreat that a new attitude to ir.rformation about the event, and others like itthat might arise, r'as quickll' generated in the Foreign Office, CabinetOffice and in the secret services. The truth had to be kept from the public:by ever,v mealls, from misinformation rlhen total silence could no l<-rngerbe maintained to blatant lies. The policl, of cover-up concerning disastersrvhich are embarrassing to politicians and their senior servants hascontinued to the preserrt time.

And naturally the core of his case is that Hollis, in his position of'anti-Communist expert and then leader of the security service itself,was largely responsible for many of the rvorst disgraces. Glees, for hispart, and other defenders of Hollis, are eager to shorv that nothingcould have been done and that, as in the Fuchs case, mistakes weremade; but they rvere understandable. Each side suffers fromincomplete information, largely brought abour, ir is true, by the kindof disinformation Pincher describes. Bur this could work both ways.The mole-hunters at the time of the Nunn May prosecution mayhave been far more effective than we know. Many people wereprosecuted in Canada who in Britain were simply dismissed ormoved to other jobs in the general cover-up policy that was adoptedinstead of one of 'McCarthyism'; they found the moles but let thernoff. On the other hand, it is absolutely obvious that nothing was doncto detect the Cambridge moles, and others, from Burgess andMaclean onwards, and Glees never really faces the fact that Hollis notonly did nothing about them but was a close personal friend of thernall, almost without exception.

As with the German Communists in Britain, Glees begins by citinga number of cases where Hollis had apparently been at tvork intracking Communist spies down. He cites the case of Raymond Urenin SOE who, as we have seen, was found to be conveying informationto D.F. Springhall. But it is clear that Springhall was being fbllowedon a routine basis by Special Branch officers, and it would have rakena particularly bold 'mole' within MI5 to rry ro suppress theappropriate action when what Uren was doing was discovered. Orrthe other hand tracking moles in SOE would have been exrremelydifficult for a reason which illustrates perfectly the reality oI'lif'e inwartime Britain when Russia was an ally. This is that there were threeKGB officers actually within SOE in London working on .i<-rintKGB-SOE exercises. The principal operation seems to have been oneinvolving an attempt, before the invasion of Europe, to draw awayClestapo units fi'orn !'rancc by sprcading doubt about the loyalty ol'the Russian txropsl scrvirrg with thc (iclrnan Ar.nry urrdcr (icrrrrr.itlVlasor'. It rvas lropctl tlrat thc (icstapo worrl<l bc so worlicd lry tlris

160 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

that they would move their men over to the eastern front to deal withthe situation. Clearly the presence of these officers in SOE wouldhave made it next to impossible to discover either whether a moleexisted or whether the men themselves were not gathering moreinformation than was necessary.

This applied generally. A close colleague of Guy Burgess's in theBBC who worked with the MI5 vetting system showed exactly howdifficult things were by commenting to me on the distinction drawnby the vetting authorities between Communists who were 'safe'andothers who were 'dangerous'. Christopher Hill, for example, wasknown to the BBC to be a Communist because MI5 said so; but hewas also a reliable Foreign Office official who was known to be'quitesafe'and actually on the Russian Desk, and has never been suspectedbefore or since of being a mole. On the other hand, E.H. Carr,despite his position on The Tirnes and his occasional appearances atthe microphone, was known to be'dangerous'. As the political battlesthat were to shape post-war Europe began to emerge, as we haveseen in Chapter 10, the detection of 'moles' must have beenimpossibly difficult, especially as what was being looked al was

essentially changeable political loyalty, and only far beneath that thefixed determination of a Philby or a Blunt who had joined the Partyand stayed loyal through thick and thin.

Apart from the cases already noticed, the only people whom Gleesdefends specifically from a charge that Hollis might have protectedthem are the central figures of Philby, Blunt, Burgess and Maclean.As has been mentioned, Philby and Hollis were opposite numbers inMI5 and MI6 for a considerable period. Even allowing for thealleged feud between the two services, it is clear that it would beagainst the most basic tenets of human nature for two people in sucha position to be spying on each other, with Hollis 'checking out'Philby, the man who sat next to him on weekly committee meetings,as the joint expert on Communist matters. Glees sees thesedifficulties in the technical terms of vetting, remarking: 'One formerMI5 officer has provided an answer: there was no Proper vetting. Itwas therefore largely a matter of chance as to whether MI5 wouldknow who might be a hazard.'And talking specifically about Philbylater, he remarks: 'A former MI5 officer emphasised to me veryforcefully indeed that MI5 had not known about Philby in 1939,although during the war, possibly in 1944, Philby had been morethoroughly looked at.' It is obvious that this 1944 check was the oneconducted after Churchill's urgent instruction to vet people in thesecurity services, a job done by Valentine Vivian in MI6, althoughapparently hardly at all in MI5, since there were so many

13. The Cases For and Against 161

Communists there that survived, as we have seen. Glees ends hisrather rveak case by stating finally:

In other words, rvhen we add to the haphazard vettir-rg possiblemisinformation and the fact that alleged 'Communist' sympathiesunsupported by hard evidence ma,v not ahvays have been an automaticdisqualification from high office, it is possible to argue that MI5's mistakesrvere the result ofperfectly straightforrvard elrors. Ifthat is the case, ir rtasnevertheless a remarkable coincidence that moles such as Blunt, Burgessand Philby'got through despite their past.

Which is very close indeed to saying that Chapman Pincher had got apoint.

On the question of the actual defection in 1951, which now bidsfair to be an historical event in its own right, a symbolicrepresentation both of Britain's lost status in the world and of theinevitable result of nearly half a century of unnecessary secrecy andsuppressed political debate in a changing world, Pincher and Gleestake their stand on their several grounds. Pincher believes that Philbycouldn't have alerted Maclean and Burgess within the time-scalenecessary. Glees cites diplomats who were there at the time, such asSir Patrick Reilly, to establish that Hollis was a mosr unlikely personto be the famous 'third man' who was thought to have tipped offMaclean and got Burgess in readiness, as has been suggested byPincher. The publication of David Cecil's biography of Maclean hasestablished that Philby is indeed the most likely person to have beenthe third man, and that objections on grounds of timing were basedon an erroneous understanding of the sequence of events that leadup to the signing of the order for Maclean's interrogation by HerbertMorrison, as has been suggested in Chapter 11. There are yetmore possible interpretations of the exact sequence of events if theyare looked for, and the fact that Hollis was not necessary to thetimetable does not mean that he was not aware that the defection wastaking place.

In contrasting the various cases made by Pincher and denied byGlees, as far as possible, it has been necessary to look at the areaswhere both make comment. In fact Pincher's case, thoughcircumstantial, is far more extensive than is indicated here. Inparticular Glees has ignored large parts of Pincher's book which dealwith matters after 1945. This may well be due to Iegalimplications indealing, even at second hand, with material that has unquestionablycome from 'insiders'. Certainly, as was made clear in the prefhce,discussiott of'purely operational failures, and the persorls responsiblefttr thctn, is thc stuf'f'of'ol'fit:c politit:s - cvcn rnore in an ilreil strclr ls

r62 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

the security of the state. The onl1 discussion of these areas possiblefor outsiders takes the reader immediately into the hall of mirrors.All that can be said is that the confusion caused is such that there is

an unansrverable case for an official history of MI5. Indeed the shiftof secret work from matters of a technical nature, such as the theft ofa military secret, to active involvement in politics makes such a

history as inevitable as the notorious court case in Australia, whichresulted solely from the frame of mind which has no understandingof this simple truth.

The final question raised by Pincher and Wright, and examined byGlees in his analysis, is the question of Hollis's motives. This questionwill now be considered in terms of the new discoveries that have beenbrought to light here.

L4

The Real Roger Hollis?

In strictly modern terms it is obvious now that Sir Roger Hollisbelonged to an older generation when it came to anything of thenature of a 'positive vet'. The fact that he was, in Evelyn Waugh'sphrase, a'good bottle man'might not have disqualified him in an agewhen more wine was drunk than now among undergraduates. Buthis close friendship with an undergraduate Communist, that rara auisin those days a card-carrying member of the Communist Party ofGreat Britain, would have meant inevitable rejection if there hadbeen no good countervailing evidence. Even at the time when Wrightwas grilling Blunt through hundreds of hours, such a connectionwhen revealed by Blunt was sufficient to have those involvedremoved from sensitive work, even if nothing more was alleged andno other connection was proved since their university days.

The case of Blunt, so long covered up by the authorities, untilAndrew Boyle's investigations discovered him, brought Hollis'sposition home to him uncomfortably, even though he was himself bythen the actual Director-General of MI5. The situation can best beseen in a story told by Philby to Philip Knightleyjust before he died:

I remember one day Blunt and I were in Hollis's office. Hollis and I werechatting and Blunt was idly turning the pages of some report or other.There was a break in the conversation and suddenly, without warning,Hollis turned towards Blunt and called out 'Oh Elli.' Blunt didn't bat aneyelid. He just went on turning the pages as if nothing had happened. AndHollis for his part, resumed the conversation as if it hadn't beeninterrupted.

If all the allegations about Hollis are true, this anecdote of a test ofBlunt to see if he was the mole 'Elli' is about a meeting, clearly aregular occurrence, of three of the most accomplished spies in Britishhistory. After Philby defected Hollis must have discussed the matterwith Blunt in an entirely new light, if Hollis was unaware of Philby's

I (i$

164 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

dual role. Again, after Blunt's confession Hollis if he was innocentmust have realised that he was the only member of that particulartriumvirate who had not been in the know. The question obviouslyarises: did Hollis tell anyone that he was in this position, or even thatthe three of them were in the habit of meeting regularly? As long as

Blunt remained free, and he rvas not disgraced until aftei Hollis'sdeath, the situation betlveen them must have been ambiguous to a

degree. Did Hollis ever offer his resignation or go over the positionwith anyone? The activities of the Fluency Committee suggest that hedid not. If Hollis and Blunt were collaborators we are faced with thepossibility that Wright's tapes of hundreds of hours of discussionwith Blunt were listened to by Hollis and Blunt later, or in any eventtheir content gone over, no doubt with amusement.

If the three in this anecdote were all spies, they are the obviouscandidates for the famous ring of three spies known by theircodenames in the intercepted radio traffic to Moscow concerningthem: Johnson, Hicks and Stanley. All three knew each other, andthey were regarded by the Russians as their most important sources.The suggestion that one of them was Burgess, an eccentric given toindependent action, has never been proved and now seems a less

Iikely alternative. As lvas suggested in the introduction, the English'spies' who knew each other, in defiance of normal Russian spycraft,must be considered as a group who existed autonomously with theirown ideas, although looking towards Moscow as the central focus oftheir loyalties. Before considering Hollis's position and possiblemotives in detail, it is perhaps worth looking at Philby and Blunt tosee why they should have decided to dedicate their lives to a Soviet,or more correctly, a Marxist-Leninist philosophy.

Philby's dedication to Communism plainly began as a result of hisown thinking at university, as he has stated in his autobiography MySilent War. Other factors were no doubt the romance of people suchas his exact contemporary Peter Smollett and the part he himselfplayed in the battle in Vienna between the Austrian left and theforces of reaction who did not stop at shelling the famous blocks ofworkers' flats. We do not know whether Philby was shot at in thisfight, as he undoubtedly was in the Spanish Civil War; but hecertainly saved the lives of some of his comrades by providing clothesas a substitute for their uniforms when they were trapped in the vastsewers in Vienna, later seen as the backdrop for the final scenes ofGraham Greene's The Third Man. ,\lthough a British subject, Philbywas born in India and spent his early days there, being bilingual inPunjabi as a child. Though he was educated in England his fatherbecame an Arabist ancl remaincd one to the last, cotrverting to Islam

14. The Real Roger Hollis? 165

and spending most of his days in the Middle East, where he becamefamous through his connection with Ibn Saud.

Kim Philby's roots in England at that time cannot have been asstrong as those around him who were native-born. Some with such acolonial background strive to be almost more English than theEnglish. A classic example is George Orwell, who was also born inIndia. Others, like Claud Cockburn, born in China, remaincosmopolitan in outlook, or simply'colonial'. Although Philby settleddown in England and had a family, the tie with England seems neverto have been complete. This is seen, for example, by his decisionwhile in Beirut, shortly before he defected, to try to become anIndian citizen. This move at such a crucial and testing time for him isall the more interesting as it was clearly not made at the request of hisRussian controller, who would have known of the legal difficulties inthe way of such a request, and no doubt would also have been able tofind a way around them. Clearly Philby was acting in response to adeep-seated need to return to his earliest roots and the place wherehe had been, perhaps, most huppy. After his defection the specialrelationship between Russia and India would have removed anybarriers to a yearly visit to India once he had settled down in Moscow.The picture is of someone essentially international in outlook whoseloyalty could have been won by the possibility of joining what hehimself called an'elite force', the KGB, working for something whichhe not only believed in, but for which comrades of his had died.

Anthony Blunt had a far more stable background and was anextremely powerful and unusual intellect. It is significant thatneither of the two biographies of him which have recently beenpublished, one by two journalists, Freeman and Penrose, Conspiraclof Silence, and the other by John Costello, The Mask of Treachery,mention any of his voluminous writings on the history of art in anydetail, if at all. This is extraordinary, particularly in Costello's book,which is described as 'fully documented'. This phrase, if it meansanything, should imply at least a bibliography of Blunt's work whichwas, after all, the central feature of his life from university days. Thisaspect may have been of little interest to Costello in view of Blunt'sother activities, but to try to understand a man's mind withoutconsidering at all the greater part of his life's work is clearlyimpossible. Considerable though Costello's work is, it leaves open thefundamental questions of BIunt's motives.

Not the least contradiction in Blunt's life was his avowal of thedogmas of Marxism and in contrast his continued interest inreligious themes in works of art. Shortly before he died Bluntdispersed part of his library at Christie's. It was fbund that he was an

r66 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

extensive collector of early religious emblem books. His library alsocontained numerous pre-war works on religious works of art and artcriticism, many in German, which he annotated copiously, usually onslips of paper loosely inserted beween pages rather than on the bookitself. At this time he did broadcasts for Burgess, one on the SistineChapel, but another on the fate of works of art in Spain during theCivil War, which showed an astonishingly naive view: that of an arthistorian first, and of a political theorist a long way behind. Talkingof the removal of pictures from the Prado, in what could rvell havebeen described as looting by the Communist forces, he remarked:

The pictures in the Prado are now on their lastjourney to safety... I thinkwe can imagine the ghost of Goya watching lvith approval the saving of hiswork - these two works [Goya's paintings the 2nd and 3rd of MayJ perhapsabove all others from the dangers that now threaten them.

The most likely explanation for his Marxist loyalty is the influence ofGuy Burgess and other Marxist thinkers such as Alister Watson. Thisthen became converted through his personal loyalty, and adherenceto the elitist attitudes of those he found himself surrounded by atCambridge, into a passionate and unyielding conviction. Costellodemonstrates convincingly that the person who recruited theCambridge spies was an ex-priest, Theodore Maly, a man of greatcharm and sophistication whose view of the world might haveappealed particularly to Blunt, whose youth had been spent in anecclesiastical atmosphere in Paris, where his father was Chaplain ofthe British Embassy Church. By the time Blunt went to university thefamily were back in England and his father the incumbent of aconventional, undistinguished London parish, a sharp transform-ation that echoes the experience of Hollis, also of course a child ofthe manse, when his family had briefly gone to Leeds from Wells.

We have mentioned earlier an Anglican parson who followedmuch the same path as the Catholic Maly, though withoutabandoning the cloth: Conrad Noel. An excerpt from one of Noel'smanifestos points to the close links with grass-roots Communistfeeling:

If you would destroy the kept press and fight for freedom of expression; ifyou would destroy the Capitalist Parliament and build a people's republic;if you would abolish classes, artificial distinctions, snobbery; if, while youknow that the most deadly tyrants are not kings but financiers, speculators,captains of industry, you would also, with St. Thomas of Canterbury,destroy that nest of flunkies, the court; if, while you measure swords withtlre New Plutocracy, you are ashanrecl of that Ancierrt Fraud which callsitself'the ()ld Aristrx:r'ncy; if you irre stliving fill sut:lr a tlansfi)rnlation as

14. The Real Roger Hollis? 167

shall make it possible to substitute 'Oh Lord save the Commonwealth' for'Oh Lord save the King'. Help the Crusadel We offer you nothing -nothing but adventure, risks, battle, perhaps ruin; with the love and loyaltyof comrades and the Peace of God which passeth understanding.

Noel's banners carried the slogan'Crusade for God and the Worker'sCommonwealth'. While such outpourings would merely have beenan embarrassment to the sophisticated Blunt, they undoubtedlyformed the background to the conviction of many in'the Church ofEngland and would have been well-known to Hollis, if not throughgossip at Wells then through talk of meetings on the downs atClifton, where Noel's emblem of a cross with hammer and sickle on itwas often seen in the twenties. The movement did not outlast theinter-war period, but there were many, such as Tom Driberg, JosephNeedham and the well-known East End vicar John Grosser, whowere to acknowledge its influence on them. It is in this context thatthe otherwise extraordinarily high proportion of Communists, bothopen and secret, who came from clerical households can beunderstood. Blunt was the son of a clergyman. Hollis's father, as wehave seen, was Bishop of Taunton. But there were many others.Dona Torr, one of the foremost theoreticians of the CPGB beforeand during the war, was the daughter of the Rev. William Torr,Vicar of Eastham and Canon of Chester. His successor as Canon wasthe Rev. HewlettJohnson, famous as the'Red Dean', in fact the Deanof Canterbury and a member of the board of the Daily Worker, sittingalongside J.B.S. Haldane, throughout the crucial period leading upto its suppression, as we have seen in Chapter 5. At the People'sConvention itself numbers of clergymen were present and evenspoke from the platform. It may well be, when family diaries andpapers of the period become available and the political history ofmodern Britain comes to be written, that these associations will beseen in the same light as, for example, those around FrederickDennison Maurice and the Workers Educational Association, andsimilar movements in the previous century. Until the papers of thefamilies involved reach the public domain, and the courage of latergenerations is equal to the publishing of them, the truth of thesematters must remain a mystery. Meanwhile it is obvious that theyformed a constant background to Hollis's career, and it is worthremembering that while his brother Christopher went over to Rome,Roger himself did not, and his son has remarked that he was not aCatholic of any kind.

Turning to the details of Hollis's career as they have becomeknown through the ncw facts established here, it is possible to get

r68 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

closer to the real Roger Hollis and to the truth about some of thematters which have caused such difficulty and furore. It is obviousfrom what we now know about Hollis's time in China that he hadconsiderable knowledge of Communist activity there before theComintern was found to have infiltrated his own firm. Working as ajournalist in Hong Kong while the conflict between Russia and Chinawas at its height would have made him aware from the start ofCommunism as a living force. When he joined BAT he kept up hisjournalist connections, meeting people like Agnes Smedley andArthur Ewert, if the evidence said to have come from Tony Stablesand from Hollis's own interrogation is accepted. Certainly discussingComintern activity with Peter Fleming he would have been in aposition to know much more about such things than any normalBAT employee, which he certainly was not. BAT staff are sure thatfreelancejournalism of this kind would have been unheard of amongordinary covenanted staff recruited in Britain in the normal way.

Hollis's general awareness of the Comintern would have beenbrought into sharp focus by the arrest of his fellow workers, many ofwhom he must have known personally, having worked in Mukden.When the arrests actually took place he was in Shanghai, and hewould have heard what had happened from the two men whoescaped the arrests and came straight to BAT's Shanghai base. Howdid he react to this event? According to Glees, who did not know ofany of the facts revealed here, his letters home did not mention theword'Comintern'at all. Not surprisingly, therefore, he seems to havekept it from his family. His allegiance to the Chinese cause, and hisforceful statement of it in his talk in 1937, suggests that he took theview that the Japanese were to blame for everything, rather than theComintern infiltration itself. This would have placed him in the samecamp as Clark Kerr and others on the left. On his return to Britainhis position would have been difficult to understand for those notintimately aware of what was going on in China. But his hatred of the

Japanese and sympathy for the Chinese would have aligned him withthe standard far-left view espoused by people such as StephenSpender who were ardent advocates of the boycott of Japanesegoods. Christopher Hollis wrote his biography of Lenin at this time,seeing things from his Catholic standpoint, although the fact that hewrote on Lenin at all showed that a serious debate was going on.Roger Hollis would have found himself somewhere between thesetwo positions. Though there are no surviving letters between thebrothers from this period, it seems inconceivable that they did notdiscuss the book and its contents as they bore so directly on Roger'sexperience in China of [,enin's teachings as they were then being

14. Tie Real Roger Hottis? 169

played out in practice. In this context there is a passage in the bookwhich is worth repeating:

All the activities of the secret societies in Russia always seem to have beenperfectly well known to the Police. That is why the secret societies almostalways failed in their coups; when they succeeded, they succeeded notbecause they had escaped the notice of the police but because thepolicemen whose duty it was to prevent them were themselves members ofthe secret societ,v.

