M

by Henry Hemming

  40

  THE RAID

  By Monday, 20 May, 1940, Holland had fallen, Belgium was on the brink and France looked set to follow. Britain was surely next. Indeed Hitler would soon issue Directive No. 16, regarding the German invasion of Britain, which included plans for 67,000 German troops to land by sea on the south coast of England, supported by waves of parachutists, before securing London. After this, the Nazi clean-up operation would begin. With this in mind the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or Reich Security Head Office, would compile a list of several thousand prominent Britons, the so-called Black Book, who were to be rounded up in the wake of the German invasion and delivered to the Gestapo. They would either be imprisoned or shot. One of the names on that list was: ‘Captain M. King, Whitehall’.1

  Londoners had been bombarded over the last month not with bombs but with the news of Allied losses, reversals, defeats, retreats and surrenders. German forces appeared to be better equipped than their opponents, they had superior tactics and they were better led. As one MI5 officer wrote, ‘the news has been so bad that it made me feel physically sick’.2 Even more unsettling was the idea that there were people in Britain willing to assist the invading German forces.

  M made his way to the Home Office early on that Monday morning while most Londoners were having their breakfast. He showed his pass to the sentries outside the main entrance and continued into a building that must have felt like enemy territory. He was there to pick up a detention order for Anna Wolkoff that had been signed by the Home Secretary. Usually, this would be passed on to the police at Scotland Yard, yet his agent, Mrs Mackie, had heard that the Right Club had sympathisers among the senior ranks of the police. M was not prepared to take the risk.

  From the Home Office, the MI5 spymaster made the short journey to Scotland Yard, where he met Sir Norman Kendal, the Assistant Commissioner (Crime), who was to decide whether there was sufficient evidence to have Kent arrested. Also in the room was Joe Kennedy, the US Ambassador, whose fiery red hair matched his temper that morning. Kennedy assured M and Kendal that Kent’s diplomatic immunity had been waived, adding that he wanted Kent to be taken into custody right away. Kendal ruled that the arrest could go ahead.

  At this point, M should have felt a pang of uncertainty. After all, none of his agents had actually been inside Kent’s flat to see this material. Mrs Mackie had merely been told by Anna Wolkoff, who was prone to exaggeration, like Mackie herself, that Kent had a number of confidential documents. But it seems that M knew precisely what the police would discover in Kent’s home, and where.

  The author Paul Willetts has argued persuasively that M may have crept into Kent’s rooms in the weeks before Kendal authorised this arrest. It would not have been hard. The flat was always unlocked when Kent was out, and the MI5 watchers could have easily told M when he was at work. This was also entirely in character for M. Ever since those raids on the Glasgow headquarters of the Communist Party, in 1925, he had displayed a remarkable eagerness to break into other people’s homes. This was a man who revered the ‘old-fashioned poacher’, praising him as ‘a field naturalist of a high order’.3 One woman who worked under M recalled being ordered to break into the homes of suspected spies, adding that ‘M certainly never minded taking a risk.’4 Willetts has also shown that in one of M’s reports he refers to having ‘examined’ ‘many’ of the papers in Kent’s flat.5 It is hard to think when he could have done this other than during the weeks leading up to the day of the arrests.

  Presumably feeling confident about what they were going to find, M decided that he would lead the raid on Tyler Kent’s flat. He placed Jimmy Dickson in charge of the near-simultaneous arrest of Anna Wolkoff. Once he had all the right paperwork, M set off for the US Embassy with three policemen. Meanwhile, Dickson got together two policemen and a female officer and prepared for the journey to South Kensington.

  Tyler Kent was approaching the end of his night shift when M arrived at the US Embassy, which was beyond the jurisdiction of the British police, so no arrest could take place there. It was just after seven o’clock in the morning. M found the Second Secretary, Franklin Gowen, and they waited until Kent finished his shift at around eight o’clock.

