M

by Henry Hemming

  He was right. In the months after his dismissal from the Woolwich Arsenal, Glading had secretly gone to Moscow, where, as he put it, ‘I started my education again.’25 The re-education of Percy Glading took place at the International Lenin School, the Comintern’s finishing school for revolutionaries. This institution brought together the brightest young Communists from around the world and taught them ideology, tradecraft and the importance of absolute and unyielding loyalty to the Soviet Union. Graduates of the International Lenin School, like Glading, represented a new and more terrifying breed of Communist. Stalin called them ‘men of steel’. They were less forgiving than their predecessors, all reconciled to the reality that worldwide socialist revolution would not be achieved at the ballot box. Instead, they returned to their native countries and made alliances with others on the Left while secretly carrying out subversive activities and otherwise preparing for the workers’ revolution. MI5 had never faced a threat quite like this. Britain was being targeted by an enemy that was ruthless and well resourced, and had working for it a small army of agents who were patient, professional and utterly dedicated. By the time Glading returned from Moscow, he had become a cipher for Stalin and was ready to give everything for the cause. Like a modern-day jihadi who has returned from an ‘Islamic State’ camp, his commitment and faith were incorrigible. Although M did not yet know about Glading’s time in Moscow, he was certain that this man was working for the Comintern and as such he might soon be given instructions to carry out espionage in Britain. M’s hope was that when that happened, if that happened, Glading would turn to his agent for help. Although Olga needed a break after her exertions in India, the MI5 spymaster urged her to keep going.

  20

  THE HONEYMOONING SPY

  Less than a week before Olga Gray set out for Mumbai, on the day that fifteen thousand people went to see Sir Oswald Mosley perform at a Fascist rally in Olympia, west London, M decided to reactivate a former agent. He had let this man go soon after the General Strike, in 1926, as demand for intelligence on Communist affairs dried up. Now he had a very different mission in mind for Eric Roberts.

  Roberts had kept himself busy since his first fleeting taste of espionage as a teenager, after M had pulled him out of the British Fascisti and asked him to infiltrate the Communist Party. Indeed, he seemed incapable of sitting still. By day this enterprising young Cornishman was a clerk at Westminster Bank. By night he indulged an almost Victorian appetite for self-improvement. Roberts took classes in everything from judo to stock-exchange law, and he served as a Special Constable, or volunteer policeman, for the City of London, while also teaching himself graphology, Spanish and German, among other subjects. If ever there was a bank clerk whose job left him wanting something more from life, it was this one.

  Eric Roberts’s forebears had specialised in ‘the down to earth business of farming,’ as he once put it.1 He had grown up in a remote village on the Lizard, in deepest Cornwall, in a house that was too small for such a large family, yet had chosen to leave all this behind. It was as if these evening classes were part of an unconscious desire on his part to distance himself from his rural working-class background, or at least to prove to himself that he had made the right decision by moving to London. One way to get ahead was by acquiring reams of knowledge. Another was to befriend establishment figures and prove himself in their eyes, which may explain why, in 1934, Eric Roberts had written several letters that led to him getting in touch again with M, after which he more or less offered his services to his former spymaster.

  ‘In all approaches made to animals,’ wrote M, ‘it is a golden rule to let the animal make the first move.’2 The fact that Roberts had contacted him was promising. M’s former agent had even proposed a specific mission. He wanted to report back from his forthcoming visit to Nazi Germany. Roberts obviously believed that he would have time to kill, in spite of this trip being his honeymoon.

  ‘I shall be very pleased to meet you and your wife when you return from Germany,’ replied M, ‘and I shall also be interested in anything you may have to tell me regarding what you see there.’3

  There is no record of what Roberts reported from his honeymoon, but several months later M was in touch again.

  ‘I am anxious to see you as soon as possible,’ wrote M.4 ‘I have what might be a very interesting and mildly profitable proposition to put up to you. It is one which I cannot discuss on paper, but if we can meet early in September I can give you full details.’

  They met, as suggested, but M did not reveal the ‘full details’ of his plan, which was for Eric Roberts to become the first MI5 penetration agent inside the British Fascist movement. M had finally accepted the strategic need for this. He could no longer survive on scraps provided by his former comrades from the BF, yet he did not want to scare off Roberts by outlining what he had in mind. Instead, he gave him a simple, one-off mission as a way of easing him back into the work and hopefully whetting his appetite.

  Although we do not know what this job was, Roberts accomplished it well. ‘Very many thanks for your interesting report received safely,’ wrote M.5 ‘It was just exactly what I wanted and I am very grateful to you.’

  Now M could make his pitch. ‘Supposing that I find there is a certain amount of cash available for the enterprise, do you consider that you could spare say, two evenings a week?’ M offered Roberts a salary of £1 a week for a probationary period of three months, plus travelling expenses of 10 shillings a week, the equivalent today of just over £200 a month. The payment was tiny but significant. It made the work feel like a job rather than a favour and was sufficiently small that if Roberts’s motivation was financial he would lose interest.

  ‘How would that suit you?’ asked M.6

  Very well, it seemed, for Roberts accepted.