This was indeed the principle on which Maxwell Knight had acted inhis dealings with Tom Driberg and the Communist Party at Oxfordand also, though in a different way, with Mosley's British Union. It is

singularly unfortunate that no Hollis family papers survive onChristopher's side and that none are open on Roger's. It now seemsobvious that Roger Hollis's idea of going into MI5 must have evolvedin discussions of this kind. Pincher and others have remarked on howstrange it is that someone invalided home from a commercialoverseas post, should suddenly get the idea of entering MI5, anorganisation which most people would never have heard of. But,looking back on Christopher's disclaimer mentioned in the firstchapter, that the family had any political interests, clearly by this timeboth he and Roger were preoccupied with politics and politicaltheory. After their discussions, and Roger's own talks with peoplesuch as Peter Fleming and perhaps his old friend Cockburn, Rogermust have heard as much about MI5 as anyone who wasn'talready in it.

When Roger Hollis was first interviewed by MI5 his knowledge ofCommunism must immediately have become obvious, and he wouldno doubt have remarked on the fact that his brother was the authorof the book on Lenin then being talked about everywhere. It is clearthat Hollis was seen as a Communist expert almost from thebeginning of his service. It has to be asked at this point whetherMaxwell Knight was aware of Hollis's close connection withCockburn at Oxford. Driberg may have known of it, and may havetold him, which would account for the difficulty between Knight andHollis in later years. An alternative suggestion is that Hollis wasrecruited partly because of this knowledge of Cockburn; but if so it issurprising that no note of it was made anywhere and that Hollis wasallowed to pretend that he did not know Cockburn while holdingCockburn's file.

Hollis's skill in analysing Communist affairs must have been mostobvious at the time of the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact, This threwmost analysts completely, but Hollis had seen the same realpolitih

_/;--\ .

170 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

before, when Mao Tse Tung and Chiang Kai Shek had joined forces.Even earlier Stalin had happily backed Chiang Kai Shek in order toprotect hisJapanese flank, though Chiang Kai Shek was slaughteringChinese Communists wherever they could be found. Thisperspective would have enabled Hollis to see the Communist Party as

potential allies, as Kingsley Martin's mysterious informer did, evenwhen they had joined Hitler in raping Poland. When the securityexecutive was established in May 1940 Hollis's line would have beenseen as 'left', if not actively Communist. Whether he dissembled thisor openly avowed it we shall never know, but we have seen him actingto protect the Daily Worker and The Week. It could be claimed that,rather than acting out of Communist sympathy here, or as an agentof influence, he may simply have been protecting his old friendCockburn. He was of course doing that, but the only reason we haveheard about the Cockburn case, rather than others that may haveexisted, is the high profile adopted by Cockburn, which ensured thatsome at least of the files relating to him were preserved. Theparticular case that suggests that the second view is correct, and thatthere were other moves of Hollis which protected Communists perse, is the case of the atom spies, which we have looked at already indetail. When Hollis accepted blame in America in 1950 he did so atan occasion which he thought would never be made public and so hisadmission is the more to be believed. If he was acting on Sovietinstruction when he let through Fuchs and Nunn May, he could nothave acted otherwise than he did, having full knowledge not only oftheir Communist connections but of the importance of their work.Even Hollis's staunch defender Glees has remarked that thingswould look 'black' for Hollis if Fuchs's clearance could be laid at hisdoor, and without question it now can be. As Hollis supportedanything that would oppose the Japanese, there may even be ageneral motive for his actions: for it had become known through thecensorship authorities that the Japanese were using radioactiveinvisible ink in order to evade censorship, implying that they toowere involved in nuclear research. Hollis had early remarked on thefact that the Japanese could use poison gas against the Chinesebecause the Chinese had no equivalent technology to throw back atthem. Here perhaps was an opportunity to give the Communists inChina, via their Soviet colleagues, an equal opportunity.We have, ofcourse, here entered the wilderness of mirrors, and no evidence ofany kind is likely to emerge; but some logic for Hollis's undoubtedactions needs to be found.

With the end of the war the situation in Britain, as far as MI5 was

14. The ReaI Roger Hollis? t7tconcerned, changed rapidly. The German Communist expatriatesand their problems soon dwindled as post-war Germany establisheditself in the apparently unstable split state which has miraculouslysurvived to the present day. Most German Communists went rapidlyto East Germany and remained there, including zu Putlitz himself.The cold war, on the other hand, quickly developed, and thehallmark of those on the left in Britain was a rabid anti-Americanism.Hollis seems to have shared this feeling. So much so that when hewent over to Canada to interview the defector Gouzenko his superiorwarned his opposite number in New York that Hollis was veryanti-American. Accordingly he was steered straight on up to Canada.Hollis's address in America in 1950, which we have already referredto, might suggest that he had mellowed towards America, but thiswas not so. In fact his actual view of the occasion is seen in Glees'scomment on the talk, which he refers to as a'performance':

Indeed, we know that Hollis's performance which obviously impressed theAmericans was a source of great pride to British circles generally. WhenMalcolm Macdonald reported this incident to Roger Hollis's brother, theBishop in Madras, he told him that Roger had been able to squashAmerican suspicions about MI5 by'making rings around them'.

This anti-Americanism has first been noticed in Cockburn's paperThe Week as a policy line, and it seems to have been the oneunmistakable strand in the thinking of all those now known to beSoviet agents. When Hollis gave his talk Philby and Burgess were inWashington causing social outrage by their blatant anti-Americanattitudes. On one occasion they even insulted American guests inPhilby's home. All this was in the context of Britain's complete failureto back America in her stand on China. The indications are thatHollis held to his original views on China, as we shall see; and his ownaim in 'running rings'around his hosts was to ensure that his actionsin clearing Fuchs and Nunn May were not properly understood.

The most obvious facet of anti-Americanism as it affected MI5 wasthe outcry against McCarthyism. Just as the liberal voice protestingagainst the suppression of the Daily Worker was greater than theCommunist voice, so the outcry against McCarthyism was sufficientlywidespread to make the avowal of it by the security services, andHollis in particular, seem normal. In John Bulloch's book MIT,passed in every detail by Hollis personally, we find the fbllowingdescription of'MI5's activities at this timc:

t72 Part Three: The Wild,erness of Mirrors

A few years ago, at the height of the McCarthy witch-hunt in America,when the effect of that unhappy chapter was being felt in this counrry,some 5000 people each year were being investigated by MI5 and rhesecurity services. . .

And this no doubt echoed Hollis's view of the matter. But Britain'scover-up was not due to McCarthyism in America. It was due to thetrials after Gouzenko's defection in Canada. Hollis's apologia, his'running rings around the Americans', was simply a faux-naifadmission of a mistake while concealing the cover-up that had takenplace at that level,let alone the original passing of Fuchs. In otherwords the disdain of McCarthy's methods presumed that the thingshe revealed could not have been happening in Britain. The truth ofthe matter was to be brought home with a vengeance when thedecoded 'Venona' traffic identified Maclean and precipitated thedefection of him and Burgess. The cover-up that followed made itscounterpart after the Nunn May and Fuchs cases seem like a frankand total admission of guilt.

With the defection Hollis was for the first time put in an acutelyembarassing position. Whatever lies the press were told aboutBurgess, Hollis knew precisely what his opinions were. He knew alsothat Philby and Blunt were intimate friends of Burgess. Indeed heknew them all himself. To establish guilt by association is alwaysdangerous, but the situation here was one in which even the simplest'vet'would have suggested extreme caution in the future deploymentof those involved. Thus the American authorities insisted on theimmediate withdrawal of Philby and voiced suspicion of Blunt.Precisely how much Hollis told of what he knew ro his superiors orpolitical masters is not clear; probably we shall never know. TheLabour Government at the time were in difficulty, with a reducedmajority, and would not have wanred any revelations that mightdamage their electoral prospects, which many MPs from MauriceWebb downwards would have assured them was inevitable if thedefection case were pursued. The election of a Conservativeadrninistration in l95l must have been a blessing for Hollis and hiscolleagues, as the security services were able to conceal the mostdamaging facts from the incoming administration. When Philbyreturned to London he was given,an internal 'trial' at which hemanaged to establish his innocence. Philby must have made somecontact with Blunt at this point, and if Hollis was innocent of anyknowledge of what had been happening he was the only one of thethree who was.

Burgess and Maclean's reappearance caused a sensation, but if ithad been said in the papers that the deputy head of M15 was actually

14. The ReaI Roger Hollis? 173

a close associate of the men who were now seen for the first time to bein Moscow the sensation would have been unlimited. Even the mostobtuse man in Hollis's shoes would have realised the danger of hisposition. Hollis seems to have done nothing. A game was aPparentlybegun at his expense, played by Burgess, zu Putlitz, Driberg and theothers. The events which followed the reappearance of Burgess andMaclean in Moscow were astonishing, though when they were firstrevealed by Chapman Pincher their significance was not fullyunderstood in the stream of the new facts that emerged as theSpycatcher saga evolved. Pincher was approached by Hollis with astory that was to be disclosed in the press to guard against a wholeseries of revelations that Hollis suggested were now being planned byMoscow which would be used to discredit Britain and America:

[Admiral] Thomson told me that Hill [Bernard Hill, chief legal advisor ofMI5l had been asked to see me at the request of Roger Hollis, then stillDeputy Director-General... [Hill] said that he and his colleagues hadconcluded that the theatrical production of Maclean and Burgess was justthe prelude to further statements calculated to sow the maximum distrustbetween Britain and America. The meeting ended with a request that theDail"9 Express for which I was then defence correspondent should publish a

prominent article warning the public that whatever Maclean and Burgessmight say in the future would be a KGB exercise and was not to bebelieved.

Pincher duly ran a story given him in detail from Hollis. Thisincluded the suggestion that Burgess might even appear on Moscowradio (an echo no doubt of his BBC days) providing informationabout British diplomats negotiating with the USA which mightembarrass them severely. In fact, as Pincher pointed out, no suchstories or broadcasts appeared. In the light of what has beendescribed here about Burgess's knowledge of the situation in Chinaand Britain's position vis-i-vis the USA, Hollis clearly had more toworry about than defamation of a diplomat: what was to be feared onthe home front was even greater. The whole exercise has strongechoes of the kind of activity Hollis was involved in before the warwith Peter Fleming in China. That the concern, and the steeringhand, was Hollis's became absolutely clear with the next stage, thedispatch of Tom Driberg to Moscow to talk to Burgess. This journeyhas been touched on earlier. Chapman Pincher has given a largelyaccurate account of the background and of the result, clearly to beforeseen, that Driberg ended up as a double agent working for Hollisand the KGB for much of the rest of his life. New information hascome to light, however, from an old friend of Burgess's who knewhim well in the years before the war and also knew Driberg. At the

174 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

time of the visit Driberg was warned by the Russians that he wouldnot be huppy when he saw Burgess and would be shocked by thechange that had come over him, as indeed he was. The insistence onthe visit came from the British side. Driberg made a point of lookingup Burgess's friend, and asked particularly whether he had anycommunication from him. Driberg was clearly trying to find outwhether anyone outside his left-wing circle, or any person such asHarold Nicolson, was in communication with Burgess. What wasfeared, equally by Hollis, who monitored the journey from thebeginning, and by Moscow, was that Burgess would find an ourler forwhat he knew that was outside the control of either side.- The reason the British had wanted Driberg to go to Moscowbecame obvious with the first important sequel to rhe visit beforepublication of the book itself. When Driberg produced the firstmanuscript it contained many references to Burgess'sJBC days, andto other secret matters given to him by Burgess in breach of theOfficial Secrets Act. These were deleted, of course, when MI5rewrote the book in line with their - that is, Hollis's - interests; butthe offence had been committed and there was documentaryevidence in the form of the original manuscript. There were nowgrounds for prosecuting Burgess. This, according to the line given toPincher, had been the main purpose of the visit.

That the possibility of Burgeis's return to Britain was the basis ofHollis's need to get actual evidence against him was obvious to tho'sebehind the Iron curtain. This became even clearer when zu Putlitzpublished his memoirs, The Putlitz Dossier. After naming Blunt as oneof his close friends in the prominently placed preface, as a reminderto Hollis and others in the know that the Blunt affak was still alive asfar as the East was concerned, his most interesting indiscretion was apaean of praise for Burgess which ended with a moving plea thatcould have been dictated by Burgess himself:

I sincerely hope that the day will come when he will be able to ser fooragain in his beloved England and prove to himself as well as to hiscountrymen, that he did everything in his power to serve his country welland honestly.

If this was another move in the game being played at Hollis's expense

- and, of course, at Blunt's - it worked admirably. Hollis becamemore than ever determined that Burgess should not return, until inone famous case a rumour that the return was about to take placecaused the actual issuing of arrest warrants to be served on Burgessthe moment he landed. This was the news that broke in the EueningStandunl, In a {icquently described incidcnt, television crews and

14. The Real Roger Hollis? 175

journalists waited at the airports for the expected arrival. Like thebroadcasts by Burgess promised earlier, Burgess and Maclean didnot materialise. The single-minded determination not to allowBurgess to return, even when it was rumoured that he wished to visithis mother before she died, aroused interest at all levels, even thehighest. R.A. Butler as Home Secretary in charge of MI5, to whomHollis presumably must have been reporting on the matter, was saidby Stephen Spender to have expressed bewilderment:

Please tell him [Burgess] that, as far as I am concerned, he's perfectly freeto come and go as he pleases. I know of absolutely nothing to prevent that.Of course, if he does come back and the Home Secretary takes no actionthen I'll be criticised, the press will be afrer me, but I'm prepared to facethat. As far as I am concerned there is nothing against him. Of course, thefellows at MI5 may take a different view of rhe marter. I know nothingabout that. Tell him I'll stand by what I say.

Driberg, working for Hollis and the KGB, was foremost among thosewho warned Spender that on no account should he convey this newsto Burgess. In the end he did not, though he cannot have known ofthe close connection between Driberg and Hollis. Hollis's likelyanswer to Butler's offer when it reached him can be seen in thecharade of the arrest warrants.

Pincher remarks that the Fluency Committee could notunderstand why Hollis should want to prevent Burgess fromreturning, since he would clearly be a most valuable source ofinformation even if the KGB's blessing on his exit from Russia wouldimply that he could not know much of great secrecy. This seems tosuggest that the Fluency Committee, despite the defection of Philbyand the confession of Blunt, which had taken place by the time theywere sitting, still had no idea of the Burgess China scandal, or of anyof the wartime events described here and of Hollis's part in them.Nor, it seems, did they understand the liaison between Hollis,Driberg, Burgess and the KGB.

The years of Hollis's directorship of MI5 were not entirely withoutsuccess. One of his triumphs was the trial of Gordon Lonsdale,followed by the slightly more embarrassing Vassal case. John Bullochhad followed both cases and had written a book about the Lonsdaleaffair, Spy Ring. As a result of his interest he was called to giveevidence at the Vassal Tribunal, and his publishers submitted aswritten evidence a proof copy of his book MI5. The book came as acornplete surprise to Hollis and it was returned to the publishers bythc sccrctirry ol' tlre l)-Noticc ()onrmittee tnarkecl with massive

176 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

emendations, from the rates of pay of serving officers to matters ofdetail concerning Kell's dismissal from the Service.

MI5 realised immediately that the book depended on help fromsomeone who knew a great deal about the service. The inference wasquickly drawn that this was Lady Kell, Sir Vernon's widow. She hadwritten an account of MI5 and her husband's part in it a few yearsafter his death. Publication had been prevented at that time. With thepassage of years she had tried once more, through the efforts of herson, to find a publisher. MI5 had again acted to restrain publication.At this point Kell's son, perhaps attracted by the success and abilityevinced by Sfy Ring, approached Bulloch with the suggestion that hebuild a book around the original manuscript. MI5, the first publishedhistory of the service, was the result. After the initial approach to theD-Notice Committee a long drawn-out confrontation took placebetween the Government, in the shape of M15, the Home Secretaryand the official solicitor on one side, and .|ohn Bulloch, thepublishers and their lawyers on the other. But the first move, madeperhaps in panic, was Hollis's.

Although MI5 was published in 1963 it had been written beforePhilby's defection. Hollis may have thought that the book was thebeginning of a similar situation to that involving Burgess andDriberg. Whatever the reason, he began by visiting Bulloch inperson, not on official premises, giving a false name to Bulloch'sreceptionist. He was entirely alone and the interview was conductedwithout witnesses, and without any monitoring (unless Hollis waswearing a portable microphone and transmitter: highly unlikely in1963). After apologising for the false name, which he referred to as

'this Boy Scout business', Hollis discussed the book in general termsand left after a short while. Further meetings then followed, but withothers present. The conclusion to be drawn from this highly unusualencounter - Bulloch was then a young man at the beginning of hiscareer, Hollis the most senior officer in the most secret Governmentorganisation - was that Hollis wanted to be absolutely sure ofknowing for himself from the first what Bulloch intended in hisbook, and why it was being written. In fact Bulloch knew nothing ofPhilby, or of any likely Soviet connection, and his book's appearanceat this time was simply a coincidence.

The sequel to this strange beginning was that the book, which hadby then been bound, was disbound at MI5's expense. Twelve or morepages were removed, a fresh text was substituted of exactly the rightlength for the deleted passages, and the whole was rebound and sentout as if nothing had happened, This procedure, besides beingimmensely expensive, seemed to show either that M15 was unaware

14. The Real Roger Hollis? 177

that such a procedure was uncommon - normally a book would bepulped and reprinted at less cost - or that they wished to ensure thatno copies at all of the unexpurgated book existed. Hollis's personalconcern, which he carried to the length of bringing about a meeting ofthe author with the Home Secretary, would suggest the latter.

The defection of Philby placed Blunt in great difficulty. He wasalready being interrogated by MI5, and Hollis was seeing the tran-scripts. It would appear very unlikely that Hollis was not also in contactwith Blunt himself in some way. If he and Blunt were waiting for somecontact from Philby after his defection they appear to have waited invain. Finally, in March, Blunt went to Beirut, supposedly en route to atalk he was to give at the Weizman Institute, staying there with an oldfriend. It can hardly be a coincidence that Yuri Modin, Blunt'scontroller from his wartime years, had been in Beirut at the time ofPhilby's defection two months before. Costello has suggested thatBlunt met Modin there and was told that Philby had been offered animmunity deal and that this was the way things would probably go forhim. There can of course be no evidence for this, but it seems highlyplausible. In fact only a few more months were to pass before evidenceappeared which identified Blunt, as it had Philby, in the form of a facefrom the past whose conscience overcame him in his middle years. InBlunt's case it was an American, Michael Straight, whom he hadrecruited before the war. When asked to serve as Chairman of theAdvisory Council on the Arts, set up by President Kennedy, Straightdecided to make a clean breast of his past rather than risk the positionhe would find himself in if the FBI did not discover it for themselvesand he was subjected to pressure he might not be able to resist.

Hollis of course dealt with the matter from the start, and animmunity deal was offered to Blunt, just as it had been to Philby.Blunt's career in the art world had been crowned by the coming tofruition of one of the ideas he had backed, the public opening of theQueen's picture gallery in the Royal Mews. Exposure was unthinkableand, as presumably no convenient reason for his removal could befound, it was decided to let him remain in his post until retirement. Wecannot know what Hollis's motives in this were, other than the obviousones of protecting the monarch from embarrassment. Certainly heknew now, if he hadn't known before, that throughout his time in thewar his two closest collaborators had been Soviet agents. He seems tohave told no one. His position was made all the more difficult becauseat this time the'molehunters' had begun to take seriously the possi-bility that there still was a Soviet agent in MI5, and that he and hisdeputy (iraham Mitchellwcre the most likely suspects,

Hollis harl no option but to.ioin in thc check on Mitchell, whir:h

178 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

included full-scale surveillance. During these investigations he beganto discuss political matters with Wright, presumably in an attempt tobring him round to some understanding of his perspective. WhileWright's testimony in Splcatcher, as we have seen, is tainted, hisaccount of what Hollis said is plausible, particularly as he himself hadno knowledge of affairs in China.

Occasionally, during the searches of Mitchell's office Hollis talked abouthis early years. He told me about his ravels in China during the 1930'swhere he worked with British American Tobacco.

'Dreadful business out there. Any damn fool could see what theJapanese were doing in Manchuria. It was perfectly obvious we'd loseChina if we didn't act,'he used to say.

As with many elder MI5 officers, the roots of his dislike of theAmericans lay prewar. He said the Americans could have helped out in theFar East, but refused to because they were gripped with isolationism. TheFrench in the Far East were, he said, effete, and would rather have seenthe whole place go down than help us. That left only the Russians.

'They watched and waited,' he told me, 'and they got it in the end afterthe war, when Mao came.'

This statement of his position is all the more convincing becausequite clearly it was Hollis's own, echoing the position we have seenhim take up in 1937. His view that the arrival of Mao was theequivalent of Russia's winning China chimed exactly with Burgess'sline, that Mao was the leader of a Russian-style Communism on astrict Leninist analysis, only carrying it one stage further. And, mostdamaging, it is obvious that Hollis did not tell Wright anything aboutthe activities of the Comintern in China, or about his experiencesthere involving Peter Fleming or his other contacts, which have beenrevealed in this book for the first time. Had Wright shown some signsof sympathy in these talks with Hollis, or even of understanding,Hollis might have begun to give him the wider perspective in whichhe saw Chinese affairs. But he did not. Hollis's silence under thecircumstances is extremely suspicious.