  The dandyish cipher clerk then emerged into a bright, summery day. He was spotted immediately by a team of MI5 watchers. This was not the first time they had followed him home like this after a night shift, and they knew that if today was like any other he would soon be in bed with his mistress, Irene Danischewsky. Keeping a suitable distance, they followed him back to No. 47 Gloucester Place. Not long after, the two lovers were alone in the flat.

  As things progressed in Kent’s bedroom, M and the others piled into a police car and drove to the flat. The door to the boarding house was opened by a maid. She asked them to wait as she fetched her employer. Instead, they rushed in, one following the maid, the others heading for the stairs. On the landing they found the landlady, who pointed them towards Kent’s door. They knocked several times. Kent refused to let them in. Inspector Pearson prepared to charge the door, and for a moment all was still.

  M was moments away from plugging an intelligence leak at the US Embassy, but this raid could amount to much more than that, and he knew it. It seems that M already had a sense of how the arrests of Tyler Kent and Anna Wolkoff could be used to achieve a more radical outcome, one that might banish forever the ghost of his Fascist past.

  Inspector Pearson crashed into the door, and it gave way. The men rushed in to find Tyler Kent in his pyjama bottoms. Pearson identified himself and explained why they were there. One of the other policemen went for the door to the bathroom. Kent could not prevent him from opening it, to reveal his mistress wearing just a pyjama shirt.

  The lovers got dressed.

  M fired off his first round of questions at Kent.

  Was there anything in the flat that belonged to the US Embassy? Did he know Anna Wolkoff? Was her loyalty to Russia or to the United Kingdom?

  Kent turned to Gowen, his fellow American, and asked whether he should respond.

  ‘Answer everything,’ came the reply.

  He did so, but he revealed nothing.

  Kent began by claiming to have no items in the flat that belonged to the American government, a particularly inept lie given that a team of policemen was then conducting a search. This set the tone for the interrogations that followed. Kent’s attitude throughout was detached and prickly. At times he seemed to take pleasure in evading the meaning of the questions aimed at him.

  It took the policemen seconds rather than minutes to find Kent’s collection of more than 1,500 documents. The police also discovered a set of keys for the US Embassy Code Room that Kent had had cut, in case he was transferred to a different job, and a considerable sum of money. Yet the key piece of evidence, from M’s point of view, was a leather-bound ledger secured by a simple brass lock, the Right Club’s Red Book. The man from MI5 forced it open to reveal a complete list of Right Club members, including details of who had paid what and when.

  The testimony of Mrs Mackie and Hélène de Munck would link Anna Wolkoff to Tyler Kent, yet this vital document connected Kent to the Right Club and Captain Ramsay, and in turn Ramsay could be linked to Sir Oswald Mosley. This list of Right Club members did not prove any wrongdoing on their part, but it was invaluable for anyone trying to suggest or imply the existence of a Fifth Column in Britain.

  Kent was arrested. Danichewsky was not. The American was led downstairs by the policemen and driven back to the US Embassy. There was no room in the car for his collection of papers, so a passing taxi was used to bring them to the embassy where they were lugged into the Ambassador’s office. Kent was locked up in a room nearby.

  Now Kennedy had a chance to go through the material. Burning with indignation, he agreed that these papers had come from the Code Room. Indeed Kennedy would later describe Kent’s collection as ‘vital’ and that ‘in the event of its being passed on to Germany, the most disastrous consequences would
ensue’.6

  Then Kent was called in. The ambassador began by reminding him of his family’s history. Given all this, ‘one would not expect you to let us all down’.7

  ‘In what way?’ asked Kent.

  ‘You don’t think you have?’ snapped Kennedy. ‘What did you think you were doing with our codes and telegrams?’

  ‘It was only for my information.’

  After a brief consultation, M took over.

  ‘The situation as I see it is this,’ began the MI5 officer. ‘I think it is just as well you should know you can be proved to have been associating with this woman, Anna Wolkoff.’

  ‘I don’t deny that.’

  ‘I am in a position to prove that she has a channel of communication with Germany, that she has used that channel of communication with Germany, that she is a person of hostile associations, that she is involved in pro-German propaganda, to say the least,’ said M. ‘As your Ambassador has just said, you have been found with documents in your private rooms to which he considers you have no proper title. You would be a very silly man if you did not realise that certain conclusions might be drawn from that situation, and it is for you to offer the explanation, not us.’

