The Greatest Traitor

by Roger Hermiston

  Of his escape from Wormwood Scrubs, he remarked: ‘I was very lucky in that there were some good people who sympathised with me, people inside and outside jail, and who were ready to help me.’ As ever, he conscientiously avoided any comment that might expose his friends back in England, but by now, the tide was coming in for Michael Randle and Pat Pottle. Before very long, Blake would be forced to reveal the part they had played in securing his freedom – and make a stand on their behalf.

  21

  Endgame

  Thirty years after he had stood in the dock charged with betraying Britain to her Cold War enemy, George Blake was once again back in the Old Bailey’s famous No. 1 Court. This time, however, the man who had once been the anxious defendant of May 1961, awaiting the Crown’s punishment for crimes ‘akin to treason’, was a relaxed witness for the defence. Now there was no wooden seat amidst a sea of suspicious eyes, but the solitary comfort of an armchair in his Moscow flat. The sober suit and tie had been replaced by the navy blue blazer and knotted silk scarf. A bald head and neatly trimmed beard succeeded the clean-shaven, tanned face and longish brown hair.

  Blake’s ‘virtual’ presence at the Old Bailey on Tuesday, 25 June 1991, came towards the end of the trial of Michael Randle and Pot Pottle, who had finally been charged with helping him to escape from Wormwood Scrubs, and then conspiring with Sean Bourke to harbour him and prevent his arrest.

  As his voice echoed around the historic courtroom to a spellbound packed gallery. The three-minute video recording ran on three screens at points North, East and West of the oak-panelled room, so that everyone would have a clear view of the star turn. Flanked by Randle and Pottle’s lawyers, Blake read slowly and deliberately from his text.

  Back in 1961, the court had determinedly and deferentially avoided any mention that a secret organisation (SIS) was fighting a clandestine war against the Soviets, so there was delicious irony in the opening remarks of the former ‘foreign office official’. This time, everyone would know the unvarnished truth. ‘I was a member of the British Secret Intelligence Service from August 1944 until the date of my trial in May 1961,’ Blake told Mr Justice Alliott and his court. ‘I was engaged in secret, subversive operations directed against the Soviet Union, the socialist countries and world Communism. It was my task to attempt the recruitment of Soviet citizens, and in particular members of the Soviet intelligence services and those of other socialist countries.’

  Yet again, however, he was determined to challenge the general perception of the human cost of his treachery: ‘It was said that my actions led to the deaths of British and other agents. I can confirm that at my trial it was never alleged that in working for both the British Secret Intelligence Service and the Soviet Intelligence Service, I was ever responsible for the death of agents. However, I do not deny that I disclosed the identity of a number of agents to the Soviet authorities.’

  He then devoted the rest of his statement to refuting suggestions that the KGB had been involved in his escape, or that Randle and Pottle had received any financial reward for their efforts: ‘There was never any doubt in my mind that they acted as they did out of purely humanitarian concern, and specifically because of the length of my sentence. I say this as they repeatedly commented on the harshness of the sentence.’

  Blake concluded his remarks by saying he was ‘deeply grateful’ to the two defendants for ‘having enabled me to lead a normal life over the last twenty-four years’.

  To trace the origins of Blake’s second court appearance at the Old Bailey, you have to go back to January 1970 when MI5 received an advance copy of Sean Bourke’s book, The Springing of George Blake.

  Bourke had been determined to chronicle his leading role in Blake’s escape, almost from day one of its inception. He wanted to write a detailed book about the daring operation that would bring him acclaim as a writer and substantial financial reward.

  In the course of the mission in 1966, Blake, Randle and Pottle had been perplexed and at times angered by what looked like careless, sometimes reckless behaviour by Bourke. His mistakes, it seemed, were giving the police far more clues than was necessary. Some of Bourke’s decisions were merely slipshod, but others were deliberately made to lead police on a chase after him, so that the world would clearly know that the Irishman was responsible for this audacious plan. The pursuit would add extra colour to the book.

  This goes some way to explaining why he failed to sell the Humber Hawk registered in his name before the escape; why, just four days after he had sprung Blake, he phoned the police to tell them of the car’s whereabouts; why he left Randle to go looking for it, knowing the police were also trying to find it; and why he left potentially incriminatory letters, photographs, his typewriter and the walkie-talkie sets in the bedsit at Highlever Road.

  All the while, he was also surreptitiously photographing scenes in Wormwood Scrubs, keeping recordings of his conversations with Blake, and retaining all correspondence related to the plot. He was building up a full record of events for when he eventually put pen to paper.

  When Randle confronted Bourke about his reckless actions on visiting him not long after his return to Limerick, his co-conspirator merely replied enigmatically: ‘Well, you see I am not the simple, uncomplicated Irishman that some people imagine.’

  After he had successfully fought extradition to Britain in the High Court in Dublin in January 1969, he settled down to complete his colourful account of the Blake escape.

  When MI5 read their advance copy, they swiftly forwarded it to Chief Inspector Rollo Watts, the Special Branch officer who had been fruitlessly hunting Blake and his collaborators for the past four years. Watts knew immediately that the book was Bourke’s own work, not that of a ghost-writer: ‘Bourke has always considered himself to have a flair as a writer, and the style and phraseology is typical of the articles he wrote when editor of the prison magazine, New Horizon, and of the many long letters to his brother and others of which we have copies.’