When the time came to brief the American security services on theenquiry into Mitchell, Hollis himself went over and made thenecessary disclosures. Pincher and others have commented on this assuspicious, and it is another example of Hollis's acting on his own toensure that he knew before anyone else exactly what was being said.Yet on such a serious matter it would only have been proper for himto go over in person, especially as MI5's previous track record oncollaboration had been so chequered.

Some writers, notably NigelWest, maintain that Mitchellis still themost likely suspect; but Mitchell was clearerl and there followed the

14. The Real Roger Hollis? 179

investigation into Hollis himself which marked the nadir of internalself-confidence of MI5 and in the end precipitated the Spycatcherfiasco. Hollis clearly bore the various investigations with fortitude.Finally, if Wright is to be believed, shortly before his retirementHollis called him into his office and asked him face to face why hethought he was a spy. Wright went through his arguments. Theywere largely circumstantial and evoked the classic reply which hasbeen so frequently reprinted:

'You have the manacles on me. All I can tell you is that I am not a spy.'

Wright was not convinced, of course. But there was no conclusiveevidence, and Hollis duly retired to Somerset and the world aroundWells Cathedral in which he had grown up, playing golf on the localcourses and an appropriate part in community affairs. A closerelation has remarked that Hollis was too indolent to be engaging inintrigue, and that all he wanted to do was to play golf and listen toevensong at Wells Cathedral. For a while this was his life; but therewas an unwelcome intrusion in the form of a further interrogation bythe Fluency Committee, this time with different personnel, withoutWright in the chair. A fresh look at all the facts had forced the jointMI5 and MI6 Committee to conclude that Hollis really was the mostIikely suspect for a number of unexplained failures and leaks. In thepublished account of this interview there is one significant passage,that involving the Cockburn file. It was put to Hollis that it wasirregular not to mark the file with the information that he hadknown Cockburn at university. At first Hollis merely said that thiswas a rule frequently broken in pre-war days. The Committeenoticed, as Wright had, that Hollis had kept Cockburn's file by himthroughout the war, but seem not to have drawn any conclusionfrom it. Next day they asked him about it again, and Hollis producedwhat can clearly be seen now as a well-prepared fall-back position.He remarked frankly that, yes, he had deliberately omitted to saythat he knew Cockburn. He was aware that Cockburn had left-wingassociations and did not wish to prejudice his career. This wasaccepted as a candid disclosure which effectively disposed of thematter, and that can only have been because the Committee had notlooked closely at Cockburn's file or, if they had, that it had beenweeded ruthlessly before they saw it. In either case it is clear thatHollis was prepared to protect his position at this level even whenthings had reached the pass they obviously had: bringing a formeremployee out of retirement in any clrganisation is a step hardly evertaken; bringing the hcacl of'the Set;urity Service in to fhce a fbrmal

180 Part Three: The Wilderness of Mirrors

interrogation was the most serious possible situation imaginable.Hollis simply allowed this to happen.

The point here, and it is vital, is that Hollis's remark to Wright, 'AllI can tell you is that I am not a spy', clearly implied that there wasmore to be told but he could not tell it, with the implication, de haut en

bas, that there were secrets of his office which he could not divulge.This may have held when he was Director-General; but afterretirement it is impossible to believe that, if there were such secrets,he would not have gone to the then Director-General, opened anappropriate file with the remark'Enough is enough. Here is what isat the bottom of all this', and declined to let the wholemorale-sapping charade go on any further.

There remains the possibility that what Hollis was guarding thatwas so secret involved some previous political administration. It is

difficult to see what this might have been. The People's Conventionwas an attempt at revolution in Britain; the fact that MI5, and Hollishimself, seemed to have done nothing might imply that a politicaldecision had been taken to allow it to run and see what mighthappen. If there hadbeen a revolution, MI5, like the Czarist secretpolice, would have been on the winning side; but this could also beseen as treason. The need to conceal the true role of Burgess, both inthe pre-war anti-Nazi activities in Germany and in the split betweenBritain and America after the war which ended with the loss of Chinaand the Korean war, could be a more likely explanation. Hollis'sdesperate attempts to stop Burgess coming back might suggest this.But even if either of these reasons were the real one, or somethingsimilar to them, then Hollis was acting entirely on his own, withreference only to his wartime connections with Philby, Blunt and theothers. He was letting his own political view of the world, as it wasdetermined before the war in China, dominate entirely the realpolitikdecisions he was making as head of M15 twenty and thirty years later.It could justly be said, of course, that Hollis could have had no idea ofthe chaos this secrecy was to cause in later years, or the politicalineptitude that was to be exhibited on all sides.

The printed word was the cause of the trouble here, and theGovernment of the day and their advisers showed less skill thanHollis in dealing with books which might cause difficulty. The rootsof the problem are now clear, and there is an obvious parallel to beseen between the Salman Rushdie affair and the Spycatcher appeals.Rushdie's The Satanic Verses has been defended on Iiterary grounds,when the problem it presented was a religious one. This was notunderstood even when people were being killed all over the world inreligious riots: the b .nning of'the book was still seen as a literary

14. The Real Roger Hollis? r8lquestion rather than a religious one. With Spycatcher the response wasto try to contain a security break, when the entire phenomenon waspolitical, both in its immediate manifestation, the book itself, and inthe roots of the affair in modern political history. The result was notwholesale killings, as followed The Satanic Verses, but somethingequally distasteful for any government conscious of its image: publicdisgrace in the international arena. Further, the confusion of asecurity problem with a historical problem has not been resolved.The Government's answer seems to have been the introduction ofrestrictive legislation affecting, in particular, a much-maligned press,who have been in the front line in their coverage of what wasobviously to them a political affair through and through. Legislationin any democracy, let alone England, which tries to interfere with thewriting of history is fraught with danger, beside which even thetroubles caused by Wright or Rushdie would pale into insignificance.If the Government pursues that line Burgess's description ofBritain's political system as Administrative Totalitarianism ratherthan Democracy may still be seen as valid. It can only be hoped thatnothing will be put in the way of books such as this one which touchon cases where the security services have acted in such a way as tomake themselves an intimate part of the political life of the country.

If the final truth about Hollis is that he was an archetypalEnglishman who had a sympathy for Communism as he saw it inChina, as the most convincing champion of the cause for which hesaw so many of the Chinese he supported suffering, and who stuck tothat view through the war when it was the Government's cause, andafterwards when it lost favour, then he got an appropriate reward.This was of a piece with his own philosophy, expressed to hiscolleagues, that people should not be prosecuted for their beliefs andthat the role of a security service should be to know as much aspossible and keep people away from sensitive areas, rather than takepositive action. Of those closest to him who are mentioned in thisbook Blunt was publicly exposed and had his honours taken fromhim; Philby died in exile, though in reasonable contentment, courtedby journalists to the last; Burgess also died in exile, though isolated,his views and ideas unknown outside his own small circle and hischaracter exposed, however justifiably, to denigration and abuse thatfew in British life have ever experienced. Hollis alone remained inEngland in honoured retirement to the end of his days, able to enjoyiis'great game' just as he had at Oxford, in China and on the links inthe Home Counties and the west of England - no doubt using, in thefinal strokes, the treasured putter given him by .f . l)dgar Hooverhinrself'.

Appendix I

Ihe Conflict in Chinaby Roger H. Hollis

A public lecture giuen to the Royal Central Asian Society on 20 October

1937, Mr. J.S. Sco/l in the chair, and later published in 'Transactions of the

Royal Central Asian Society', aol. xxu, 1938

Before taking my plunge into'the situation in China, it may be as wellto present my credentials - very slender ones, I am afraid, foraddressing so distinguished a gathering. I have lived for nine years inChina, first as a journalist in the south, and later I travelled fairlyextensively through Central and North China on business, and havebeen resident at one time or another in most of the important citiesof this part. I make no pretence to having the inner knowledge of a

diplomat, or close personal acquaintance with Chinese leaders andofficials. Consequently I shall not attempt to make any ex cathedrapronouncements upon the policy and secret aims of either side,though I shall in all humility advance my own suggestions of theseaims, based on my reading of a situation which I have studied closely.

I do not propose to go back to the conquest of Manchuria, and theestablishment of the East Hopei Autonomous Area and theHopei-Chahar Political Council under General Sung Che Yuan. Butit is necessary to look at some of the more immediate antecedents ofthe present outbreak.

During the last two years or so there has been an increased feelingof confidence among Chinese bankers and industrialists, due in partat least to greater stability as a result of the Government's monetarypolicy. During this same time the Government has increased itscontrol over the provincial authorities, and has reached some sort ofworking agreement with the Red'armies which have been such a

thorn in its side.The confidence engendered by this had inspired a firmer attitude

towards Japan, with successful results. Manchurian troops, backedand to some extent officered by Japanese, had invaded SuiyuanProvince and had been defeated by the Chinese. The NankingGovernment had got into closer touch with the Hopei-Chahar

I rl2

Appendix 1 r83

Political Council, and with General Sung Che Yuan playing the r6leof Cunctator with great skill, a number of Japanese demands hadbeen shelved, and proposals for Sino-Japanese demands had beenshelved, and proposals for Sino-Japanese economic co-operation hadbeen firmly set aside. Briefly, China believed that she had calledJapan's bluff.

Internal dissension among the political and military leaders inJapan made it highly unlikely that she would wish to enter inrofurther commitments on the mainland. The army's North Chinapolicy had been found expensive and lacking in practical results, andwas discredited.

But while the responsible people both in Nanking and Tokyo werefirmly of opinion that peace would best suit them, the men on thespot felt differently. The Chinese troops and junior officers, firedwith a ready enthusiasm, believed that the time had come to drive theJapanese into the sea. The Japanese army, sullen with the ill-successof its North China plans, and impatient of the controlling hand ofthe diplomats at home, was prepared to take the bit between its teeth.

Such was the position when the Japanese manoeuvres started nearLiukouchiao at the beginning of July this year. I have seen Japanesemanoeuvres in North China, and I can easily believe that they werecarried out with a degree of hubris calculated to inflame the hatred ofany Chinese sentry. Discipline is fairly lax in the Chinese army, andthe sentry opened fire. There is no need to look for deep-laidschemes behind this. The incident - a very minor one - occurredquite spontaneously.

There was every indication that the settlemenr would be effectedwithout friction. General Chiang Kai Shek srated on July t9 that hisconditions were that there should be no infringement of China'sterritorial integrity or sovereign rights, nor the removal of officialsthrough outside pressure. General Chiang felt himself strongenough not to be browbeaten, and the Tokyo authorities showed nodesire to precipitate a crisis. On July 24 the Tokyo correspondenr ofThe Times could report 'The situation in North China is now entirelyclear.'

It is true that Chinese opinion was considerably inflamed, and thatthere was a popular demand for military action against theJapanese.The more optimistic believed thar North China could be cleared ofthem, while the less sanguine felt that the granting of Japanesedemands would only encourage them to ask for more, and that thiswas the best time to put a stop to it, whatever the risk. Nevertheless,left to hirnself General Chiang could have controlled nationalrupinion, ancl prcventecl any rnajor clisplay of anti-.fapanese feeling.

184 Appendix II do not propose to go into details of the sporadic fighting of the

next few days. From a national, as opposed to a local, point of view,the next important move occurred on July 29, when General SungChe Yuan retired to Paotingfu, leaving General Chang Tzu Chungin charge of Peking. On the same day General Chiang Kai Shekissued another clear warning to the Japanese, saying that peacenegotiations were impossible and the traditional Japanese tactics toconfront Nanking with a fait accompli were useless unless the

Japanese Government recognized his minimum conditions. Fromnow on local settlements would not be considered, as relations withJapan had now become a national affair.

By August 2, however, a new Peking Government had been set upwith Japanese advisers, and three days later the headquarters of theEast Hopei Government had been moved from Tungchow to Peking.

The Japanese had thus deliberately ignored General Chiang'sminimum conditions.

This is a very significant point in the history of the conflict, and itseems to me to prove that the Japanese had decided in favour of war.There can have been no essential reason for so immediate andprovocative an act, which was tantamount to daring the ChineseGovernment to come on and fight.

Meanwhile there was also considerable tension further south. InShanghai a Japanese bluejacket disappeared, and the Japanesealleged that he had been abducted by the Chinese. The inhabitants ofChapei, scenting trouble, began to trek into the InternationalSettlement, as they did in 1932. The Shanghai Chinese is far moreexcitable than the phlegmatic northerner, but there were in fact veryfew provocative incidents, in spite of the fact that national feeling wasrunning high.

Let me briefly outline what seem to me significant points in thenext few days.

On July 30 it was reported that none of the crack Nankingdivisions or air squadrons had moved northwards, and to the best ofmy knowledge there was no indication of an intention to send themto the northern front during the next few days. This is open tovarious interpretations, but it is fair to say that the Governmentforces, as opposed to the 29th Army, avoided all provocative actionin the north.

On August 3 a Japanese aircraft-carrier was reported off theestuary of the Yangtsze River. If Nanking troops had been movingnorth, which they were not, it might have been argued that air attackon them at entraining points was defensive actiotr. As things were,howcvcr, the aircrafi-cut'ricr was tlclinitcly an ofl'ertsivc weapotr, as

Appendix 1 185

planes would have been of little use for the protection of Japanesecommunities up the river.

On the same day a schedule fixing dates for the evacuation ofJapanese civilians from points on the Yangtsze and elsewhere waspublished in theJapanese press.

On August 6 a Tokyo message stated that anti-Japanese activitiesalong the Yangtsze River had been intensified. 'As a result,' itcontinued, Japanese residents at Hankow since August 3 have beenrefused food supplies by the Chinese. The Japanese Concession inthat city has been surrounded by about a division and a half ofChinese troops, and the situation is extremely grave. One thousandJapanese civilians, including men, are being evacuated.'

Two days later, on August B, another Tokyo message stated that allJapanese residents had been evacuated from Hankow, and Japanesemarines and gunboats had been withdrawn.

This total withdrawal of all armed forces from the JapaneseConcession at Hankow seems to me another significant fact.

The evacuation in times of stress of Japanese trading communitiesfrom points up country is a precautionary measure which has beentaken several times in the past. But the Hankow Concession is morethan a trading post. The position as regards concessions is somewhatanomalous, but during the period of tenure they are to all intentscolonial possessions, in which the occupying Power has full rights ofadministration, police and defence. Without striking a single blowfor their property, the Japanese yielded up to the Chinese rheirHankow Concession, with its administrative offices, police headquar-ters, and barracks. I am unable to trace any precedent for such anevacuation ofa concession by theJapanese.

During the Shanghai fighting of lg32 and the Manchurian crisis itwas not thought necessary to evacuate the concession. At thebeginning of August the Yangtsze is at its highest, and ocean-goingcruisers of 10,000 tons can and do regularly visit Hankow. Japantherefore could have sent a force sufficient to ensure the safety ofher property in any ordinary emergency. Under such circumstancesthe withdrawal seems to prove thatJapan was already determined ona major war in some part of China, and did not wish to face theembarrassment of having to maintain isolated posts of no militaryvalue miles behind the fighting lines.

On August 9 a report from Shanghai stated that 'At about sixo'clock this evening a party of .fapanese in a motor-car tried to enterthe Htrngj:ro aerodrome on the outskirts of'shangh:ri. "fhey werechallenged by thc Chinese but relused to halt, and it is allegcd that ir

.fapancsc ol'lit't'r'tllcw his llistol. A (lhinesc sentt'y fircd, killing tlrc

186 Appendix 1

Japanese officer and mortally wounding another Japanese. OneChinese was also killed in the scuffle.'

There seems little reason to doubt the general truth of the report.TheJapanese have maintained that the officer did not open fire, thatthe dead Chinese was killed by machine-gun bullets and plantedthere for effect. But these are small matters. Knowing the acute stateof tension which existed, what man in his senses would visit animportant aerodrome and flout an armed sentry? If the Japanesehad official business there, surely the natural thing would have beento get an official pass, or take a Chinese officer to sponsor them. Ifthey had no official business there - and the Hungjao aerodrome ismiles from theJapanese area - they should have kept away under thecircumstances. The Japanese neglected these elementary precau-tions, and were deliberately provocative. They were asking fortrouble, and it seems to me that the Chinese sentries would havefailed in their duty if they had not given it to them.

The incident was thus an even less important one in itself than thatat Liukouchiao in the north. A settlement could undoubtedly havebeen arranged if the Japanese had adopted a reasonable attitude.Instead of that, and without even waiting for an enquiry, fifteenvessels of the Japanese Third Fleet appeared in the Whangpoo Riverwith decks cleared for action, and landed a force of 4,000 marines inthe International Settlement, bringing their land forces in Shanghaito about 9,000. The Japanese admiral, alleging a breach of the 1932Agreement, demanded the withdrawal of the Peace PreservationCorps and all other military effectives to a distance of not less thanthirty miles from Shanghai, and the dismantling of all defences. TheChinese reply was to move up the 88th Division and take up adefensive position.

There has been considerable discussion on the origins of theShanghai conflict, owing to belated attempts by the Japanese topresent their side of the case. I think it is worth our while to make afurther examination of this question.

Military arguments seem to me to prove that it was overwhelm-ingly to Japan's disadvantage to fight at Shanghai. Large scaleoperations here were bound to tie up numbers of troops which wereurgently needed in the northern campaign. For the Chinese, on theother hand, major fighting in Shanghai was an advantage, once it wasobvious that a major war in China was inevitable. Not only did it splitthe Japanese effort, but it allowed General Chiang Kai Shek to usehis picked troops against a IimitedJapanese force near his own base,and in country so cut up by creeks and canals that the .fapanesesuperiority in mechanized units was of little advantage. Added to this

Appendix 1 I tl7

- and it is very important in the case of the Chinese - the l9th Arrnyhad put up a very gallant resistance on this ground in 1932. 'I-he

memory of this would have an excellent effect on the morale of'thetroops.

Fighting in the Shanghai area was bound to bring the war beforethe eyes of the world in a way that no amount of battles in the northwould do, and ensuing foreign complications were almost certain toembarrass Japan more than China. The presence of extensiveforeign interests would either limit the wholesale nature of theJapanese attack or would involve her with other Powers. Thepresence of foreign observers would probably prevent the use ofsuch refinements of warfare as gas. I mean this quite impartially: theChinese have no more humanitarian instincts than the Japanese inwarfare, but theJapanese have the equipment, and the Chinese havenot. It would obviously be to the Chinese advantage to limit weaponsto swords and spears if that were possible. It is important to realizethat the Chinese leaders know that they cannot at present gain a finalmilitary victory over theJapanese. Their policy is to delay them untilthe Powers intervene, or until Japan finds the strain of the war sogreat that she becomes exhausted. Japan on the other hand can onlygain anything from the Shanghai war if she is able to shatter theChinese forces so comprehensively that they cease to exist. TheChinese forces facing her at Shanghai are the only ones which cancompare with her own in training and equipment, and theannihilation of China's only modern army would remove the mostserious potential threat to Japan's military security on the mainland.But the prospect of such a rapid and wholesale victory were remoteat the outset, and I do not believe that Japan intended to make theattempt.

Let us assume, then, that China wanted to fight in Shanghai, andJapan did not. It was still necessary to find a casus belli. China is fartoo astute to alienate the world's goodwill by appearing as theaggressor. Japan with almost unbelievable obtuseness played into herhands. The situation at Shanghai on August 9 was not hopeless. Theonly Chinese troops in the Shanghai area were the PeacePreservation Corps, which is a comparatively ineffective body in a

rnilitary sense. If the Japanese had appealed immediately to theinternational Joint Committee which supervised the working of the1932 Agreement the whole situation would have been immobilized.Instead of'this the.fapanese admiral made a definitely hostile navaldemonstration, ancl dernanclecl the irnmcdiate withclrawal of' nllnrilitary cf'l'cr:tivcs firrrn thc Shitnghiri alea, (loulcl the (lhincst.rc:rs<ln:rllly' bc cxllet:tt:rl to ucrpricsr:c irr tirr:t: ol' this thlcirt./'l'ht:y

188 Appendix Iseized the opportunity to move up their regular troops, and whenthe Japanese did make a belated appeal to the Joint Committee, theChinese were able to point out quite correctly that the Japanese hadalready violated the Agreement by stationing troops in theprohibited area and by their naval preparations.

Japan had forced a major war upon China, and I cannot see thatChina was in any way compelled to confine the fighting to ground ofJapan's choosing. She- was fully entitled to reap the advantage of hersuperior man-power by extending the war to as many fronts as shewished.

There is one other point. The Japanese Foreign office spokesmanhas spoken of 'a well-considered Chinese plan to attack andannihilate the Japanese in the Settlement, numbering 30,000. Theirstrategy,' he continued, 'was to overrun the Settlement beforereinforcements arrived and force us, and, if possible, all other"foreign devils", out of Shanghai.' The last part of this statement canbe dismissed as a clumsy attempt to rank other nations with Japan asobjects of China's anti-foreign feeling. For the rest, China wouldhave gained nothing by the wholesale massacre ofJapanese civilians,and would have set the world against her, as she would by an invasionof the International Settlement. Is it conceivable that she could haveplanned such an action at a time when she was so dependent uponthe goodwill of the world?