  Kent said nothing.

  ‘What is this?’ asked M, holding the ledger that contained details of the Right Club membership.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Kent.

  ‘Who gave it to you?’

  ‘I think probably if you opened it you could find out.’

  ‘Who has the key?

  ‘I haven’t any idea.’

  Kent offered nothing to M, who soon concluded that this man was ‘either a fool or a rogue’ and ‘nothing very useful is to be got by carrying on this conversation’. Instead, the well-tailored clerk was led off to Cannon Row Police Station.

  M had long been of the opinion that ‘what the suspect says in the first excitement of interrogation is often the very thing that gets him six months hard’.8 Kent had revealed nothing, other than his determination to clam up. M would not be able to frame his prosecution around a full or partial confession from him. Instead, the onus would have to be on other evidence.

  At eleven thirty that morning, just as Tyler Kent was being grilled by Joe Kennedy and M, Jimmy Dickson formally detained Anna Wolkoff and took her to Rochester Row Police Station. Both arrests had gone as planned, yet the prosecution of these two would not be for some months.

  Using superb tradecraft, M had manoeuvred two of his female agents into the heart of a hostile spy ring and had stopped a potentially devastating leak of information to the enemy. But his work was not finished.

  41

  THE MEETING

  The following evening, Tuesday, 21 May, 1940, M attended a meeting at the Home Office. Gathered round a table was his immediate superior in MI5, Guy Liddell, and the two most senior figures in the Home Office – the Home Secretary, Sir John Anderson, and the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, Sir Alexander Maxwell – as well as the head of the British Army, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir Alan Brooke and, finally, the Director of MI5, Major-General Sir Vernon Kell. At an early stage the Home Secretary trotted out the line he had been using since the start of the war, namely, he felt there was no evidence that the British Fascists were prepared to assist the Germans if there was an invasion. He referred to an article by Sir Oswald Mosley in which the BUF leader had apparently ‘appealed to the patriotism of its members’.

  At this point M intervened.

  ‘M. explained that this was merely an example of how insincere Mosley really was,’ recorded Liddell, ‘and how many of his supporters simply regarded utterances of that kind as a figure of speech.1 He then went on to describe something of the underground activities of the BUF and also of the recent case against Tyler Kent involving [Captain] Ramsay. Anderson agreed that the case against Ramsay was rather serious but he did not seem to think that it involved the BUF.’

  At this point in the meeting, M could have agreed with the Home Secretary. It was the polite thing to do, the sensible thing to do and perhaps the most accurate thing to do. It was what the majority of his Fascist friends, past and present, would have done in his position, and it was probably what he himself might have chosen to do had a similar situation arisen several years earlier. The link between the BUF and the Kent-Wolkoff-Ramsay affair was tangential, not direct.

  M chose otherwise. He pushed back against the Home Secretary. Using his intimate knowledge of the movement, he made the case in the strongest terms for the internment of all senior British Fascists, referring not only to the arrests of Kent and Wolkoff but to the list of Right Club members contained in the secret ledger. ‘M. explained to him [Anderson] that Maule Ramsay and Mosley were in constant touch with one another and that many members of the Right Club were also members of the BUF.’2

  The meeting lasted just under two hours. ‘M. was extremely good,’ wrote Liddell, ‘and made all his points very quietly and forcibly.’

  By the end of it, thought Liddell, Sir John Anderson was ‘considerably shaken’.3 ‘He asked us for further evidence on certain points which he required for the Cabinet meeting which was to take place tomorrow evening.’

  That meeting was chaired by Churchill, who pushed for a new clause, 1a, to be added to the existing Regulation 18b of the Defence (General) Regulations 1939. This would allow for the detention without trial of any British citizen thought to pose a threat to national security as a result of their membership in an organisation that might be under foreign control or influence – such as the BUF, the Right Club or any other extremist right-wing group. This new clause was not put before Parliament but was approved by the Cabinet, including the Home Secretary, that same evening. No public announcement was made. This was to ensure an element of surprise when the arrests began, as they did the next day.