  More than a decade later, M was able to say of his MI5 section that ‘no purely mercenary agent has ever been employed’.7 M had recruited an old friend and a former member of the BF who was evidently patriotic, intelligent and patient. Now he could explain to him in more detail what he wanted him to do.

  ‘We should like you to endeavour to get into touch with our friends at their head office [BUF Headquarters] and to put in some evening work there as and when it is most convenient to you and to them, but we should much appreciate at least one weekly report.8 It is difficult to indicate lines of enquiry so early on, but doubtless your first two or three visits will indicate some basis for future work. In general we can say nothing is too small to report, particularly with reference to the personnel and their activities, and also indications of internal dissension.’

  M posted the letter and began to look forward to receiving the first report from his new agent. But his instructions had been too broad. Roberts was not yet ready.

  He wrote back to his spymaster explaining that his manager at the Westminster Bank was not fond of Fascism, which would make it impossible for him to wear a blackshirt.

  ‘It is not necessary for every member to wear a uniform,’ replied M, ‘and I should make it very clear from the start that owing to your position in the bank and the unsympathetic views of your manager, it would be impossible for you to do this.’9 Roberts also wanted more guidance. What should he do when he first arrived at BUF Headquarters? Who should he look out for? What was the best way to present himself?

  ‘I cannot give you any particular detailed advice at this stage, but will help you in every way possible when you have started to gather in a certain amount of information,’ came M’s reply.10 ‘Generally speaking, however, I should simply do whatever task is allotted to you as well as you can, and allow yourself to drift along with the tide, so to speak. If there are any special points on which you require an opinion, I will deal with them by return.’

  So it was that in late 1934 a Cornish bank clerk who was also an MI5 agent, and feeling slightly unsure of himself, walked into the National Headquarters of the British Union of Fascists and offered his services as a linguist. He was directed
to the Foreign Relations Department. This was promising. If Roberts could secure a position in there, he might be able to uncover more about the financial connections among Mosley, Mussolini and Hitler. But, as he reported back to M, the men in this department wanted nothing to do with him.

  ‘Do not be disturbed about the attitude of the Foreign Department,’ M assured him.11 ‘It seems to me to be quite reasonable. I think they will obviously regard with suspicion any new recruits and wait until they have proved themselves elsewhere. I should not make any more obvious attempts to get in touch with them or find out about them for a week or two, but you might take to reading one or two suitable foreign newspapers and making cuttings of anything which you think might interest the Foreign Relations Department. These you might hand to the man at HQ who seems to be the most friendly to you and ask him to pass them on. In this way you will gradually establish confidence.’

  Roberts’s first report had provided nothing of any great value, yet this did not stop M from showering him with praise. ‘Very many thanks’ for your ‘most interesting’ report, which was ‘exactly what I want.12 You cannot do better than carry on like this.’ M understood the enervating insecurity of life as an informant, especially at the start. He knew this because he had experienced it himself. He appreciated that it could take months and sometimes years for an agent to produce useful intelligence. Roberts, however, appeared to have got there much sooner.

  The next offering from M’s new agent really was ‘an excellent report; it provides us with a great deal of new information and presents several lines for further investigation’.13 The following week’s effort was also superb. Information was now pouring in from Roberts. It was as if he had opened a tap, until there was so much of it that his spymaster became worried.

  M urgently warned Roberts against appearing ‘to be unduly curious’.14 The following week he made the same point. ‘May I again emphasise that for the next few weeks you should studiously avoid the asking of questions which might in any way be deemed improper by the BUF.15 It is obvious from what you report that they are suffering from spy mania, and it would be a pity to spoil your excellent start by appearing too anxious for information. Don’t imagine that for one moment that we are impatient. You obviously have the ability to deliver the goods, so we shall not be at all upset if we hear nothing very sensational for a month or two. It is far more important that you should become intimate with one or two persons as you have already indicated. Information will come to you. It is a mistake to go out and try to find it.’

  This was essentially the same advice M had doled out to each of his agents. Just as he monitored the health of his pets every day, he scoured his agents’ reports for signs that an informant was pushing too hard, or not enough. Were they making the wrong friends? Did they need more attention? Had they received the latest payment? Was the pressure of the work getting to them?

  M had never been taught to do any of this. Yet these were vital parts of the vast body of knowledge, his tradecraft, which he had honed during his career. Eleven years after being thrown in at the deep end, M had reached a point where he displayed an indigenous grasp of how to penetrate subversive groups, including the importance of never asking too many questions. M was attentive to Eric Roberts partly because it had been almost a decade since this agent had last been in the field, but also because there was also a lot riding on his success. Although M had at least a dozen paid operatives by late 1934, all of them, except Roberts, were deployed inside the Communist movement. Usually M gave his agents a numbered codename, such as M/12, yet for Roberts he came up with a new nomenclature.

  On 31 May, 1935, M/F, an agent who has never before been correctly identified, reported that ‘the sister-in-law of Miss H. B.16 Tudor-Hart recently cabled £25 to a Hungarian’, adding that Edith Tudor-Hart gives large subscriptions at irregular intervals to a particular school, and that when she sent this money to the Hungarian she ‘seemed excited and urgent’.