The fighting in the north was caused by the Liukouchiao incident,and this was an accident. But though I do not believe that theJapanese had planned any aggressive action for that particular time,they were certainly not caught unprepared. Eighteen months ago theJapanese scheme of an autonomy movement in the five northernprovinces was the common talk of China. This was shelved at thetime, but there is no question that it was fully worked out, and itseems likely that it is now being put into effect in some form.

But Japanese interests in North China are twofold - military andcommercial - and it is necessary to examine them separately. We willtake the military objectives first, as they are fairly simple and havealready been largely attained.

One of the main guides to all Japanese military policy in the northis fear of Russia. It has been with her for over forty years, and islikely to remain unless it is settled by war. Ever since the seizure ofManchuria, Japan has been strengthening her defences along theSoviet border. From Korea round to Chahar these defences arehighly organized and equipped with wireless stations, landinggrounds and adequate garrisolls. West of'this they have established a

Append,ix 1 ltl{)

series of military missions and depots running along the Russi:tnborder as far as Chinese Turkistan, but these are of course morclistening posts than defensive establishments. Behind these posts,serving the passes which run up to the high Inner Mongolianplateau, is the Peking-Suiyuan Railway. From a military viewpointthe provinces of Chahar, Suiyuan, and Northern Shansi with thePeking-Suiyuan Railway and the remaining part of the Peking-Mukden line south of the Great Wall - all this is of vital importanceto the Japanese scheme of defence. The Liukouchiao incident gavethem the opportunity, and they have appropriated, or are about toappropriate, all this. Incidentally, they have also obtained valuablecoal mines near Tatung and much of the best sheep-grazing inChina, but important though these are I think they were incidental tothe military need.

With the capture of Chahar and Suiyuan and the Peking railwayjunction at Fengtai the military have practically all they want for theirnorthern defences. But in order to cash in on the adventure theymust go considerably further south.

Early prophets of Japan's mainland policy always spoke of theGreat Wall as Japan's first step - which was obvious - and the YellowRiver as the second. I do not set myself up as a prophet, but I amconvinced that if the Japanese stop at the Yellow River, the pause willbe only a temporary one to consolidate their gains. The Shantungpeninsula, where Japan has already considerable railway and mininginterests, lies south of the Yellow River. The large cotton areas ofHonan - and all cotton-growing areas are of vital importance to

Japan - lie south of the Yellow River. The Lunghai Railway, runningfrom Haichow on the coast to Sianfu, is all south of the Yellow River,and from Kaifeng to Tungkuan runs close to its banks. It seemsalmost inevitable that the Japanese sphere of influence will ultimatelyextend to the hills which run along the Honan-Hupeh border andwill stretch to the banks of the Huai River in Anhwei, finally runningthrough Kiangsu to the coast somewhere south of Haichow.

This is a vast, but not an insuperably vast, undertaking from a

military point of view. Once the Suiyuan troops have been defeated,the territory along the Ping-Sui line can be held by Manchukuo-Mongolian levies, releasing the Japanese troops for the other fiont.In the Hopei plain theJapanese at first made slow progress, but thiswas largely due to the nature of the country over which they wereoperating. South of Peking and -fientsin it is very much cut up l-ry a

network of rivers :rnci canals, whilc heavy rains, making thc (lirlroarls irnpass:rlllc to whcclcrl tral'fir:, nlust havc hirrdcred thern badly.l'urllrcl soulh thc (:ountry is rrrore rapirl. (lrrrtrrrurtir:aliotts itr tltc

190 Appendix Icentral plain are by no means bad. Shantung is particularly wellsupplied with roads, as is North Kiangsu, while in South Hopei andHonan cross-country communication is not difficult. Both thePeking-Hankow and the Tientsin-Pukow railways serve rhe fightingline, and these railways, running across the plain with few largebridges, cannot be seriously disabled. Later the Chiao-Tsi Railrvayfrom Tsingtao to Tsinan and the Lunghai line from the port ofHaichow will be invaluable further feeders.

The hills east of Taishan, the holy mountain in South Shantung,will be a stumbling block to the Japanese advance, but it should bepossible to isolate them and carry out mopping-up operarions later.They have always been a home of bandits, but are too barren tosupport an army capable of putting up a sustained resistance.

The one real thorn in the side of any Japanese advance is ShansiProvince. This province is a lofty tableland, almost everywhere 3,000feet high, and surrounded by mountains running up to 7,000 feet.On the northern side the only practicable pass is the Yenmenkuan,south of Tatung, through which runs a well-built motor-road. On theeast also is only one accessible pass, the Niangtzekuan, through whichthe narrow gauge Chengtai Railway runs up to Taiyuanfu. Anyentrance 'from the west necessitates the crossing of the turbulentYellow River by boat, which is only possible in one or rwo places.Entry from the south-west across the Yellow River is comparativelysimple.

Not only is the province a natural stronghold, but it adjoins thewestern province of Shensi and the wild lands beyond, and wouldafford a covered approach to the Japanese flank. It is essential toJapanese security in South Hopei that they should have conrrol ofShansi Province.

The Japanese have made more rapid progress than one mighthave expected in the conquest of this province. After brisk fightingthey penetrated two of the lesser passes in the north and so took inthe rear the Yenmenkuan, a pass which no invader has ever beforecrossed. The capture of the central tableland of Shansi is now amatter of no outstanding difficulty though they are meeting withdetermined opposition. But the mountains along the Hopei-Shansiborder are lofty and rvild. It will be quite impossible for theJapaneseto police them thoroughly, and though they are too barren tosupport anything like an army, they are an admirable base fbrguerilla raids on the Peking-Hankow Railway which runs ar theirfeet. Already the Japanese have had to double their railway guards asa result of'such raids, When one thinks that vast sums al'e still beingspent on bandit suppression in Manchukuo alicr six ycar.s ol'

Appendix 1 l9lJapanese rule, one can begin to realize the problem that theJapanesehave undertaken here, in the heart of a patriotic China.

Even that is not the end of their difficulties. At the time of'theirattack, the rveather in the Shansi mountains lvas at its best. Soon thebitter winter rvinds rvill bring the temperature dotvn far belolv zero,and the Yenmenkuan, rvhich is over 6,000 feet high, becomes almostimpassable. The Chengtai Railrval on rhe easr is a highl,v picturesqueline, rvhich skirts precipices and spans chasms in a rval'rvhich mustthrill even the most unromantic traveller. It is thus highly vulnerableto guerilla raids, even if the Chinese do nor rvreck it comprehensivelybefore thel'are driven out of the pass. Under such circumstances theproblem of maintaining a garrison in Shansi during the rvinter b1'rvay of these rvild passes is going to be a ticklish one.

That states briefly the Japanese military aims and the difficultiesthey are likell' to encounter, as I see them. Before turning to thecommercial outlook, it is necessar)' to mention one or trvo pointsrvhere Japanese military policy ma)' come into direct conflict rvithforeign rights and interests. The paralyzation of legitimate foreigntrade, the destruction of foreign propert)' and the danger to foreignlives as a result of Japanese military activity, is a subject too large todeal with here. Apparentl)'this has now to be regarded as a necessar)'risk in trading rvith China. The blockade of Chinese porrs, eventhough the blockade applies only to Chinese vessels, is a potentialsource of added difficulties and misunderstandings. Already a P. andO. liner of some 16,000 tons has been stopped by a Japanesepatrol, though it is common knowledge to theJapanese and evert'oneelse that the Chinese possess no vessel of anything approaching thissize.

The Japanese navy has already seized the Pratas Shoals benveenManila and Hongkong, and has established a seaplane base there.There have been reports that the Japanese are planning to takeHainan Island and turn it into a naval base. Such a base in theWestern Pacific would be a direct threat to Hongkong andSingapore, the Philippines and French colonial interesrs, and it is tobe hoped thatJapan will not carry provocation so far as to atrelnpt tc)put this plan into effect.

Let us now see whatJapan hopes to gain on the commercial side asa result of this conflict.

She will get under her own control large cotton areas in Shantung,Hopei, Shansi, and Honan, and obtain a closer holcl on the shecpproducing lands of' Inncr Mongolia. 'lhese ar.e irnportant points,espccially in Japanese eyes, Itrr shc is obscsscd by thc fl'ar. tlrltsr"rpplics of' cssctttiitl t'ittv ttttlcrials nr:ry bc cut of'l' fi'orn hcr'. l rrrn olc

192 Appendix 1

is another commodity of which she has insufficient supplies inJapan.With the capture of Manchuria she obtained 75 per cent of the ironore resources of China, which are situated in Liaoning Province. Theseizure of Chahar has given her approximately another l0 per cent.Most of the remainder - and these are the richest deposits - aresituated in the Yangtsze Valley, and the Japanese hold large interestsin these workings.

Another commodity of the greatest importance to Japan is coal,especially coking coal, of which her home supplies are very slender.China is fairly well off as regards coal, and Hopei, Shantung, Shansi,and Honan all yield coal of good quality, while half the reserves inChina are situated in Shansi Province. This Shansi reserve, accordingto the figures of the Geological Survey of China in 1934, is aboutfifteen times as much as the total estimated reserves of Japan andKorea, and nearly thirty times greater than the reserves ofManchuria.

Other minerals of which japan is short are either not foundChina, or are mined in southern provinces outside the spheredirect Japanese control.

The North China market is to a large extent undeveloped andunexploited, both as regards production and consumption. Underany normal circumstances it is obvious thatJapan, being the greatestpurchaser of China's raw materials and her closest neighbour, wouldalso be the leading seller in this market. Everything was in herfavour, for her prices were low, foreign trade - especially inconsumption goods - was small, considering the size of the area, andChinese industrial enterprises had hardly begun to develop. ButJapan, by her policy towards China in the last six years, has built abarrier of ill-feeling that will limit her trade for years to come. Shehas complained of Kuomintang anti-Japanese propaganda, but thepropaganda of her bombs, and even more the domineering attitudeof her soldiers, has been far more effective in instilling a hatred of allthings Japanese into all classes from the illiterate coolie upwards.

Japan may beat China to her knees, but it will be a China united byhatred ofJapan as nothing before has united her.

This dawning of a national consciousness is bound to create anadded demand for national goods. When the time comes for Japanto administer her new territories, she will do well not to attempt tostifle this demand, nor to put obstacles in the way of growing Chineseindustries. She will only aggravate a hatred which it is her first dutyto appease, Economically this competition with.fapanese goods mayhit her merchants hard at first, but the added prosperity which it willbring to North China will soon bc reflcctetl in a growittg tlentitnrl lirr

lnof

Appendix 1 193

goods which Japan, in her special position, rvill have to supply.Japan's one duty in North China will be to ensure peace andmaintain a stable government, while effacing herself as much aspossible. It is not a r6le for which she has shown much aptitude.

The outlook for foreign business in North China is not necessarilybad in the long run, though for the immediate future it is gloomy. Asin Manchuria, Japan will no doubt declare that she abides by thepolicy of the Open Door, but that rvill be little encouragement tothose who know the fate of many of the foreign firms operating inManchuria. Under any Japanese-controlled rdgime I do not thinkthat we can expect to maintain a trade in cheap consumption goods.

Japan, for all her unpopularity, is in too good a position, and eventhough she may not capture the market with her own products, shewill organize Sino-Japanese concerns which can supply the demandat prices impossible to foreign imported goods. Even foreignindustries in China will be at a disadvantage, as they frequently areto-day, owing to the fact that Chinese goods are - at least in somecases - allowed reduced freight rates on the railways and in allprobability other secret preferences. All this may be expected tocontinue and to increase underJapanese control.

A Japanese occupation of North China can be one of two things.Either it can be a ghastly fiasco, bringing in its train oppression andfurther bloodshed, or it can be the means of accelerating thedevelopment of North China. It depends upon the Japanese methodof handling the situation. If the former case comes to pass, foreigntrade will perish in the general chaos. But in the latter case, capitaland capital goods will be needed in quantities far beyond the capacityof Japan alone, and increased purchasing power will create ademand for high-grade goods which only foreign manufacturers cansupply. It may be a conclusion of little comfort to those who haveseen their China trade dwindle to nothing, but it is in the broadersense an encouraging outlook. The industrialization of China wasbound to come, and for years we have been fighting a losing battle inthe market for cheap goods of general consumption.

The most ominous point in the whole situation is that Japan isIiving in an atmosphere of fear, and a frightened nation, like afrightened man, is apt to act rashly. On the sea she fears the navalpower of the United States and ourselves. On land she fears Russiaand the growing military efficiency of China, while she is haunted bythe fear of being cut off from essential raw materials. She has tried toput herself in a position to defy the world, and as a resultJapan hasforcecl upon the United States her new naval programme. Japan hasbuilt trp thc powcrf'ul Soviet Far liastern Army, and has driven China

194 Appendix 1

to modernize her military machine. She has compelled China torecognize present Japanese superiority, military and industrial.

But the Chinese are a proud race. They were prepared to admitthe greater technical efficiency of the Western nations in somematerial things - it was a matter which did not affect them veryclosely. With Japan the case is different. Every Chinese not onlybelieves, he knows, that China is the superior of Japan in culture, insize and in natural resources. Japan has taken pains to force uponChina the realization of her present ineffectualness. A decadentnation rnight accept the proof, but China has taken up the challenge,and will never admit to permanent domination by her former pupil.

In my opinion the belligerent attitude ofJapan since the capture ofManchuria has been a grave error in policy. The loss of Manchuriawas a blow to China's atnour propre, but it was a blow from which shewould have recovered. Manchuria had for years retained a measureof independence of the Chinese Government. Japan should haverealized that her seizure of Manchuria was bound to stir up popularresentment in China, and should have followed a policy ofconciliation until this resentment had died down. Instead of that shehas persistently inflamed it by provocative action in North China.Chinese pride very properly demands that she should be treated asan equal, and that her territorial integrity should be respected. IfJapan had handled the situation with tact, I believe that she couldhave built up a vastly increased trade with North China by this time,and have earned the friendship and goodwill of the ChineseGovernment. Instead of that her military-inspired policy has broughther to a point from which there is no withdrawing. Evacuation ordefeat in North China would be a blow from which the prestige ofthe Japanese army in Japan would never recover. The onlyremaining hope is that she should settle the Shanghai affair andachieve her objectives in the north as quickly as possible, and thenabandon this suicidal policy of provocation. China is more ready thanmost nations to accept a fait accornpli, if she is allowed to do it withoutloss of dignity.

This time there must be no autonomy movement, no emperor, noclumsy farce of a new state. The Nanking Government must beallowed a nominal authority over the area,'even though in practice itwill be self-governing as regards internal affairs. Chinese officialsmust adminiser it, backed byJapanese advisers. This is essential, notonly to propitiate the Chinese, but because the Japanese have ncrtrained body of civil servants sufficient to take over such an area.Above all, the.fapanese army must be confined as far as possitrle togarrison and police work, and rnust not bc alktwccl to take an :rctivc

Appendix 1 195

hand in the administration of the territory. These seem to me thenecessary antecedents of peace in North China, and I feel that thechances of achieving them are slender.

Such conditions may appear a poor return for a war of conquest, butJapan has undertaken more than she can handle, and will be lucky toget out of it without ruining herself. China will never agree to becomea subject nation to Japan, and Japan's one aim must be to prevent herbecoming an implacable enemy. Japan mtst give up all hope of'immediate gain from this conquest, and in true sincerity help theChinese to develop the north. It will be a hard task to win back China'sconfidence, but if she can do it her reward, both in increased trade andincreased security, will be enormous.

The temptation to look into the future is one which few can resist,and I confess to a belief that Japan is digging her own grave in thepresent war. China, even in the humiliation of a defeat by theneighbour she despises, has learned that the Japanese are not invin-cible, and Japan's bombs have sowed the seed of a new patriotism.WhatJapan has done China can do, both in the military and industrialfield, and Japan cannot suppress a nation-wide determination in so

vast a country. China will bide her time, but when her time comes shewill return to the leadership of Asia. The world will be the better for so

mighty an ally in the cause of peace.

Mr C. Milnes-Gaskell: Is it likely that China will adopt a very stronganti-foreign and anti-European policy if she succeeds in throwing offthe domination ofjapan?

Holli.s: For some time past China has been bringing her internaladministration into line with Western standards, and I think it onlyright that she should abolish extra-territoriality within her ownborders in the not too distant future. I am positive that she has nothought of expansion into other Iands. She would, of course, like to getback control of Manchuria, but her only real aim is to be allowed toexercise her sovereign rights within her own territories.

A Member: How does the equipment of the Chinese army comparewith that of theJapanese?

HoIIis: The Government troops on the Shanghai front are said topossess equipment which is up to modern standards. Some of thetroops in the north are supplied with up-to-date rifles, machine-guns,trench-mortars, etc., but they have very little artillery. Others are verypoorly turned out, and are armed with ancient rifles, or sometimesonly with large executioner's swords.

A Member: ls this R.ed Army the same as that of'tlrc (lntntnutrists ittKiangsi who ma<le that lclrrg rnarr:h thlough Huttatt atrd Szechttan ul)

196 Appendix Iinto Kansu?

Hollis: It is the same Red Army, and they are now in theGovernment fold. It is difficult to find out exactly what promisesGeneral Chiang Kai Shek had to make to get their adherence, andalso to get his orvn liberty after the Sianfu revolt.

A Member: The Chinese have absorbed many invaders in the past,would you agree that they are prepared to look on the Japaneseinrasion with equanimitl ?

Hollis: The Chinese ma)' be able to absorb invaders, but it isdifficult to believe that they are prepared to accept the presentinvaders with equanimity. China is not prepared to face the indignityof serving her former pupil - a pupil rvhom she always despised, andrvho norv has added the insult of discarding much of her teaching.This in particular rankles. Bad manners on the part of otherforeigners the Chinese can forgive, they recognize that they cannotbe expected to know how to behave; but they feel that the Japanesedo know how they ought to behave, and therefore they cannotforgive them when they behave badly.

A Mernber: Would the lecturer tell us exactly what he means by'China'and what by Japan'?

Hollk: By Japan' I mean generally those responsible for thepresent policy towards China, which I believe has been inspired bythe military. At present all Japan supports this policy, but when thewar fever has died down the critics of this military domination willappear again. I think it is clear from the context when I have used

Japan' to refer to Japan as a trading nation. By 'China' I mean theChinese speaking people, whose loyalty is not to an emperor or agovernment, but to a civilization and a scheme of life which they haveserved for centuries.

The Chairmain: It now only remains for me to thank Mr Hollis onyour behalf for his most interesting talk. But before I do so, there aretwo points which struck me in what he said. He expressed the view,with which I .agree, that the main theatre of operations is in the northand the Shanghai fighting is merely a side show, which serves to tieup large numbers ofJapanese troops effectively in the public eye andon ground that is familiar to them. I am no strategist, and I know theChinese are deliberately and probably rightly spreading out thecontest and engaging theJapanese at as many points as they can. Butit seems to me that the Japanese are probably deriving as muchadvantage, from tying up China's only well-armed and trained troopsin a local Shanghai conflict, as the Chinese are by holding only asmall part of theJapanese army there.

Secondly, Mr Hollis remarkcd on the blockade of thc (lhina coast.

Appendix I 197

Actually, the Japanese blockade is only very partially effective, as itdoes not apply to foreign shipping. But the Chinese played to fortnand decided to go one better by blockading their own coast forthemselves. They therefore seized all the Japanese ships withinreach, and sank them to form barriers at the mouth of every river,which is making the transport of all kinds of goods into the interiorof China a far more difficult matter than the Japanese blockadecould ever do.

Appendix 2

Contemporary Documents

(i)Extract from secnrity conference notes

prepared by UK representatiuesconcerning Tripartite talhs on security standards

at Washington,.lune 19-2I, 1950

Mr Perrin then suggested that U.K. delegates should review theFuchs case and explain the action that was taken at the times when hejoined the atomic energy project, rvhen he was transferred to theU.S.A. and when he was given an established post at Harwell in 1946.

Mr Hollis began by pointing out that he had not been briefed indetail for this discussion and was speaking 'off the record', but hehad, throughout, been concerned with all the security clearanceaspects of the case and was confident that the facts as he wouldreport them were substantially correct and represented all that wasknown at the times in question.

Fuchs came to England at the end of 1933 and took up universitywork in Bristol. In 1934 the German consul there reported,unofficially, that Fuchs was a Communist. This was based on a claimby the Gestapo, and similar accusations were being made about manyanti-Nazi German refugees in England. The source was regarded as'tainted' and the claim was not considered to be of real significancewhen set against a British Police report that there was no evidence ofFuchs taking part in Communist activities while he was in Bristol.

InJune 1940 Fuchs, with other enemy aliens, was interned. In theconfusion then existing he was sent to a camp in Canada which wasintended for active Nazis only. Also by mistake a well-knownCommunist was sent to the same camp and it was known that Fuchsassociated with him there. This, however; was again judged to be ofrelatively little significance and a natural result of the presence of twcranti-Nazis in a crowd of active sympathisers.