  Over the next three months, Sir Oswald Mosley, Captain Ramsay and more than 1,000 senior British Fascists were arrested and imprisoned without trial. According to the Home Office, more than 700 of these men and women belonged to the BUF, an organisation that was soon outlawed by the Home Secretary. On the day that these arrests began, 23 May, 1940, Parliament also passed the Treachery Act, which made it easier for the death sentence to be delivered in cases of espionage or sabotage. Just four days later the Home Defence (Security) Executive was established to look into questions concerning the so-called Fifth Column.

  Two weeks after that, in the wake of Dunkirk, Churchill dismissed MI5’s most senior officer, Sir Vernon Kell, who had been in charge of this department since its creation in 1909. His long-serving deputy, Sir Eric Holt-Wilson, resigned in protest. Part of the reason for Kell’s removal was that he had agreed too easily to the Home Office position on mass internment. With Kell and Holt-Wilson out of the picture, it was agreed at an MI5 board meeting that ‘our policy with regard to enemy aliens should be their wholesale internment followed by their removal from the country as and when this might become possible.4 Our object is to clear the ground as far as possible in the event of an invasion of this country.’ Very soon after, the British Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered the internment of all male enemy aliens between the ages of 18 and 70 years. By the end of July, as the Battle of Britain began and Hitler’s plans to invade Britain reached an advanced stage, roughly 27,000 Germans and Italians – for Italy was now at war with Britain – were detained in camps across England and some were sent to Canada and Australia.

  Before considering the legality of this mass internment, of both homegrown Fascists and enemy aliens, or the question of whether it was justified, we should ask how this had come about.

  ‘It seems that the Prime Minister takes a strong view about the internment of all Fifth Columnists at this moment,’ wrote Liddell, shortly after the critical Cabinet meeting of 22 May, in which the key 1a clause was approved.5 ‘He has left the Home Secretary in no doubt about his views. What seems to have moved him more than anything was the Tyler Kent case.’

  This last
sentence is telling. The arrests of Kent and Wolkoff played a pivotal role in the decision to order mass internment. But why did Churchill know so much about this particular case? And for what reason did he imagine that it strengthened the case for having senior Fascists locked up, exactly as M had argued?

  The answer appears to lie in the identity of the man who told Guy Liddell about the importance Churchill had attached to the Kent-Wolkoff case. This was the Prime Minister’s close friend and homme d’affaires: Desmond Morton.

  Desmond Morton, the bad-tempered Old Etonian with the bullet lodged in his chest, M’s former spymaster at MI6, had become Churchill’s most trusted adviser on national security. Indeed, the head of MI6 was said to be ‘mortified’ by the extent to which Churchill now relied on Desmond Morton.6

  Morton’s influence would wane, yet by May 1940 he was at the peak of his powers. Desmond Morton was the conduit between the Prime Minister and MI5 who was capable of exerting huge influence on Churchill regarding national security. At the same time, Morton remained a ‘great contact’ of M, ‘to whom he had direct access’.7

  It is not a wild leap to imagine that as German forces poured into the Low Countries, M chose to bypass his superiors in MI5 and that he presented Morton with his own analysis of the threat posed by the BUF and the Right Club, and the need for mass internment of political extremists, and that Morton used this to lobby the Prime Minister. The way Churchill stressed the need for Communists and Fascists to be interned, in terms that M might have used, as early as 18 May, several days before the arrest of Wolkoff and Kent, only reinforces the idea that M was in touch with Morton and that his version of the situation was being passed on directly to Churchill.

  It is also possible that this channel of communication accelerated the departure of Kell and Holt-Wilson. Just two days after they had gone, it was Desmond Morton who urged MI5 not to compromise with the Home Office as these two had done. M’s channel of communication with Morton would have underlined to the Prime Minister’s office the gulf between more hawkish MI5 officers such as Liddell and himself and the two elderly men at the helm.