  This was the kind of intelligence that could only really have come from an employee at Tudor-Hart’s bank, most likely the individual who handled this actual transfer. This points clearly to Roberts. So does the fact that on the same day, Rita Retallick, M’s secretary at No. 38 Sloane Street, wrote to Roberts thanking him for his recent report and telling him, in response to his question, that ‘the sister-in-law of Miss T-H is, I gather, the wife of Dr T-H’, before asking Roberts for ‘further’ details about this woman.17 Until now it has been suggested that ‘M/F’ was a codename used by M to refer to his own reports. Instead, it seems that M/F was Eric Roberts.

  Why did M give him the letter F? Presumably it stood for ‘Fascism’, which may have been M’s way of saying he only really needed one agent to investigate Fascism. Looking out on the world just then, one could have been forgiven for thinking otherwise.

  Nazi Germany had recently withdrawn from the League of Nations and had begun to rearm. Hitler would soon announce the resumption of military conscription and the existence of the Luftwaffe – both violations of the Treaty of Versailles. Mosley was strengthening his relationships with Italy and Germany and had met senior Fascists from France, Belgium, Norway, Ireland and Spain. By the end of 1934, international Fascism was a coherent political force and Mosley’s British Union of Fascists was undoubtedly part of it. There was a growing need in MI5 for reliable human intelligence from the heart of the BUF. Most of its hopes rested now on a newly married bank clerk who might have just given himself away.

  Very soon after M cautioned him against making too many enquiries, Roberts was befriended by a senior Fascist. This man was unusually critical of the party’s leadership. He tore into Mosley, telling Roberts he was part of a dissident faction that hoped one day to oust the leader. He then asked the MI5 agent to join them.

  Roberts was intrigued and uncertain. It was his first major dilemma as M/F. Should he find out more, or report this man to the BUF Intelligence Department?

  M agreed that the situation was ‘very tricky’.18 He was tempted to encourage Roberts to accept, for this was bound to produce valuable intelligence, but he worried that if this dissident was genuine then ultimately he would be exposed, leaving Roberts tarred by his association with him. There was also a chance that this was a trap.

  ‘Up to date I think you have done admirably and have reacted in exactly the right way,’ M told his agent.19 ‘You must bear in mind the possibility that the whole of this business may have been staged for your benefit. It may be in the nature of a test to see whether or not you are reliable, whether you are addicted to listening to gossip etc. etc. Therefore it is of the utmost importance that your attitude should be one of scrupulous loyalty to the Movement and to the senior officers. While listening sympathetically to the criticisms of your friends, you should under no circumstances allow yourself to be drawn into criticising your seniors. Don’t utter a single word or phrase that could be used against you on some future occasion. Express surprise – anything you like, but not agreement.’

  All M could do now was wait. The next report from Roberts would reveal whether he had given the right advice.

  It is hard to say how much this episode preyed on M, only that he would have had little time to dwell on it. ‘You’re always saying we should have hobbies and recreations,’ his fictional counterpart is reminded in John Le Carré’s A Perfect Spy.20 M was an inveterate joiner, much like Eric Roberts and Jimmy Dickson (who would become close friends). By late 1934, M belonged to the Overseas Club, the Paternoster Club, Surrey County Cricket Club and the Zoological Society of London; he would soon join the Authors Club and the Society of Civil and Public Service Writers and be elected a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society and the Royal Geographical Society. Later he would also belong to the Royal Societies Club, the Quekett Club, the Royal Entomological Society, the Linnean Society, the British Mycological Society, the British Herpetological Society, the Royal Institution, the Freshwater Biological Association, the Ray Society and, strangely, the Medico-L
egal Society, in spite of having no medical or legal experience.

  M liked to divide his world into many different compartments, and to keep each one well furnished. His spare time was dominated by this mass of clubs and societies, as well as his pets and his jazz. Each provided not only a refuge from his work but a reminder of his youth. They anchored him to an earlier, often wilder version of himself: Max the boy, obsessed with animals; Max the cadet, learning to look after himself; Max the schoolmaster, lacking direction; Max the black sheep of the family, a man adrift; and Max the aspiring writer.

  It was this last version of himself that was keeping M most busy over those winter months as Eric Roberts found his way inside the BUF. M had decided to write a second novel. This was despite the reaction to the first.

  His debut, Crime Cargo, had been described in the Manchester Evening News as ‘a novel for that large and increasing class of reader that likes its blood red’, a warning, perhaps, that it contained several gory scenes.21 Truth called it ‘a real good rousing yarn’.22 In the Straits Times, of Singapore, it was hailed as ‘readable’.23

  Crime Cargo did not sell well and mustered only a handful of reviews, the most prominent of which was easily the most partial. Soon after the book came out, M/8 wrote it up in his Daily Express column as a ‘thriller with a contemporary theme: kidnapping racketeers on a luxury cruise … American slang well done’.24 M’s agent then followed up with a lively, if selective, biography of the author.