Fuchs was released from internment and came to EdinburghUniversity at the beginning of l94l on the recommendation of hisscientific colleagues with whom he cclntinued non-secret academicwork, Thcrc were no Police reports showing :ury politicirl activity on

I {)8

Appendix 2 199

his part during his stay there.At the end of l94l his potential use for the Tube Alloys project

was recognised. Mr Perrin explained that, at the time, competenttheoretical physicists were nearly all engaged on important war workin other fields and the Department rhen responsible for the atomicenergy project (D.S.I.R.) was very anxious to get the services ofFuchs. When his security clearance came up for consideration theSecurity Service reported the adverse information known to them,explain their reasons for doubting its validity and pointed out thatthey had no positive adverse information on his activities in the U.K.The Department took the decision to allow Fuchs to join the team arBirmingham Unviersity which was then working under a secretcontract.

In L942 Fuchs was naturalised. This srep was taken, althoughnormally not permissible during war time, on the strongrecommendation of the Directorate of Tube Alloys in order to avoidthe administrative difficulties involved in getting access for an enemyalien to'prohibited places'where T.A. work was in progress.

Naturalisation proceedings involve the active participation of theindividual and an open investigation is carried out that iscomparable with the F.B.I. security clearance procedure. Thisdisclosed no adverse information and, on naturalisation, Fuchs tookthe Oath of Allegiance.

When Fuchs was transferred to the U.S.A. in December 1943 hewas made a temporary Government official and taken off the payrollof Birmingham University. The M.E.D. aurhoriries were informedthat he had been through the security clearance procedure.

On his return to Harwell in 1946 Fuchs was given a post as anestablished civil servant. Because he was not British born of Britishparents his case was very specially considered and the SecurityService maintained, for several months, a very careful secret checkon his activities. This disclosed nothing derogatory and it hassubsequentlv transpired that, during this particular period, he wasnot engaged in any espionage activities.

Mr Hollis concluded by reminding rhe conference that it was inSeptember 1949 that information was received indicating thatsorneone had passed atomic energy information to the Russians.Between then and March 1950 the counter-intelligence organisationidentified Fuchs as the individual, evidence against him was obtainedand he was prosecuted and convicted.

In sumrning up it was pointed out that a serious mistake hadundoubtcdly been madc but that a type of'espionage was involvedwhich rrer:cssitatr:rl positivc actiorr only rluring I lL.w pcriocls in a ycar

200 Appendix 2

each of r,vhich might not last more than half an hour. Three detailedPolice reports, one thorough covert investigation by the SecurityService and the Naturalisation proceedings investigation haddisclosed nothing adverse and the evidence from the German consulin 1933 and from the internment camp contact in 1940 was, as amatter of considered judgment, discounted.

This account \,vas sympathetically received and the U.S.representatives expressed their gratitude for having been given a

first-hand explanation. Very few questions were asked. Mr SumnerPike brought out the point that security clearance questions mustultimately depend on personal judgments as it rvas impossible toconceive of any system which would ensure continuous coverage ofthe activities of every individual in the project.

Dr Smyth asked whether the M.E.D. authorities were told of theadverse information about Fuchs and the British reasons fordiscounting it, and rvhether Fuchs' security clearance was re-examined immediately before his transfer to the U.S.A. or whetherthe original decision was reported. It was explained that it was neverthe practice to report from one country to another the details of asecurity investigation but that each Government must takeresponsibility for its orvn employees. Fuchs' security clearance wasreviewed carefully with the Security Service before his transfer to theU.S.A.

As an illustration of the alternative method of attack on personalsecurity status Wing Commander Arnold then gave a short accountof fiis rpsychological' approach to members of the A.E. Establishmentat Harwell in his capacity of Security Officer there. He believed thatthis might have broken down the Fuchs case independently andwould provide a valuable lead if other cases occurred.

(ii)Report concerning the disappearance of two former Foreign Office fficiak.

The full text of White Paper, Cmd. 9577, 23 September 1955

On the evening of Friday, 25th May 1951, Mr Donald DuartMaclean, a Counsellor in the senior branch of the Foreign Serviceand at that time Head of the American Department in the ForeignOffice, and Mr Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess, a Second Secretary inthe junior branch of the Foreign Service, Ieft the United Kingdomfrom Southampton on the boat for St Malo. The circumstances oftheir departure frorn England, for which they had not soughtsanction, were such as to make it obvious that they had deliberatelyflcd the country. Both ofT'iccl's wcrc suspcuded fi'orn cluty on lst

Appendix 2 201

June 1951, and their appointments in the Foreign Office wereterminated on lstJune 1952, with effect from lstJune 1951.

2. Maclean was the son of a former Cabinet Minister, Sir DonaldMaclean. He was born in l9l3 and was educated at Gresham'sSchool, Holt, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he had a

distinguished academic record. He successfully competed fbr theDiplomatic Service in 1935 and was posted in the first instance to theForeign Office. He served subsequently in Paris, at Washington andin Cairo. He was an officer of exceptional ability and was promotedto the rank of Counsellor at the early age of thirty-five. He wasmarried to an American lady and had two young sons. A third childwas born shortly after his disappearance.

3. In May 1950 while serving at His Majesty's Embassy, Cairo,Maclean was guilty of serious misconduct and suffered a form ofbreakdown which was attributed to overwork and excessive drinking.Until the breakdown took place his work had remained eminentlysatisfactory and there was no ground whatsoever for doubting hisloyalty. After recuperation and leave at home he was passedmedically fit, and in October 1950 was appointed to be Head of theAmerican Department of the Foreign Office which, since it does notdeal with the major problems of Anglo-American relations,appeared to be within his capacity.

4. Since Maclean's disappearance a close examination of hisbackground has revealed that during his student days at Cambridgefrom l93l to i934 he had expressed Communist sympathies, butthere was no evidence that he had ever been a member of theCommunist Party and indeed on leaving the University he hadoutwardly renounced his earlier Communist views.

5. Burgess was born in 1911 and was educated the Royal NavalCollege, Dartmouth, at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge,where he had a brilliant academic record. After leaving Cambridgein 1935 he worked for a short time in London as a journalist andjoined the BBC in 1936 where he remained until January 1939.From 1939 until 1941 he was employed in one of the warpropaganda organisations. He rejoined the BBC in January l94land remained there until 1944 when he applied for and obtained a

post as a temporary press officer in the Nervs Department oftheForeign Office. He was not recruited into the Foreign Servicethrough the open competitive examination but in 1947 took theopportunity open to temporary employees to present hirnself' firrestablishrncnt, He appeared before a Civil Scrvicc (lornmissiorrIJoard and was rccommcudcd lbr the.iunior branch ol'thc ForcigrrSclvir:e, His establishrncnt took ef'l'ec:t f'r'oln lst .fanulry lt)47, llc

202 Appendix 2

worked for a time in the office of the then Minister of State, Mr HectorMcNeil, and in the Far Eastern Department of the Foreign Office. InAugust 1950 he was transferred to Washington as a Second Secretary.

6. Early in 1950 the security authorities informed the ForeignOffice that in late 1949 while on holiday abroad Burgess had beenguilty of indiscreet talk about secret matters of which he had officialknowledge. For this he r,vas severely reprimanded. Apart from thisIapse his service in the Foreign Office up to the time of his appoint-ment to Washington was satisfactory and there seemed good reason tohope that he would make a useful career.

7. In Washington, however, his work and behaviour gave rise tocomplaint. The Ambassador reported that his work had been unsatis-factory in that he lacked thoroughness and balance in routine matters,that he had come to the unfavourable notice of the Department ofState because of his reckless driving and that he had had to bereprimanded for carelessness in leaving confidential papers unat-tended. The Ambassador requested that Burgess be removed fromWashington and this was approved. He was recalled to London inearly May 1951 and was asked to resign from the Foreign Service.Consideration was being given to the steps that would be taken in theevent of his refusing to do so. It was at this point that he disappeared.

8. Investigations into Burgess's past have since shown that he, IikeMaclean, went through a period of Communist leanings while atCambridge and that he too on leaving the University outwardlyrenounced his views. No trace can be found in his subsequent career ofdirect participation in the activities of left-wing organisations; indeedhe was known after leaving Cambridge to have had some contact withorganisations such as the Anglo-German Club.

9. The question has been asked whether the association of thesetwo officers with each other did not give rise to suspicion. The fact isthat although we have since learned that Maclean and Burgess wereacquainted during their undergraduate days at Cambridge, they gaveno evidence during the course of their career in the Foreign Service ofany association other than would be normal between two colleagues.When Burgess was appointed to the Foreign Office Maclean was inWashington and at the time Burgess himself was appointed to Wash-ington Maclean was back in the United Kingdom awaiting assignmentto the American Department of the Foreign Office. It is now clear thatthey were in communication with each other after the return ofBurgess from Washington in l95l and they may have been in suchcommunication earlier..Their relations were, however, never such asto cause remark,

10. In.f anuary 1949 the security authnrities received a report that

Appendix 2 203

certain Foreign Office information had leaked to the Sovietauthorities some years earlier. The report amounted to little morethan a hint and it was at the time impossible to attribute the leak t<r

any particular individual. Highly secret but widespread anclprotracted enquiries were begun by the security authorities and thefield of suspicion had been narrowed by mid-April 1951 to two orthree persons. By the beginning of May Maclean had come to beregarded as the principal suspect. There was, however, even at thattime, no legally admissible evidence to support a prosecution underthe Official Secrets Acts. Arrangements were made to ensure thatinformation of exceptional secrecy and importance should not comeinto his hands. In the meantime the security authorities arranged toinvestigate his activities and contacts in order to increase theirbackground knowledge and if possible to obtain information whichcould be used as evidence in a prosecution. On 25th May the thenSecretary of State, Mr Herbert Morrison, sanctioned a proposal thatthe security authorities should question Maclean. In reaching thisdecision it had to be borne in mind that such questioning mightproduce no confession or voluntary statement from Macleansufficient to support a prosecution but might serve only to alert himand to reveal the nature and the extent of the suspicion against him.In that event he would have been free to make arrangements to leavethe country and the authorities would have had no legal power tostop him. Everything therefore depended on the interview and thesecurity authorities were anxious to be as fully prepared as washumanly possible. They were also anxious that Maclean's house atTatsfield, Kent, should be searched and this was an additional reasonfor delaying the proposed interview until mid-June when MrsMaclean who was then pregnant was expected to be away fromhome.

ll. It is now clear that in spite of the precautions taken by theauthorities Maclean must have become aware, at some time beforehis disappearance, that he was under investigation. One explanationmay be that he observed that he was no longer receiving certain typesof secret papers. It is also possible that he detected that he was underobservation. Or he may have been warned. Searching inquiriesinvolving individual interrogations were made into this lastpossibility. Insufficient evidence was obtainable to form a definiteconclusion or to warrant prosecution.

12. Maclean's absence did not become known to the authoritiesuntil the morning of Monday, 28th May. The Foreign Office isregularly opetr for normal business on Saturday mornings butof'fir:crs t:an firln timc tcl tirnc obtain lcave to take a weekend of'f', Ilr

204 Appendix 2

accordance with this practice Maclean applied for and obtained leaveto be absent on the morning of Saturday, 26th May. His absencetherefore caused no remark until the following Monday morningwhen he failed to appear at the Foreign Office. Burgess was on leaveand under no obligation to report his movements.

13. Immediately the flight was knorvn all possible action was takenin the United Kingdom and the French and other Continental securityauthorities were asked to trace the rvhereabouts of the fugitives and ifpossible to intercept them. AII British Consulates in Western Europewere alerted and special efforts were made to 26th or 27th May. As aresult of these and other inquiries it rvas established that Maclean andBurgess together left Tatsfield by car for Southampton at midnight,caught the SS Falaise for St Malo and disembarked at that port at I 1.45the following morning, leaving suitcases and some of their clothing onboard. They were not seen on the train from St Malo to Paris and it hasbeen reported that two men, believed to be Maclean and Burgess, tooka taxi to Rennes and there got the l.t8 p.m. train to Paris. Nothingmore was seen of them.

14. Since the disappearance various communications have beenreceived from them by members of their families. On 7th June 195 I ,

telegrams ostensibly from Maclean were received by his mother LadyMaclean, and his wife Mrs Melinda Maclean, who were both at thattime in the United Kingdom. The telegram to Lady Maclean was ashort personal message, signed by a nick-name known only within theimmediate family circle. It merely stated that all was well. Thataddressed to Mrs Maclean was similar, expressing regret for theunexpected departure and was signed 'Donald'. Both telegrams weredispatched in Paris on the evening of 6th June. Their receipt was atonce reported to the security authorities, but it was impossible toidentify the person or persons who had handed them in. The originaltelegraph forms showed, however, that the messages had been writtenin a hand which was clearly not Maclean's. The character of thehandwriting, and some mis-spelling, suggested that both telegramshad been written by a foreigner.

15. On TthJune 1951, a telegram was received in London by MrsBassett, Burgess's mother. It contained a short and affectionate perso-nal message, together with a statement that the sender was embarkingon a long Mediterranean holiday, and was ostensibly from Burgesshimself. The telegram had been handed in at a Post Office in Romeearlier on the day of its receipt. As with the telegrams from Paris toMaclean's family, there was no possibility of identifying the personwho had handed it in. The handwriting had the appearance of beingfbreign, and was certainly not that ofBurgess,

Appendix 2 205

16. According to information given to the Foreign Office inconfidence by Mrs Dunbar, Maclean's mother-in-law, who was thenliving with her daughter at Tatsfield, she received on 3rd August195 I, two registered letters posted in St Gallen, Switzerland, on lstAugust. One contained a draft on the Swiss Bank Corporation,London, for the sum of fI,000 payable to Mrs Dunbar; the other, adraft payable to Mrs Dunbar for the same sum, drarvn by the UnionBank of Switzerland on the Midland Bank, 122 Old Broad Street,London. Both drafts were stated to have been remitted by order of aMr Robert Becker, whose address was given as the Hotel Central,Zurich. Exhaustive inquiries in collaboration with the Swissauthorities have not led to the identification of Mr Becker and it is

probable that the name given was false.17. Shortly after the receipt of these bank drafts Mrs Maclean

received a letter in her husband's handwriting. It had been posted inReigate, Surrey, on 5th August 195 I, and was of an affectionate,personal nature as from husband to wife. It gave no clue as toMaclean's rvhereabouts or the reason for his disappearance but itexplained that the bank drafts, which for convenience had been sentto Mrs Dunbar, were intended for Mrs Maclean.

18. Lady Maclean received a further letter from her son on lSthAugust 1951. There is no doubt that it was in his own handwriting. Ithad been posted at Herne Hill on 11th August.

19. Mrs Bassett, the mother of Burgess, received a letter iniSurgess's handwriting on 22nd December 1953. The letter waspersonal and gave no information as to Burgess's whereabouts. Itwas simply dated 'November' and had been posted in South-EastLondon on 2lst December. The last message received from either ofthe two men was a further letter from Burgess to his mother whichwas delivered in London on 25th December 1954. This letter wasalso personal and disclosed nothing of Burgess's whereabouts. It toowas simply dated'November'. It had been posted in Poplar, E.14, on23rd December.

20. On l lth September 1953, Mrs Maclean, who was living inGeneva, left there by car with her three children. She had told hermother, who was staying with her, that she had unexpectedly comeacross an acquaintance whom she and her husband had previouslyknown in Cairo and that he had invited her and the children tospend the weekend with him at Territet, near Montreux. She statedthat she would return to Geneva on l3th September in time for thetwo elder children to attend school the following day. By l4thSepternber hcr mother, alarmed at her failure to return, rcportedthe mattcr to l"lel Mirjcsty's (lonsrrl-Ocrrcral in (icrrcva antl :rlso by

206 Appendix 2

telephone to London. Security officers were at once dispatched toGeneva where they placed themselves at the disposal of the Swisspolice who were already making intensive inquiries. On theafternoon of l6th September Mrs Maclean's car was found in agarage in Lausanne. She had left it on the afternoon of the I lthsaying she would return for it in a week. The garage hand whoreported this added that Mrs Maclean had then proceeded with herchildren to the Lausanne railway station. On the same day, l6thSeptember, Mrs Dunbar reported to the Geneva police the receipt ofa telegram purporting to come from her daughter. The telegramexplained that Mrs Maclean had been delayed 'owing to unforeseencircumstances' and asked Mrs Dunbar to inform the schoolauthorities that the two elder children would be returning in a week.Mrs Maclean's youngest child was referred to in this telegram by aname known only to Mrs Maclean, her mother and other intimates.The telegram had been handed in at the Post Office in Territet at10.58 that morning by a woman whose description did not agree withthat of Mrs Maclean. The handwriting on the telegram form was notMrs Maclean's and it showed foreign characteristics similar to thosein the telegrams received in l95l by Lady Maclean, Mrs Maclean andMrs Bassett.

21. From information subsequently received from witnesses inSwitzerland and Austria, it seems clear that the arrangements forMrs Maclean's departure from Geneva had been carefully planned,and that she proceeded by train from Lausanne on the evening ofI lth September, passing the Swiss-Austrian frontier that night, andarriving at Schwarzach St Veit in the American Zone of Austria atapproximately 9.15 on the morning of 12th September. Theindependent evidence of a porter at Schwarzach St Veit and ofwitnesses travelling on the train has established that she left the trainat this point. Further evidence, believed to be reliable, shows that shewas met at the station by an unknown man driving a car bearingAustrian number plates. The further movements of this car have notbeen traced. It is probable that it took Mrs Maclean and the childrenfrom Schwarzach St Veit to a neighbouring territory in Russianoccupation whence she proceeded on her journey to join herhusband.

22. There was no question of preventing Mrs Maclean fromleaving the United Kingdom to go to live in Switzerland. Althoughshe was under no obligation to report her movements, she had beenregularly in touch with the security authorities, and had informedthem that she wished to make her home in Switzerland. She gave twogoocl reasons, firstly that shc wished to avoid the personal

Appendix 2 207

embarrassment to which she had been subjected by the Press irr tlrcUnited Kingdom, and secondly, that she wished ro educatc lrerchildren in the International School in Geneva. It rvill bcremembered that Mrs Maclean was an American citizen and in vicwof the publicity caused by her husband's flight it was only natural th:rtshe would rvish to bring up her children in new surroundings. Belbreshe left for Geneva the security authorities made arrangements witlrher whereby she was to keep in touch with the British authorities inBerne and Geneva in case she should receive any further news fromher husband or require advice or assistance. Mrs Maclean was a freeagent. The authorities had no legal means of detaining her in theUnited Kingdom. Any form of surveillance abroad would have beenunwarranted.

23. In view of the suspicion held against Maclean and of theconspiratorial manner of his flight, it was assumed, though it couldnot be proved, that his destination and that of his companion musthave been the Soviet Union or some other territory behind the IronCurtain. Now Vladimir Petrov, the former Third Secretary of theSoviet Embassy in Canberra who sought political asylum on 3rd April1954, has provided confirmation of this. Petrov himself was notdirectly concerned in the case and his information was obtained fromconversation with one of his colleagues in Soviet service in Australia.Petrov states that both Maclean and Burgess were recruited as spiesfor the Soviet Government while students ar rhe University, with theintention that they should carry out their espionage tasks in theForeign Office, and that in 195 l, by means unknown to him, one orother of the two men became aware that their activities were underinvestigation. This was reported by them ro the Soviet IntelligenceService who then organised their escape and removal to the SovietUnion. Petrov has the impression that the escape route includedCzechoslovakia and that it involved an aeroplane flight into thatcountry. Upon their arrival in Russia, Maclean and Burgess livednear Moscow. They were used as advisers to the Ministry of ForeignAffairs and other Soviet agencies. Petrov adds that one of the men(Maclean) has since beenjoined by his wife.

24. Two points call for comment: first, how Maclean and Burgessremained in the Foreign Service for so long and second, why theywere able to get away.

25. When these two men were given their app<lintments nothingwas on record about either to show that he was unsuitable lor thcpublic service. It is true that their subsequent pcrsonal behaviour wasunsatisfht:t<lry, :rnd this lccl to a<:tion in each case, As alreacly statedMat'lcirrr was rct':rllctl l'rorn (lirir'o in l.t150 lnrl wls rrot le-emllkryetl

208 Appendix 2

until he rvas declared medically fit. Burgess was recalled fromWashington in l95l and rvas asked to resign. It was only shortlybefore Maclean disappeared that serious suspicion of his reliabilitywas aroused and active inquiries were set on foot.

26. The second question is horv Maclean and Burgess made goodtheir escape from this country when the security authorities were ontheir track. The watch on Maclean rvas made difficult by the need toensure that he did not become aware that he rvas under observation.This watch was primarily aimed at collecting, if possible, furtherinformation and not at preventing an escape. In imposing it a

calculated risk had to be taken that he might become aware of it andmight take flight. It was inadvisable to increase this risk by extendingthe surveillance to his home in an isolated part of the country and hewas therefore watched in London only. Both men were free to goabroad at any time. In some countries no doubt Maclean rvould havebeen arrested first and questioned afterrvards. In this country noarrest can be made rvithout adequate evidence. At the time there wasinsufficient evidence. It was for these reasons necessary for thesecurity authorities to embark upon the difficult and delicateinvestigation of Maclean, taking into full acount the risk that hewould be alerted. In the event he lvas alerted and fled the countrytogether with Burgess.

27. As a result of this case, in July 195 I the then Secretary of State,Mr Herbert Morrison, set up a Committee of inquiry to consider thesecurity checks applied to members of the Foreign Service; theexisting regulations and practices of the Foreign Service in regard toany matters having a bearing on security; and to report rvhether anyalterations were called for. The Committee reported in November1951. It recommended, among other things, a more extensive securitycheck on Foreign Service officers than had until then been thepractice. This was immediately put into effect and since 1952searching inquiries have been made into the antecedents andassociates of all those occupying or applying for positions in theForeign Office involving highly secret information. The purpose ofthese inquiries is to ensure that no one is appointed to or continues tooccupy any such post unless he or she is fit to be entrusted with thesecrets to which the post gives access. The Foreign Secretary of theday approved the action required.

28. A great deal of criticism has been directed towards thereticence of Ministerial replies on these matters; an attitude rvhich itwas alleged would not have been changed had it not been for thePetrov revelations. Espionage is carried out in secret. Counter-espi<lnage equally depends firr its success upott the tn:txitttttttt secrecy

Appendix 2 209

of its methods. Nor it is desirable at any moment to let the other sideknow how much has been discovered or guess at what means havebeen used to discover it. Nor should they be allowed to know all thesteps that have been taken to improve security. These considerationsstill apply and must be the basic criterion for judging what should orshould not be published.

(iii)The full text of the statement issued in Mascow on Saturday 1 I February 1 955b Gul Burgess and Donald Maclean, describirug thernselaes as 'former

rnembers of the British Foreign Office'

It seems to us that doubts as to our whereabouts and speculation aboutour past actions may be a small but contributory factor that has beenand may again be exploited by the opponents of Anglo-Sovietunderstanding.

Accordingly we have thought it best to issue the followingstatement:

We both of us came to the Soviet Union to work for the aim of betterunderstanding between the Soviet Union and the West, having both ofus become convinced from official knowledge in our possession thatneither the British nor, still more, the American Government was atthat time seriously working for this aim.

We had in the positions we occupied every reason to believe thatsuch an understanding was essential if peace was to be safe. We hadevery reason to conclude that such an understanding was the aim ofSoviet policy.

We had had every opportunity to know and grounds for fearing theplans and outlook of the few but powerful people who opposed hisunderstanding.

At Cambridge we had both been Communists.We abandoned our political activities not because we in any way

disagreed with the Marxist analysis of the situation in which we stillboth find ourselves, but because we thought, wrongly it is now clear tous, that in the public service we could do more to put these ideas intopractical effect than elsewhere.

It was probably our action in necessarily giving up political activitiesby entering the public service that, falsely analysed, led the ForeignOffice to say through its spokesman it'believed' we had been Sovietagents at Cambridge.

The Foreign Office can, of c<lurse,'believe'anything it wishes,'fhcirnportant point, however, is that on this guestion we know, arrd it clocsnot.

210 Appendix 2

We neither of us have ever been Communist agents. So far theground was common for us both.

Details of our subsequent careers were completely different andhad, therefore, better be dealt with separately.

As regards Maclean, he worked in London and in Paris,Washington and Cairo as a regular member of the Foreign Servicefrom 1935 to 1951, and as such was part of the machine which, withthe exception of the war period, carried out a policy unacceptablenot only to him but to many others.

He was by no means alone inside the Foreign Service in objectingto British foreign policy before the war, particularly as regardsAbyssinia, the Spanish Civil War and Munich. But he wasincreasingly isolated in doing so after the war.

It became more and more difficult to find anyone willing to thinkor speak of anything but the 'menace of Communism' or tounderstand the folly and danger of American policy in the Far Eastand Europe.

Further work in the Foreign Service was becoming impossible. InMay 195 I there were clear signs that whatever future course hemight work out for himself, the Foreign Office and securityauthorities had plans of their own.

His telephones in his office and private houses were used as

microphones. Plain-clothes policemen followed him wherever hewent, and one of his colleagues was put up to act as provocateur.

Maclean therefore decided to come to the Soviet Union to dowhatever he could to further understanding between East and Westfrom there.

The difficulty of leaving the country while being tailed by the policewas solved by a meeting with Burgess shortly after the latter's returnfrom the Washington Embassy to London. The latter not onlyagreed to make arrangements for the journey but to come too.

The risks of such a journey would have been too great for MrsMaclean, who was shortly expecting a child. She and the childrencame to the Soviet Union in 1953.

As regards Burgess, when he decided to leave Cambridge, hejoined the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). Subsequently,positions were offered to him which he accepted, first in a

department of the Secret Service and secondly in the Foreign Office.Throughout he sympathized with Soviet policy and became

increasingly alarmed by the postwar trend of Anglo-Americanpolicy.

Most alarming of all was its failure first to reach, and later even toseek tcr reach, a rnodu; uiuendi between East and West.

Appendix 2 zllNeither in the BBC nor in the Foreign Office, nor during the period

that he was associated with the Secret Service and also MI5 itself, didhe make any secret from his friends or colleagues either of his views orthe fact that he had been a Communist.

His attitude in these positions was completely incompatible with theallegation that he was a Soviet agent.

This statement of Burgess's position is necessary to understand thesituation which arose a week or so after his return to London fromWashington in 195I.

He went to see Maclean as head of the American Department of theForeign Office. They found that their information and opinionsabout the political situation and the danger of rvar were in agreement.

What now happened was determined by the following facts. Bur-gess, who some months previously had himself initiated arrangementsto obtain a newjob with a view to Ieaving the Foreign Office, was facedwith the fact that the Foreign Office had independently and subse-quently decided that they would no longer employ him.

It is, of course, obvious that no agent would take the initiative inarranging to leave the Foreign Office.

However, when the break came, Burgess was doubtful whether hewanted or could conscientiously do the new job he had beenarranging.

Therefore when Maclean told Burgess that he himself had decidedthat he could no longer work for the Foreign Office and its policiesand suggested that they should both go to the USSR, Burgess had nodifficulty in agreeing.

There alone there appeared to both to be some chance of puttinginto practice in some form the convictions they had always held.

As the result of living in the USSR we both of us are convinced thatwe were right in doing what we did.

(iv)Statement by Margaret Thatcher about Anthony Blunt, Hansard,

l5 Nouember 1979, col.679ff

Mr kadbitter asked the Prime Minister if she will make a statement onrecent evidence concerning the actions of an individual, whose namehas been supplied to her, in relation to the security of the UnitedKingdom.

The Prime Minister: The name which the hon. Member for Hart-lepool (N{r Leadbitter) has given me is that of Sir Anthony Blunt.

In April 1964 Sir Anthony Blunt admitted to the security authori-ties that hc harl trecn rccruited by and had acted as a talent-spotter for

212 Appendix 2

Russian intelligence before the war, when he was a don atCambridge, and had passed information regularly to the Russianswhile he was a member of the Security Service between 1940 and1945. He made this admission after being given an undertaking thathe would not be prosecuted if he confessed.

Inquiries were of course made before Blunt joint the SecurityService in 1940, and he was judged a fit person. He was known tohave held Marxist viervs at Cambridge, but the security authoritieshad no reason either in 1940 or at any time during his service todoubt his loyalty to his country.

On leaving the Security Service in 1945 Blunt reverted to hisprofession as an art historian. He held a number of academicappointments. He rvas also appointed as Surveyor of The King'sPictures in 1945, and as Surveyor of The Queen's Pictures in 1952.He was given a KCVO in 1956. On his retirement as Surveyor, hewas appointed as an Adviser for The Queen's Pictures and Drawingsin 1972, and he retired from his appointment in 1978.

He first came under suspicion in the course of the inquiries whichfollowed the defection of Burgess and Maclean in 1951, when theSecurity Service was told that Burgess had said in 1937 that he wasworking for a secret branch of the Comintern and that Blunt was oneof his sources. There was no supporting evidence for this. Whenconfronted with it, Blunt denied it. Nevertheless the Security Serviceremained suspicious of him, and began an intensive and prolongedinvestigation of his activities. During the course of this investigationhe was intervielved on I I occasions. He persisted in his denial, andno evidence against him was obtained.

The inquiries which preceded the exposure and defection ofPhilby in January 1963 produced nothing which implicated Blunt.Early in 1964 new information was received which directlyimplicated Blunt. It did not, however, provide a basis on whichcharges could be brought. The then Attorney-General decided inApril 1964, after consultation with the Director of PublicProsecutions, that the public interest lay in trying to secure aconfession from Blunt not only to arrive at a definite conclusion onhis own involvement but also to obtain information from him aboutany others who might still be a danger. It ivas considered importantto gain his co-operation in the continuing investigations by thesecurity authorities, following the defections of Burgess, Maclean andPhilby, into Soviet penetration of the security and intelligenceservices and other public services during and after the war.Accordingly the Attorney-General authorized the of fer of immunityfrom prosecution to Blunt if'hc conf'essed. Blunt theu adnritted to

Appendix 2 2t3the security authorities that, like his friends Burgess, Maclean andPhilby, he had become an agent of Russian intelligence andtalent-spotted for them at Cambridge during the 1930s; that he hadregularly passed information to the Russians while he was a memberof the Security Service; and that, although after 1945 he was ncr

longer in a position to supply the Russians with classifiedinformation, in 1951 he used his old contact with the RussianIntelligence Service to assist in the arrangements for the defection of'Burgess and Maclean. Both at the time of his confession andsubsequently Blunt provided useful information about Russianintelligence activities and about his association with Burgess, Macleanand Philby.

The Queen's Private Secretary was informed in April 1964 both ofBlunt's confession and of the immunity from prosecution on thebasis of which it had been made. Blunt was not required to resign hisappointment in the Royal Household which was unpaid. It carriedwith it no access to classified information and no risk to security, andthe security authorities thought it desirable not to put at risk hisco-operation in their continuing investigations.

The decision to offer immunity from prosecution was takcttbecause intensive investigation from l95l to 1964 had produced ttoevidence to support charges. Successive Attorneys-General in 1972,in June L974 and in June 1979 have agreed that, having regard t<r

the immunity granted in order to obtain the confession which hasalways been and still is the only firm evidence against Blunt, there areno grounds on which criminal proceedings could be instituted.

(v)Statement by Margaret Thatcher about'Their Trade is Treachery', Hansurd,

25 March 1981, col. 1079ff

The Prime Minister: With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make astatement about the security implications of the book publishedtoday that purports to give a detailed account of the investigationsinto the penetration of the Security Service and other parts of thepublic service that were undertaken following the defection ofBurgess and Macle an in 1951.

The events into which those investigations were inquiring beganwell over 40 years ago. Many of those named or implicated in thisbook as having been the subject of investigation have died. Othershave long since retired. None of them is stillin the public service.

-fhe extcnt of penetration was thoroughly investigated after thedcll't:tirlrr ol'Rrrrgess irrrcl Miu:lcatt, its ittdcctl, thc author of'this b<xlk

214 Appendix 2

makes clear. The book contains no information of securitysignificance that is new to the security authorities, and some of thematerial is inaccurate or distorted. All the cases and individualsreferred to have been the subject of long and thorough investigation.

The investigations into the possibilities of past penetration haveinevitably extended widely. They have covered not only thosesuspected of being guilty but all those who could conceivably fit theoften inconclusive leads available. The fact that somebody has beenthe subject of investigation does not necessarily, or even generally,mean that he has been positively suspected. Many people have had tobe investigated simply in order to eliminate them from the inquiry.

The results of the investigations into Philby and Blunt are now wellknown. There were good reasons for suspecting a few others, but as

it was not possible to secure evidence on which charges could befounded they were required to resign or were moved to work wherethey had no access to classified information. Many others wereeliminated from suspicion.

Apart from the main allegation, to which I will come, I do notpropose to comment on the allegations and insinuations in this book.Nor can I say which allegations are unsubstantiated or untrue - as

some certainly are - since by doing so I should be implicitlyindicating those that were suspected of having a degree of substance.

I must, however, comment upon the grave allegation thatconstitutes the main theme of the book - that the late Sir RogerHollis, director general of the Security Service from 1956 to 1965,was an agent of the Russian intelligence service.

The case for investigating Sir Roger Hollis was based on certainleads that suggested, but did not prove, that there had been aRussian intelligence service agent at a relatively senior level in Britishcounter-intelligence in the last years of the war. None of these leadsidentified Sir Roger Hollis, or pointed specifically or solely in hisdirection. Each of them could also be taken as pointing to Philby orBlunt. But Sir Roger Hollis was among those that fitted some ofthem, and he was therefore investigated.

The investigation took place after Sir Roger Hollis's retirementfrom the Security Service. It did not conclusively prove hisinnocence. Indeed, it is very often impossible to prove innocence.That is why, in our law, the burden of proof is placed upon thosewho seek to establish guilt and not on those who defend innocence.But no evidence was found that incriminated him, and theconclusion reached at the end of the investigation was that he hadnot been an agent of the Russian intelligence service.

This view was challenged, however, by a very few of' those

Append,ix 2 215

concerned, and inJuly l974,Lord Trend, the former Secretary of theCabinet, was asked to review in detail the investigations that had takenplace into the case of Sir Roger Hollis and to say whether they hadbeen done in a proper and thorough manner, and whether in his viewthe conclusions reached werejustified. Lord Trend examined the filesand records and he discussed the case with many of those concerned,including two people who considered that the investigation should bereopened.

Mr Pincher's account of Lord Trend's conclusions is wrong. Thebook asserts that Lord Trend 'concluded that there was a strong primafacie case that M15 had been deeply penetrated over many years bysomeone who was not Blunt', and that he'named Hollis as the likeliestsuspect'. Lord Trend said neither of those things, and nothing resem-bling them. He reviewed the investigations of the case and found thatthey had been carried out exhaustively and objectively. He was satis-fied that nothing had been covered up. He agreed that none of therelevant leads identified Sir Roger Hollis as an agent of the Russianintelligence service, and that each of them could be explained byreference to Philby or Blunt. Lord Trend did not refer, as the booksays he did, to 'the possibility that Hollis might have recruited uni-dentified Soviet agents in MI5'. Again, he said no such thing.

Lord Trend, with whom I have discussed the matter, agreed withthose who, although it was impossible to prove the negative, con-cluded that Sir Roger Hollis had not been an agent of the Russianintelligence service.

I turn next to the arrangements for guarding against penetrationnow and in the future.

All Departments and agencies of the Government, especially thoseconcerned with foreign and defence policy and with national security,are targets for penetration by hostile intelligence services. The Secur-ity Service, with its responsibilities for countering espionage andsubversion, is a particularly attractive target. Recent security suc-cesses, such as the expulsion'of members of the Russian intelligenceservice from this country in 1971, would hardly have been achieved ifthe Security Service had been penetrated.

The Security Service exercises constant vigilance not only againstthe risk of current pene.tration but against the possibility of hithertoundetected past penetration, which might have continuing impli-cations. But, however great our confidence in the integrity anddedication of those now serving in the Security Service, we need tomake sure that the arrangements for guarding against penetration areas good as they possibly can be, both in this area and throughout thcpulllit: servir:e .

216 Appendix 2

Existing security procedures were introduced during the yearsfollowing the Second World War. Burgess, Maclean, Philby andBlunt were all recruited by the Russian intelligence service before theSecond World War and came into the public service either before orduring the war, well before existing security procedures wereintroduced.

It was in 1948 that the then Prime Minister announced theGovernment's intention to bar Communists and Fascists and theirassociates from employment in the public service in connection withwork the nature of which was vital to the security of the state. Thisled to the introduction of what came to be known as the 'purgeprocedure'.

In 1952, the positive vetting procedure was instituted, with theobject of establishing the integrity of civil servants employed onexceptionally secret work. In 1956, it was publicly declared thatcharacter defects, as distinct from Communist or Fascist sympathiesor associations, might affect a civil servant's posting or promotion. In196 1, security procedures and practices in the public service werereviewed by an independent committee under the chairmanship ofthe late Lord Radcliffe.

The committee's report, published in 1962, contained an accountof those procedures, and made various recommendations formodifying them, which the Government accepted. These pro-cedures, as modified in 1962, are still in operation.

These arrangements have over the years substantially reduced thevulnerability of the public service to the threat of penetration andhave served the interests of national security well. But it is 20 yearssince they were last subject to independent review. In that time thetechniques of penetration and the nature of the risks may havechanged. We need to make sure that our protective securityprocedures have developed to take account of those changes. I havetherefore decided, after consultation with the Right Hon. Gentlemanthe Leader of the Opposition, to ask the Security Commission: 'Toreview the security procedures and practices currently followed inthe public service and to consider what, if any changes are required.'

These terms of reference will enable the Security Commission toreview, and to make recommendations as appropriate, on thearrangements and procedures used in all parts of the public servicefor the purposes of safeguarding information and activities involvingnational security against penetration by hostile intelligence services,and of excluding from appointments that give access to highlyclassificd informati<ln both those with allcgianccs thrlt thcy put abovcloy:rlty to lltcit'('()untry itrtrl lltttst'wlto ttuty lirt'wlt;tlcvct'rcitson ltc

Append,ix 2 217

vulnerable to attempts to undermine their loyalty and to extortinformation by pressure or blackmail.

There are difficult balances to be struck here between the need toprotect national security, the nature and cost of the measuresrequired to do so effectively, the need for efficiency and economy irrthe public service, and the individual rights of members of the publicservice to personal freedom and privacy. The Security Commissionwill be able to consider how these balances ought to be struck in thecircumstances of the present time, as it conducts its review andprepares its recommendations. It will be my intention to make itsfindings known to the House in due course, to the extent that it isconsistent with national security to do so.

In conclusion, Mr Speaker, I should like to emphasise once againthat this statement arises out of a book that deals with investigationsof matters and events that occurred many years ago. My concern iswith the present and with the future. That is why I am asking theSecurity Commission to undertake the review that I have described.

Sources and References

The following list gives the location of all passages cited in the text, together witha few notes to elucidate passages with supplementary information. To avoidencumbering the text I have not noted the source of every single fact related.Wherever it is not self-evident from the text it may be assumed that the passageis based on a printed or archival source. No fact, as I have said, stems from anyemployee or ex-employee of the security services or from anyone who has alifelong duty of confidentiality to the Government. The sources are given bypage; when more than one quotation occurs on a page the first is numbered (i),the second (ii), and so on.

pageI Andrew Boyle, Climate of Treason (1979) 419.9 Christopher Hollis, Along The Road to Frome (1958) 13.

r0 rbid.,13.I l rbid., 15.12 Michael Davie (ed.), The Diaries of EaelynWaugh (1976) 158.13 i. rbid., 189.

ii. Ibid.,250.15 Hollis, op. cit., 65. Note, however, that Evelyn Waugh did not leave

Oxford without a degree but took a Third.l6 Evelyn Waugh, A Little barning (1964) 192.l8 Harold Acton's remark about Hollis was made to Chapman Pincher

and is cited rnToo SecretToo Long (1987 ed.) 20.20 Hollis's letter was originally published in The Times on 3 April 1982 and

was republished by Anthony Glees in Secrets of the SenLice ( 1987) 384.2l i. PPrO F327412956/10 in FO index for A. Rose memorandum.

ii. Passage from F.C. Jones, Manchuria Since 193 I, cited in Edward Behr,The Inst Emperor (1987) 201.

iii. Hollis quotation: see Appendix l, p. 193.iv. The astute observer was Ann Trotter, and the text is from her Britain

and East Asia 193)-1937 (1975) 54-5. The information about theLeith-Ross mission is also from her, or from PRO sources cited by her.

22 Allegations against H.V. Tiekcken are in PRO FO index F98l/981/10.23 Memoranda cited are from the file on the incident: PRO FO371.20240;

F4137/90n0.24i. Ibid. The memorandum was by S. Harcourt-Smith.

ii. Chapman Pincher's remark: op. cit.,46.iii. Hollis quotation: Glees, op. cit., 386.

25 i. Chapman Pincher quotationi op. cit., 36.ii. ()lees quotation: op. cit., 380.

2(i lnlillnration alxnrt Agncs Srne<lley an<l lter tirtre in Ohirra obtairrerl li'om

2lll

Sources and References 2t9the Edgar Snow file in the FBI Archives.

27 i. Chapman Pincher, op. cit., 30-1. It is instructive to comparc l)irtr:lter'saccount of this interview, obtained from Wright at an early stagc, withthe account of it published in Spycatcher: 'Tony Stables was a brust;tte,old-fashioned military officer, and he remembered Hollis well. l-le sairlhe never knew his political opinions, but always assumed that they wcreleft-wing because he mixed with people like Agnes Smedley, a left-wingjournalist and Comintern talent spotter, as well as another man calledArthur Ewert, whom Stables described as an International Socialist.'Theshaping of the material is absolutely clear.

ii. Glees, op. cit., 383.28 Ibid.,385.29 John Costello , Mash of Treachery Q988) 292.30 PROFO37l.20258;F59741335110.32 Peter Wright interview: Granada TV, l6July 1984.33 Waugh Diary, op. cit., 419. There is a further brief entry in Waugh's diary

which reads: '22 January 1937... Dined with fChristopher] Hollis,Woodrufls etc. Odious brother of Chris. Very expensive and sadevening.' It is not clear which brother is referred to. In later life Waughalways spoke warmly of Roger Hollis, so it would seem likely that it wasanother brother. (Private communication Auberon Waugh.)

36 i. See Appendix I , pp. 188-9.ii. Ibid., p. 195.

37 Glees, op. cit.,392.38 i. Chapman Pincher, op. cit., 53, citing Stephen Knight, The Brotherhood

(1984).ii. The references to freemasonry in MI5 are in Peter Wright, Splcatcher

(1987) 30 and 187.43 Kingsley Martin, Editor (1968) 301.46 Philip Knightley, Philby (1988) I .

47 i. PRO FO395.563.ii. Ibid. Andrew Boyle mentions Philby's connection with Smollet (to whom

he refers by his pre-naturalisation name 'Smolka') in The Climate ofTreason (1979) 138. He suggests that their connection was a Vienneseone, and says that the agency they were involved in was LondonContinental News Ltd. which acted as a feed for the Exchange TelegraphCompany. However, Boyle was unaware of the latter connection, whichis established here for the first time.

48 Canadian National Archives RG25 vol. 2705; file 44-GK-40.49 American National Archives 841.008/197 for a report from AJ. Drexel

BiddleJr. citing the shop stewards committee manifesto.50 Hansard,July 1940, vol. 362 coll. 1358-9.5l PRO HO144121540. The suggestion that Hollis might have been using

Cockburn as an agent is refeired to subsequently.52 American National Archives 841.008/207 for the report on Cockburn

and others in the CPGB.55 Hansaid,28June 1940.56 ' D.N. Pritt, A Callto th,e People (1940) 16.58 i. The origirral rumour was published in The Wcch, no. 385, 25 September

1 940.ii. 'l'hr Wrch, rro. 3{X), 21} O< tolrr 11140,

51) 'l'he iulorrrrt (rl tll(. riu(lelrt rltlt.glrtiorr to tlre l'rrxlots is lirrtrt Studntt

220

60 i.ii.

6r i.ii.

62 i.ii.

63 i.ii.

64i.ii.

Sources and References

News, no. 10,7 February 1941.Tribune, 8 November 1940, 23.The Week, no. 397 , l7 December 1940.Tribune, 22 November 1940.Ibid., ll October 1940.Daily Worker, l8January 1941,4.PRO HOl44t2t540.Patricia Cockburn, The Years of the Week (1968) 276.Claud Cockburn, Crossing the Line (1959 ed.) 72.The People Speah: The Offcial Report of the People's Conaention (1941) 51.The account of Pritt's approach to Eden through Sir Walter Monckton,whose pupil he had been, is in PRO FO371.29465;N2565/3/38.

67 PRO INF.I.676.69-71 BBC Written Archive Centre (BBC.WAC) MOI file, cited in WJ. West

(ed.), Orwell: The War Commentaries (1985) 20ff.7l-73 BBC.WAC Rbl/520/l l5 July 1941, cited in WJ. West, Truth Betrayed,

(1987) 5ef.73 Files on political bias allegations cited are BBC.WAC Political Broadcasrs

(General): Leftwing bias files.74i. rbid.

ii. BBC.WAC: Soviet affairs.77 1. Wolfgang zu Putlitz, The Putlitz Dossier (1957) 247 .

ii. BBC.WAC: Memorandum on proposed series'Parliament'.78 i. rbid.

ii. rbid.8l BBC.WAC: Programme files: 'Can I help you?'85 BBC.WAC: Contributors file forJohn Hilton. The letter from the War

Office has the reference A.M.I/152.BBC.WAC:ibid.rbid.Ibid.PRO FO3 7 I /36 185 ;280241 361 39.Rumbold quotation: ibid., as are all background papers on this question.Frank Pitcairn [pseud. Claud Cockburnf, Where France Begins (1943) I 1.

7 As quoted in contemporary press. Origin of translation unknown.TheTimes,24May 1943.The 'Darlanism' and related material may be found in PROFO371.34416.

l0 I Siegbert Kahn, The National Committee 'Free Germanl' ( 1943) I .

103 Giffard Martel, The Rassian Outlook (1947) 122.104 Winston S. Churchill, The SecondWorld.War, Vol, V, Appendix.ll0 Daily Express, TJune 1951, and as cited in Geoffrey Hoare, The Missing

Macleans (1955).lll JohnFisher, BurgessandMaclean(1978ed.)'181.lI2 BBC.WAC: Programme Files: War Commentary, Foreign Affairs.I l3 Tom Driberg, Guy Burgess: Portraituith Bachground (1956) 62.tt4 rbid.,70.I l8 Christopher Mayhew, Time to Explnin (1987) 109.t20-2 PRO FO371.757 49;F5503t1015/10.123 i. Tom Driberg, op. cit.,8l.

ii. Peter l,<rwe, The Origirls of tlw Korea.n War,124 Torn Driberg, op. cit., ti0.

8688899lo9

9596-9798

Sources and References

131 Chapman Pincher, op. cit.,4-5.135 Headline cited from a press cutting from the Washingkn Nrrr,,r 2H/ll/1111 ilt

the FBI Archives, Burgess and Maclean Files.136 Tom Driberg, op. cit.,2.137 Philip Knightley, op. cit.,8.138 JohnWhitewell fpseud. Leslie Nicholson], British Agen, (196()) hall'title,140 Barrie Penrose & Simon Freeman, Conspiracl of Silence ( I 986) 4tl2 '

l4l Letter cited by Chapman Pincher, The Spycatcher Affair (tevised LJS etl,1988) Appendix A, 263.

143 Malcolm Turnbull, The Splcatcher Trial (1988) 17.144 Michael Bialoguski, The Petroa Storl (1955) xv.148 Anthony Glees, private communication by telephone.150 Glees, op. cit., 323.l5l rbid.,325.152 See the full text of this report in Appendix 2(i), p. 198. Glees's

selective version of this appears in Glees, op. cit., 350-1.153 Glees, op. cit., 366. The fuller version of this statement and other related

quotations may be found in Margaret Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy(I%9-45) (1964)350 and 358/9.

22r

Glees, op. cit.,327.rbid., 327.Glees's version is not merely selective but involves the substitution ofphrases: for example, 'the Foreign Office' for'Mr. Allen and I'. Thecorrect text, or rather the text on which Glees's text is based, howeverloosely, may be found in PRO FO371.34416c 13941. Glees had earlierused this same quotation in a slightly more accurate though stillerroneous form in his Exile Politics d.uring the Second World War (1982)193, though he cites this in his note 23 from a completely irrelevant file:FO 371.39919c 1370.PRO FO37 1.3 4416c 13941.Chapman Pincher, Too Secret Too Long (1987 ed.).

l5b15/ r.

ii.

158 i.ii.

159 rbid., 202.161 Glees, op. cit.,344.163 Knightley, op. cit., 133-4.166 i. BBe .WAC: scripts microfilm for Anthony Blunt. For further informa-

tion about Blunt-'s broadcasts see WJ' West, Truth Betrayd (1987) 51f.ii. Manfesto of the Catholic Crusade (place and date of publication unknown)

cited in Kenneth Brill (ed.), /oftn Grosser: East London Priest (1971) 15.169 Christopher HoIlis, Lenin: Portrait of a Professional Reaolutionaryr (1938)

130.171 Glees, op. cit.,352.172 .f ohn Bulloch , MI5 (1963 Corgi ed.) 1 l.173 Chapman Pincher, op. cit., 293f.174 Wolfgang zu Putlitz, op. cit., 250.175 Cited in Barrie & Penrose, op. cit., 394.178 Peter Wright, Sp)catcher (1987) 199.179 Ibid.,290. At this point Hollis made a possibly revealing remark. When

asked if he read the reports of the Fluency Committee he said: 'Theynrade ftrscirtating reading. All that history. Always good to blow a fewcr.rbwcbs o{'l'the pipes.' ln vicw of Hr.rllis's wi<le krrowle<lge of'tttatterswlritlr lrc nt,vcl ilivrrlgcrl to Wlight ol tlrc othcls, hc nray hitvc lteettsullgcslilrg tlrirt lrc rvrtstt'l lrotltet ittg lx'titttst'it wits,irrst 'lrislory',

Bibliography

This is a list of books and other sources that have been referred to inthe text, with the page numbers after each entry referring to thepages of this book where the work is cited. Page numbers in boldtype indicate where passages from the work in question are quoted.

Harold Acton, Ponies and Peonies (1941), l8American National Archives, 841.00B/197, 49; 841.00B 1207, 52BBC Written Archive Centre files, 69-74, 77-8,81,85-6,88-9, ll2, 166Edward Behr,The LastEmperor (1987), l9Michael Bialoguski, The Petrou S/ory (1955), 134;144Andrew Boyle, The Climate of Treason (1979), 1,141;1,47Kenneth Brill (ed.),./o hn Grosser: East London Priest (197l), 166John Bulloch, MI5 (1963), 17 l, 175-6; t72

-, spy.Ring (1961), 175_6

Canadian National Archives, RG 25, Vol. 2705, file 44-GK-40,48Claud Cockburn, Crossing the Line ( I 959), 63-4Patricia Cockburn, The Years of the Week (1968), 62;63E.H. Cookrid,ge, The Third Man (1968), 139

John Costello, Mashof Treachery (1988), 83, 165;29Richard Deacon, The British Connection (not published), t40Tom Driberg, Gry Burgess: Portrait with Bachground (1956), ll3-14, 123-4,

r36John Fisher, Burgess and Maclean: A New Look at the Foreign Off.ce Spies (1978

ed.), 140; lllPeter Fleming, News from Tartary (1936), 33Simon Freeman and Barrie Penrose, Conspiracy of Silence (1986), 165; 140,

t75Anthony Glees, The Secrets of the Serlice (1987), 73,95,148-9;20,24-5,27-8,

37,150-7, 16l, l7l

-, Exile PoLitics during the Second World War: The German Social Democrats inBritain ( I 982), | 47 -8 ; 157

Margaret Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy ( I 9 3 9-4 5 ) ( I 964), I 53Graham Greene, The Third Marz (1950), 164Geoffrey Hoare, The Missing Macleans (1955), 134; 110Christopher Hollis, Along the Road to Frome (1985), 9-l l, 15

-, Lenin' Portraitof a Professional Reuolutionary (1938), 169

Siegbert Kahn, Thr Nalional Comrnittec'Frec Gerrnany'(1943), I00; l0lSteplrerr Krright, Tlu' Brotherlurorl (l9ti4), 38

Bibliography 223

Philip Knightley, Philby: The Life and Views of a KGB Mastersfo (1988),46;46,137,163

Giffard Martel, The Russian Outlook (1947), 103Kingsley Martin, Editor (1968),43Christopher Mayhew, Time to Explain (1987), f 18George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four (1949), 33

-, Animal Farm (1945),55, 107

Bruce Page, David Leitch and Philip Knightley, Philby: The Sfu who Betrayed aCeneration(1968), 137

The People Speah: The Off,cial Report of the People's Conuention ( 194 I ), 64Kim Philby, M11 SilentWar (1968),138, 164Eleanor Philby, The Spy I Loued (1968), 139Chapman Pincher, The Spycatcher Affair (1988), 14f

-,Their Trade is Treachery (1981), 2,142,145-6

-, T'oo Secret Toa Long (1984),2, 18, 145, 148, 150, 156; 18, 24-5,27,38,13l,158-9,173

Frank Pitcairn [Claud Cockburn], Where France Begins (1943),93;95D.N. Pritt, A Call to the People (1940), 55; 56

-, Another Lie Nailed: The Pritt-Attlee Letters (1940), 56

PRO F98t/981/10 IFO Index],22PRO F3274/2956/10 [FO Index],21PRO FO37 l. 20240 ; F 4137 190/ t0, 23-4PRO FO37 l. 20258; F 597 4/3351 10, 30PRO FO37 1. 29465 ; N2565/3/38, 64PRO FO37 1.344t6, 98, 158PRO FO37 I .36 185; 28024/36/39,9l-zPRO FO37l .75749; F5503/1015/10, 120-2PRO FO395.563,47PRO HO144t2t540,51,62PRO INF.I.676,67Anthony Purdy and Douglas Sutherland, Burgess and Maclean (1963), 137Wolfgang zu Putlitz, The Putlitz Dossier (1957), l7 4; 77, 174Goronwy Rees, A Bundle of Sensations ( 1960), 139Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Versas ( I 988), I 80- IPatrick Seale and Maureen McConville, The Long Road to Moscow ( 1973), 139H.P. Smolka [Peter Smollett], Forty Thousand Against the Arctic: Russia's Polar

Empire (1937),46, l5lAnn Trotter , Britain and East Asia ( 1% )- 1937) (197 5),2lMalcolm Turnbull, The Spycatcher Tri.al (1988), f43Michael Davie (ed.) The Diaries of EaelynWaugh (1976), 12-13,33Evelyn Waugh, A Little Learning (1964), f 6

-, Waugh in Abyssinia (1936), 33

WJ. West (ed.), Orwell: The War Commentaries (1985), 69-71

-, Try1ft Betrayed: Radio and Politics between the Wars (1987), 5,34,73,79,140;71-3

.fohn Whitewell [Leslie Nicholson], British Agent (1966), 137-8, 142; f 38Peter Wright, Spycatcher (1987), l-2,5-6, 14, 18,26-7,31,38, 139, 142-5,

173, 178-tl'l ; 27, tl8, l?t-g

Abyssinia, 33, 210Action,63Acton, Sir Harold, 12,15,17-I9Adams, Harry,56Adenauer, Konrad, ll8Administrative Totalitarianism ,77 ,82, l8lAfghanistan,44Aitken, Jonathan, I 4 I -2Albania, I58Algiers, 7 l, ch. 9 passim

Communist Party in, 90-1, 94, 99, 101,r54

Andrew, Christopher, 5, 94Anglo-German Club,202Anti-Comintern Pact, 97Appleton, Sir Edward, 153-5'Arbiter, the', 146Ardath Tobacco Company, 34, 37Armley, Parish of,9Armstrong, Sir Robert, IArmy Bureau of Current Affairs (ABCA),

85Army Directorate of Welfare and

Education,85Army Morale Committee, 86atomicbomb, 100, 109, 153, I99Attlee, Clement, I 14-15Auden, Wystan, 126Australia, l-2, 12, ll0, ll6, 134, 142, 145,

162,207

Baltic States,65Barbarossa,96Barnes, Monsignor A.S., l3Barnes, Sir George, 73-4,83,87,89, I 10,

112Barnes, James Strachey. l3Battle of Britain, 49Beaverbrook, Lord, 14I'beafsteaks' (political term referring t<r

'reds'who seern innocnous ou theoutside),2ll

Beilut, l(i5, 177Bclgiurrr,4l'r

Index

Belloc, Hilaire, l3Berkhamsted, l6Berlin airlift, I l6Bernal, Professor J.D., 7 l-2Betjeman,John, l5Bevan, Aneurin, 1 27Beveridge Report, 85, I 14Bevin, Ernest, I l5Bialoguski, Michael, 134, 144Birmingham, 154

Birmingham University, 154, 199Bizonia, 117Blunt, Anthony, l, 3-4, 15, 34, 44-5, 67,

72-3,79,83,96, 102, I 10, l3l, 136,139-42, 144, 146, 160, 163-6, 172,t7 4-5, 177, 180-1, 2l l-16

Boer War, I IBohr, Niels, 105, 153, 155Boyle, Andrew, 1, 5, 140-1, 163Bracken, Brendan, 48, 67-8, 107Bristol,152,154, 198British American Tobacco Company

(BAT), l9-31, 33-5,37 , rr3, r24,768,178;see ako Chi Tung TobaccoCompany; Ardath TobaccoCompany

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC),4-6, 19, 34, 37, 48, 56, 61, 68-9,71-80, ch. 8 passim, l0l, 107-14, 134,140, 160, 173, 20I, 210-1 1

BBC Written Archive Centre (WAC),4-6,85, I l2

British Military Mission in Moscow, 102British Union Party,51,63, I56, 169Brittain, Sir Harry, 47Brooke-Booth, Captain S.P., 99-100, l5iJBuchan,John, 133Budget,80-1,87Bulloch, John, 137, 17 I, 17 5-7bnreaucracy in Britain, 77Biirgerbliiu bomb plot agairrst Hitlcr, 4llBur gess, ()try Francis de Moncy, l, 3-1">,

I tt- l{}, 24, 14, 44-7.r, 4tt, 66-7, 7 l -l-rl

clts 7 rrtrl tl/n,r,rirrr, {)5, l0tt, t lt. I I

22'1

passim, 131 -2, 133-6, 1 44, 1 46,159-61, 171-6, 178-81, 200-I3, 216

Burgess and Maclean - White Paper on theDefection 1955 Cmd 9577,lI0,134-5

texr,200-9Burlington rnagazine, 140Burrna,32Bnrton, Helen, 19Burton, Montague, S3Bushell, Tony, 15Butler, P.D.,23Butler, R.A., 50, 65, 175

Cadogan, Alexander, Lord,29, 104Cairncross,John,3Carnbridge Undergraduate Council, 59Canrbridge Union Society, 59, 76'Can I Help you?'(BBC talks series pro-

duced by Guy Burgess), 78-81Canada, 84, 99- I 00, I 32-3, 1 49, 159, 17 1-2

WW2 censorship in, 84Carney, Sir Gerald, 80Carr, E.H.,67, 107, 160Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, 153Cecil, David, 16lCharnberlain, Neville, 2 1 -2Cherutell, 15Chesterton, G.K., l3Chi Ttrng Tobacco Company,19 see also

British American Tobacco CompanyChiang Kai Shek, 21, 25, 35-6, 123, 170China, 3, 4,12, 16, ch.2 passim,32-8,43,

45-6, 59, 64, 1 1 3, t t6, t t9-25, 147,I58, 165, r68, 170-1, r73, 175, 178,1flo- I

Chinese Communist Party, ChineseCommunism and Communists, 18,2r-3,64, r2r-4

China Association, 124Chou En-lai, 123Christie's, 165Church, C.M.,9, l0Church, John Dearman, l0Church, R.W., Dean of St Paul's, 10Churchill, Winston Spencer,65-6, 69, 77,

94,98, 104-9, 125, 154-5, 160'Fulton' Speech and the'Iron Curtain',

u4, l3lCitizens Advice Bureaux (CAB), 78-81Clark Kerr, Archibald, see Lord

I nverchapelClift<rn Collcgc, Ilristol, 10, I I, ltt, 27,157Olilion, tltc rkrwns, Bristol, I l, 167(ix'kbrrlrr, (llarul, 4, l2-14, lfi-19, 20, 3ti,

45.ti, 48.9, il.tt4, ti,{1, ? I, H{, 88-9,clt, 1)y'rrrrlrr, !11l"l(X), l()$, l(Xi, l0l't,

225

t17, 154, 158, 165, 169, t70-1, 179Cockburn,'Chinese Harry' (Clatrd's

father),12, l6Cockburn, Patricia,62Comintern, 23,25-7 ,30- I , 43-4, 46, 5tl,

69-70, 88, 96, 147, 168, lTrlCommittee for a Free Germany, 97- 100,

103,105,154-5,158Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB),

14, 38, 49-58, 63, 66, 68, 95-7, 103-6,154, I63, 167

Cookridge, E.H., 139, 146Cooper, Duff, 104Cork, l0Costello,John, 29, 139, 165-6, 177Courtauld Institute, 140Cripps, Sir Stafford, 29, 65

Dail"t Express, 102, I 10, 133-4, l4l, l73Dailns Telegraph, 137Dailtt Worher,6, 38, 45, 48, 51-5, 57 ,62-4,

67, 84, 90-3, 95, 99, 158, 170-lDalton, Hugh,80Dansey, Claude, and section'X',47Darlan, Admiral, Vichy leader, 90, 93

Darlanism,98, 102, I l2Anti-Darlanism, 104

Davie, Michael, 12Deacon, Richard, 140Deep Shelter Committees, 58de Gaulle, General, 94,104

and Cornmittee of National Liberation,94

Delmer, Sefton,45, 75, 101-2, 109Denning, Sir Esler, 123Denning, M.E., British Consul-General at

Harbin,30Department of Scientific and Industrial

Research (DSIR), 154, 199'Desert Rats',89Disraeli, Beniamin, l l'D'-Notice Committee, I 75-6Dorothy Caf€, Cambridge, 59Drexel BiddleJr., AJ., 68Driberg, Tom, 14, 105, I l3-14, I16, I19,

123-4, 135-6, 138-9, 167, 169, r73-5Dunkirk, 55,87Durham Miners Association, 60Dutt, Rajani Calme, 14

Eden, Anthony, 65, 90-1, I t2Edinburgh University, 198Egypt,94'Elli, code name of spy in Britain, 149, 163Ernergency Powers Act and Regulations,

44-5,49,51,59,63Rcgulation lttll, 4{i, 49, 56, 7l'r

Index

226

Regulation 2D,62Empire News, 135ENIGMA machine, 152Eton, 10, 12, 1 19, 123, 201European Theatre of Operations United

States Army (ETOUSA), 9lEuening Standard, 136, 17 4Ewert, Arthur, 25-7, 168Exchange Telegraph Company, 47Exeter, 106

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 125,134, 136, 177,199

Fisher,John, l3l,140Fishman,Jack, 135Fitzgerald, C.P., l8Fleming, Ian,23Fleming, Peter, 23-4, 26-8, 33-4, 47, t13,

168-9,173, 178Fluency Committee, 2,3, 5, 18,25,32,52,

51, t39,142, r48, 164,175,179Foreign Office, 4, 18, 20, 29-30, 39, 47,

67 -8, 7 1,90-2, 98, lO7, t r3-r7,rt9-20, 123-4, 126, l3l, 157-9, 160,201-5, 209-l r

News Department, 24, 47, 102, 108, I l2Franco, General, 33Frankfurter Zeitung,26'Free Germany', radio station in Moscow,

101Freedom of Information Acts in Canada

and America, I 18, I 25Freeman, Simon, 140, 165Freemasonry, influence of in MI5, 37-8French Communist Party, 94Fuchs, Klaus,44-5,98-100, 103, 105, 134,

150, 152-5, 170-2, 198-200Fuel Economy Campaign, 80Fulford, Roger, 34, 67,144

Gallagher, William, MP, 55Gandhi, Mrs Indira,6lGarton Foundation,83German Social Democrats, in exile in

Britain,99, 148Germany, 22, 35, 45, 54-7, 60-1, 64, 66,

ll4, r5lGladstone, William Ewart, 10, 11

glasnost and perestroika, 6, 95Glees, Anthony , 5, 6,22, 25, 3l , 35,37 -8,

45,73,95,102, l44,ch. 13 passim

Goebbels, DrJoseph,6l, I 19Gorbachev, M.,95Gordon, General, I I(iouzenko, Igor, 132-3, 149, l7l-2(iowing, Prof'essor Margaret, I l-r3(iraves, Sir (lecil, 74

Greece, 108, I 13

Green,John,76Greene, Graham, 15, 19,20, 138, 164Gresham's School, Holt, 201Grosser,John, East End vicar, 167GRU, Soviet Military Intelligence Organi-

sation,45-6,88, 100

Haldane, Charlotte,45Haldane, J.B.S ., 45, 51, 58, 167Hankinson, W.C.,48Harker, Brigadier, 5 I -2Harold, Fred,6lHarrison, A.W., 157-8Harrison, Tom, 83Harwell, 199'Hasp' coded wireless traffic, 149-50'Hicks', code name for Soviet spy in Britain,

164Hitler, Adolf, 3,15,47-8,64, l0l, 170Hill, Bernard, 173Hilf , Christoph er, 7 2-3Hilton, John, 83-9, 95, I 14

and his radio programme John HiltonTalking', 78,83-9

Hilton,John (school friend of AnthonyBlunt), 83

Hoare, Geoffrey, 134Hollis, Arthur, Bishop in Madras, 9, I 1,

t7lHollis, Christopher, MP,9-13, 15, 33, 167-9

biography of Lenin, I 68-9Hollis, Lady Evelyn (n6e Swayne), 35Hollis, The Rev. George, Bishop of

Ta.unton,9, 10, 35, 167Hollis, Henry William, l0Hollis, Mary Margaret (n6e Church),9Hollis, Sir Roger, Director-General of MI5,

passimHome Office,80'Homer', code name for Donald Maclean,

150Hoover,.f. Edgar, 134, 182Horner, Arthur, President, South Wales

Miners Federation, 60, 63Hypocrites (Oxford society), l3

Ibn Saud, 165income tax, wartime extension to working

men and women, 79India, 43-4, 120-1, 164-5

Indian Communist Party, 44India Youth League (Shanghai Branch), 26Industrial Clothing Coupons, ti0Inf<rrmation and Research l)epartmettt

(l R[)) (Postwar l)epartment), 57,ll7-lll

Index

Inland Revenue Staff Federation, 80International Brigade, 45Intourist,125Inverchapel, Lord, Archibald Clark Kerr,

28-9, 168Ireland, I l7Isir, 15, 16Iraly,22,126

Order of Battle of in WW2, 84

Japan, 18,20-2,28-31,35-7, 168, 170, 178

-fohnson', code name for Soviet agent inBritain, 164

Johnson, The Rev Hewlett, the'Red Dean',51,167

Joint Broadcasting Committee (BC), 5,113, n8, 126, r40, t74

Joint Intelligence Committee, 158

Jones, F.C.,2lJosephus (Soviet agent in China?), 23

Joyce, William, TS

Kahle, Hans,45, 99, 108, 152,154-5Kahn, Siegbert, 100-lKapitza, Peter, 153Katyn Massacre,95-7 .

Kell, Sir Vernon,38,50, 176Kell, Lady, 176Kennedy,John. F., President, 177Kerby, Capt. Henry, MP, 138KGB, 6, 1 14, 136, 138, 159, 165, 173, 175King, Harold,96King, Mackenzie, 133Kirkpatrick, Ivone, 68, 74, l18Klugman,James, 94Knight, Maxwell, 14,69, 104, 157, 169

The Comintern is not Dead, paper preparedby,69, 105

Knightley, Philip, 5, 46, 125, 137, 142-3,163

Korea, 36, I 19-20, 123, 180Kuczynski family,44-5,49, 100, 108, 155-6Kuczynski, JUrgen 45, I 00Kuczynski, Professor Robert, 46, 99, 155-6Kuczynski,'Sonia', 25-6, 35, 45-6, I00,

150-2,156-7

Labour Party, 10, 56, l 14, Il9, l72Lancing, l4Landlord and Tenant (War Damage)

Amendment Act 1941, 8lLaski, Harold, I l, 156Laski, Nevillc, I I, 156-7l,eeds (irarnnrar Schrxrl, l0l.ecper, Sir Rex, 4?l,ehntenrr,.lolur,7$l.ehnrlrrrr, llentlix, (i I

,91

Leith-Ross Mission to China 1936,20

Lenin, 13, 28, 49, 120, 122-3,144,168-9policy of 'revolutionary defeatism', 49

le Queux, William, 133Liberal Party, Liberalism, 10, I ILiddell, Gvy, 44, 67, 139, 146Lipton, Marcus, MP, 135Lisbon, l0Lonsdale, Gordon, 137 -8, l5l, 17 bLowe, Peter, 123Luker, Norman, 80, 84-5, 125

MacArthur, General, I l9Macdonald, Malcolm, I 7lMaclean, Sir Donald, 201Maclean, Donald Duart, l,3, 110-ll, 115,

125-7,132, t34-7, t44, l 59-61,172-3,200-13,2t6

Maclean, Melinda, 126, 134Macmillan, Harold,90-1, 131, 135Maconachie, Sir Richard, 73Mader,Julius,25Maisky, Ivan, Russian Ambassador, 48,

67-8Maly, Theodore, 166Manchukuo, 20-3, 29-30, 37,178Mao Tse Tung, 18, 21,25,28,64, I l9-20,

123-4,170,178and his'Red Army', 35-7

Martel, Sir Giffard, 102, 106Martin, Kingsley, 43-4, 50, 17 0Marx, Karl, Marxism, 3,4,13,77 ,140,165,

209Marxist-Leninism,4, 13, 123, 164

Maschwitz, Eric,87-8Mason, William,49-50Mass Observation, 83Massiter, Cathy, 143Maurice, Frederick Dennison, 167Mayhew, Lord,68, I l7-18McCarthyism, 159, l7 l-2McConville, Maureen, I 39McNeil, Hector, I13, 115-19, 133, 202Menon, Krishna,6lMilitary Intelligence (MI), 85

Directory of (DMI), 85-6Mr(Pw),86

MIs, l-3, 5-6, 14, 32,'37-44,48-53, 55, 57,62-3,67,69,71,73,75, ii6, 9l -2,97-102, 104-6, l0n-10, I 12, I 14,132-3, 135-7, 139, 142, 145-9,t53-60, lri2-3,160, l7l-2, t75-n0

Ml(i,2, l-r,43-4,4t1-1), 116, 104-11, l(X), I 12,I18, l:J2, llrT-9, 142, 141), l6()

Miller,.loan, ti{)Mirrirtly of lirrronric Wlrlalc, 77

Index

228

Ministry of Information (MOI), 48,55,66-9, 71,75,92,95, 106-8, I I8,158

Soviet Desk (Russian Section; RussianDesk), 48, 66, 68, I l2-13

Mitchell, Graham, l4l, 157, 177 -8Modin, Yuri, 177Monckton, Sir Walter, 65Morrison, Herbert, 62, l6l, 203, 208Morton, Major Desmond, 69Moscow, 28-9,44,50, 94-9, 104, 110, 143,

150,164-5, 173Mosley, Sir Oswald,5l, 156, 169Muggeridge, Malcolm, 138-9Mukden, 20-1, 23,25, 30, I l9, 168Mussolini, Benito, 13, 57Myatt, Ella, 73

National Government, 3

National Peace Movement radio station(supposed underground radiostation in WW2 Germany), l0l

Navy, Naval Intelligence, 89Nazi-Soviet Pact, 4, 54, 66, 96, 169Needham,Joseph, 167Neue Freie Presse of Yienna, 46Neut Statesman,45New York, 135, l7lNicholson, Leslie, 137-8, 142Nicolson, Benedict, I 40Nicolson, Harold, 34, 1 40, 17 4'Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square', 87Nixon, Edna,88Noel, Conrad, Vicar of Thaxted, I I, 166-7North Africa, Allied invasion of, 88Norwegian Government in Exile, l0lNunn May, Alan,57-8,98-9, 103, 105,

132-4,159,170-2Nuremberg Trials, 119

Observer,132, 137, 139Official Secrets Act, 104, 143, 145, 174,203Ottawa, 149Orwell, George, 4, 12,32-3,55, 107-8, 135,

143, 165and banrring of Animal Farm, 107-B

Oxford, 9, I l-19, 86, 99-100, 120, 146-7,150-2,156,169, l8l

Oxford Appointments Board, 35Oxford Broom, 15

Oxford Movement, l5Oxford Outlook, 15

Oxford Union Debating Society, 12

Pagc, Blucc, 137Pauikkat', K.M., I20-3l'alis, llritish lirrrbassy (llrtrrrlr irr, l{i(i

Parliament, TT, 131House of Commons, 3, 55,77,133,135PressLobby, ll1,114

Passport Office,91-2Pearson, Col. Tom,89Peking,23

Grand Hotel de Peking, l9Penrose, Barrie, 140, 165People, The, I I0- I 1, 134-6People's Convention, ch. 5 passim, 97 -2,

l0l,108,1ll,167,180People's Vigilance Committee, 55Percival, head of Clifton College, I IPerrin, Sir Michael, 155, 198-9Petrov, Vladimir, 110, I16, 134, 207-8Philby, Aileen (nde Furse),5, 79Philby, Eleanor, 137, 139Philby, Kim (H.A.R.), 2, 3, 5, 32,36, 47, 68,

79, 102, 104, 109, ll5, 118, 125-6,132, 135, 137 -9, 141-4, 149, I58,r60-1, 163-5, r7l-2,176-7, 180-1,2r2-r6

Picasso, Pablo, 140Picture Post,6lPincher, Chapman, 2, 4, 5, 6, 1 8, 24-8, 3 1,

44,49,l3L-2, 141-4, ch. 13 Passim,169, 173-5,178,215

'Pitcairn, Frank', pseudonym of ClaudCockburn, see Cockburn, Claud

Poland, 94, I l2-13, 170espionage trials of Polish exiles in

Moscow in 1943,96Government in Exile in London,94-6Nazi atrocities in, 58Provisional Government in Lublin, 96Union of Polish Patriots in the Soviet

Union,96Polish Secret Service (in Britain),96, 105Political Warfare Executive (PWE), 67-8,

74-5Pollitt, Harry,92-5Prado, 166Prager Presse,46Prague,47Pravda,103'Praada incident' , 102Price Regulation Committee, 8 IPritt, D..N., 37, 46, 55-6, 59, 61, 64-5Priaate Ete,45Provisional Cornmittee of the Aircraft ar"rd

Engineering Shop StewardsNational Council,49

Pryce-Jones, Alan, l5Purdy, Anthony, 137Putlitz, Wolfgang zu, 44-5, 4U-9, 77, 102,

l(x), I l(i, t7 l, l7:l-4Prr Yi, !}npclot ol Mitttcltttktro, l)cpose<l

Index

Emperor of China, 1 9, 20

Radcliffe, Lord,2I7Radcliffe, Major R.A.C., 85'radishes' (political term referring to

'whites'who seemed to be'red'), 28Rees, Goronwy, 36, I36, 139Reilly, Sir Patrick, 161Rent Restriction Act, 80Renters,96, 135Ribentrop,.f . r'on, 103Ridsdale, Sir William, 112-13, I l5Robson-Scott, Mr, I 57-tlRose, Archibald, 19, 2lRothschilds,46Royal Central Asian Society, 31, 35

Hollis talk given to, 182-97Royal National Lifeboat Institution, 135Rugby, I IRrlmbold, Sir Anthony, 9l-3Rtrshdie, Salman, I 80- IRussia, USSR, Soviet Union, 20-3, 27 -9,

36-7, 44, 50, 54, 64,66-75, 89, ch. l0passim, 134, 136-7, 151, 159, 164-5,169,178

alleged Japanese fear of, 1 88, 1 93

St Malo, 200,204St Thomas of Canterbury, 166Salisbury, Lord, I l9San Francisco,44Sandforth, Thornas, I9Sandys, Duncan, 134Sargent, Orme,65Sayle, Murray, I38Schrnidt, Professor O.Y., 46Scarlett, Sir Peter, 123Seale, Patrick, 139Security Executive (also known as the

Swinton Comrnittee), 5O-2, 55, 62,6it-9

Shanghai,147, l6uShaw, George Bernard, l9Sher{ield, Lord, C)liver Makins, 9ISiberia, 46Sirnon, Sir E,ruest, 72Sistirrc ()hapcl, l6(iSinvcll, ()sbert, l()Srtttxllcy, Agrrcs, 21'r-7, 2l), 43, l(itiSrnollct t, Pctcr (nlso krrowrr as H . P.

Surolkl), 4(i.tt, (i(i.7 l, 7ll-l'r, 1)7,

l(Xi.7, llll, ll'rl, I(i4Srrow, l,rlglr', ll), $(iSokrtturtr, IIrll, llliSolge Rirrg (ol ( irrrrirrtcr n uHrntr), 25Sovict lrrlirrmnnnn lilrrcnn, l,rrrrdrrrr, 74Sprirr,21, 54, $7,4n,1l!), lllli

229

Spanish Civil War, 3, 33, 37 , 45,99,164, 166,210

Sparrow, John, 86-7Spender, Sir Stephen, 168, 175Springhall, D.F., 103, 105, 159Sp"tcatcher Affair, l, 2, 5, 6, 14, 26, 27, 31,

139, t42-5,178-81Squance, WJ.R.,56Stables, Tony, 25,27, 168Stalin, Joseph, 27, 46, 54, 64-5, 69-7 I, 89,

95-7,r13,120,153,170Stalin's Englishmen,3Stalingrad,9S'Stanley'. code name of Soviet spy in

Britain, 164Starrett, Vincent, l9Stephensen, P.R., l4Strachey, John, 55, l l5, 133Straight, Michael, 139, 177Strasser, Otto,47-8Sumrnerfields Preparatory School, l0Sundat Times, 137-8, 140Sutherland, Douglas, 137Swinton, Lord,50Switzerland, 144

Tasmania, 142-3Tedder, Air Marshal, 89Thatcher, Margaret, Prime Minister, I,

14t , 145, t47'These Foolish Things', 87'Third Man'

as originally mentioned in the DaifuExpress,110

as source for a 'tip<rff to Burgess andMaclean, ll1, 126, 135, 139

as=in the fihn scripted by GraharnGreene,135, 164

Thirty Year Rule,5, 133Thomson, Professor George, 1 54Thwaites, Mr, MOI official, 157-uTimes, 18, 19, 23, 24, 34, 35, 46, 52, 67-t1,

97, 106-8, r32, 135, 14r, 147, t60Times Literan Suppleme nt, 34Tito, Josip Broz, Marshal, 94, 127'Iirrr, Dona, 167'Iorr, Rer'. Willianr, 167'Irans-Siberian Railway, 20, 2t|'l'reasttly, tl7'I'r'errd, Sir Ilrrrkc, 145,215

'l'hc 'l'rcnd Rcport, I 47'l'rilnut,l'rl'r, (i0- I, l0ll'l'r'ipirrtitc (irrli.r'errt c orr Sct rrlitv Stirrr<l-

llrh* l{)1'r0, II'r2, I()tl-2(X)'l'ttlr Alkrvn (tlte llotttir' lxrtttlr lltrricr I r orlc

nnlllf), rr,,, aIotnit lxrtttIr'l'tu'kcv, lil'r

Index

.' ', ;,,S*;rar,",'.

230

Turnbull, Malcolm, 5, 142-3

Ulbricht, Walter,99United States of America, 20,31,44-5' 52'

57, 62,70-1,81, 84, 102-3, ll7' 120't2b-6, t32-4, 148, 154-6, 170-3' 180

Uren, Captain RaYmond, 103' 159

Ustinov, Klop,45utility furniture,80

Vansittart, Lord,48Vassal Tribunal, 175

Vatican,5S'Venona', coded wireless traffic, 149-50'

172Vienna, 164Vivian,Valentine, 104-5, 112' 160

Vlasov, General, 159Volkov, Konstantin, 110, 138, 149

Warner, Sir Frederick, 102' 113' I l5Watson, Alister, 166Waueh. Evelvn, I2-I6,33' 38' 163

Weaidale Iron and Coal ComPanY, l0Webb, Maurice, 109, lll-12, 134'6,172Weeh,The,26,38,45,51-2, 58, 60, 62-3' 103,

170-1'Week in Westminster', BBC radio pro-

gramme, 1l IWeizman Institute, 177

Wells Cathedral,S, 34' 17 IWells Cathedral School, 9Wells Theological College, 9

West, Nigel (pseudonym of Rupert AllasonM.P.),5, 178

Whitewell, John (pseudonym), see LeslieNicholson

Williams, Francis, 107'8' 115

Williams, Raymond,59Willoughby, C.A.. I 19-20Winant,John G.' 90-lWindsor, Duke of, 83-4Wong, Anna MaY, l9Wootton, Barbata,T2'Workers Challenge', German English lan-

guage'black' radio station Pur-f,orting to be in England, 56' 60-l

'/5

Workers Educational Association, 167

Wrisht, Peter, 2, 3, 4'31-2,38, 52' 137'" 139, I42-4. 146-8, 150' I63-4.

I 78-8 I

Yalta, 106Younghusband, Sir Francis, 17,33Yugoslavia,94

Zeitgeist Bookstore. 26Tinoviev letter, 133

Index

L ;

has until now been inexplicable, despite anapparently exhaustive trial in Australia inwhich the British Government was made toseem foolish and which resulted in the newOffrcial Secrets Act.

The revelations made here about Hollisand the modern political world explain at lastthe underlying reasons for the Spycatcherfiasco.

WJ. West was born in wartime London andeducated at the fuchitectural AssociationSchool of Architecture and BrunelUniversity. He lives in Exeter. For reviewsof his last book, Tiuth Betrayed: RadioPolitics between the Wars, and his twoeditions of recently discovered work byGeorge Orwell, Orwell : The War Broadcastsand Orwell: The War C ommentaries, seeback panel.

TRLTTH BETRAYED: Radio Politics between the Wars

,\.J. \\:est

.111 account of the secret radio propaganda conducted in Europe in the 1930s and the Second

lb::icl War, involving mainly Britain and Germany but also ltaly, Russia, Austria and Czecho-

slovakia. It is a fascinating story and much of the author's evidence has not been published

beforr: . . . An important book which deserves carefi:l reading,' Adrian Johnson

'Novel, original and interesting, particularly where it probes the delicate point of how much

influence the Foreign Office exercised over the political content of talks on the BBC. West has

found out a lot more about Burgess's career than was public knowledge before and has estab-

lished that he moved into the Secret Service world from the BBC,'M.R.D. Foot

lVJ. West sheds the harsh light of documentary fact on many of the myths about Burgess's

;ime at the BBC . . . His diligent researches have uncovered the link between Burgess,

irulford and Hol|is,' John Costello

ORWELL: THE WAR BROADCASTSCRWELL: THE WAR COMMENTARIES

Edited byWJ. West

Ihese two collections of Orwell's 'lost writings'mark the first time that unpublished work byGeorge Orwell has appeared since his death in 1950. The material - vintage Orwell - was dis-

:overed by WJ. West in the BBC fuchives dating from Orwell's period as a Thlks Producer

at the BBC in the early years of the war. TheWar Broadcasls brings together all Orwell's sur-

viving general taiks; mostly on literary subjects, ranging from assessments of English and

American writers who had influenced him - Swift, ShaW Jack London, Oscar Wilde - to adap-

fations of stories by H. G. Wells, Hans Andersen, Anatole France and Ignazio Silone. TheWarCommentaries contains Orwell's weekly talks on the progress of the war from Decemberi941, immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, to February 1943 when the tide had

finally tumed in the Allies' favour. Covering the most critical period of the wal they present

a unique view of events as they were unfolding.

'Of permanent value to all Orwell scholars,'T. R. Fyvel

A genuine discovery'John Gross

'The editor's introduction, which connects Orwell's experience in the BBC with his notion ofa totally controlled society in 1984, is quite excellent,' Auberon Waugh

DuckworthThe Old Piano Factory43 Gloucester Crescent

London NW1 7DY

rsBN 0-7T 56-2286-2

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