  Watts, who described the account as ‘99 per cent’ authentic, took a particular interest in pages 211 and 246. The former referred to Bourke’s first accomplice as ‘Michael Reynolds’ – a man aged about 30, slight in build, pale-faced, and married to Anne, with two children aged four and two and a half. The latter described his other co-conspirator, ‘Pat Porter’ – a friend of ‘Michael Reynolds’, two years younger, single, with a flat in Hampstead. It did not take Watts long to join up the dots. ‘A very probable identification thus comes to light in the form of Michael Joseph Randle, very well known to Special Branch for his militant activities with the Committee of 100,’ he wrote in his report to MI5. From there, he had no difficulty in identifying Pottle.

  While Randle and Pottle read the published book with mounting anxiety, fearing a knock on the door at any moment, Chief Inspector Watts took soundings among his police and security service colleagues. On 28 April he spoke to an MI5 officer who consequently filed this intriguing report: ‘Chief Inspector Watts added that the Special Branch decision at present was to take no steps to interview or attempt to prosecute the RANDLES or POTTLE. It was considered that to do so might be persecution – a big fish had got away, so they were taking it out on the little fish. It was considered, however, that it had been necessary to investigate their suspicions and place them on record.’

  To this day it has never been clear who took the final decision not to go after the two men. The official line was that the decision had been taken by the police, and by the police alone; the Director of Public Prosecutions had not been consulted, and the Home Office had played no part. At the very least, however, their lack of enthusiasm to tackle the ‘little fish’ makes it clear that the authorities never had any intention of prosecuting Blake’s accomplices. The escape and subsequent manhunt had made them look foolish, and a full airing of their failings in trial at the Old Bailey would have done little to enhance their reputation.

  So there the matter lay for seventeen years. Then, in September 1987, a
train of events was set in motion that would eventually lead to Randle, Pottle and Blake’s appearance at the Old Bailey. First, the writer and former intelligence officer H. Montgomery Hyde published a book entitled George Blake – Superspy, which provided more clues to the identity of Bourke’s accomplices. This was followed by a Sunday Times story on 4 October, under the headline ‘Soviet Spy Was Sprung by CND Men’, and this time the two men were properly ‘outed’.

  The following week, Randle and Pottle released what amounted to a holding statement to the Guardian, neither confirming nor denying the claims made by Hyde and the Sunday Times, but pointing out inaccuracies in both. It was not a sustainable stance. The following days and weeks saw a wave of speculation. The Sunday Times even carried an erroneous story that the actress Vanessa Redgrave, known for her sympathy to left-wing causes, was ‘Bridget’, the mysterious woman whose bequest had funded most of the escape operation.

  In the New Year, the two men sat down to consider their options. They had always wanted to keep their story secret, but now the genie was well and truly out of the bottle. Also, they were concerned about the damage the publicity was doing to the Peace Movement, with continuing suggestions that they were pawns, willing or otherwise, in a KGB operation. They decided to put the record straight and write a book that would give a full account of their motives and actions.

  Meanwhile there were developments in Parliament. In a speech on 19 December, the Conservative MP for Colne Valley, Graham Riddick, demanded the two men be prosecuted, accusing them of ‘the most appallingly treacherous behaviour’. He then put down an Early Day Motion on the House of Commons Order Paper urging the Director of Public Prosecutions to ‘institute criminal proceedings forthwith against these two men’, and also demanding that they should receive no royalties from their forthcoming book. He gathered 111 signatures from Tory MPs. The parliamentary pressure was all too much for Sir Allan Green, Director of Public Prosecutions, to ignore, and he ordered a somewhat reluctant Metropolitan Police to look at the case again.

  In the meantime, further pre-publicity for the book, by way of a Thames TV documentary, The Blake Escape, on 26 April, in which Randle and Pottle clearly explained their roles on camera for the first time, only increased the likelihood of prosecution.

  On 3 May, at Gerald Road police station in south-west London, Randle and Pottle were formally arrested by Special Branch. It did not come as a surprise. After they had been questioned, they were put in the cells for several hours and later that day their homes were searched.

  The Blake Escape was published in June, and charges against the two men finally laid on 10 July. In the course of the next two years, they fought an unsuccessful battle in the High Court to have the case dismissed.

  By the time Randle and Pottle finally stood in the dock at the Old Bailey on Monday, 17 June 1991, it was thought they had created history: it was the longest gap – nearly twenty-five years – between an alleged offence and the subsequent criminal trial.

  Blake’s video statement was shown on the penultimate day, turning the case into a front-page story. For Randle, this was important: ‘Not only could we now be sure that the trial and its outcome would be widely known and discussed, but we could be confident that the humanitarian motives for our actions – which George stressed in his statement – would be well publicised.’

  Nonetheless, they feared the worst. Despite conducting their own defence in remarkably effective fashion, the judge told the jury to ignore Randle’s argument that they had a ‘defence of necessity’ – that sometimes it was right to disobey the letter of the law for a greater good. The only issue, Mr Justice Alliott said, was whether they had helped Blake escape and spirited him out of the country.

  Nonetheless, in their eloquent closing speeches, Randle and Pottle persisted in asking the jury to ignore their offences and concentrate on the ‘natural justice’ of their case. Pottle waspishly condemned the forty-two-year sentence the ‘Establishment’ had inflicted on Blake, while treating the Cambridge Five with relative leniency. He argued that Blake had been the victim of snobbery, if not racism: ‘What did George do that set him apart from other spies uncovered at that time? He was not British, was he? Not of the old school, not one of us. Deep down he was a foreigner and half-Jewish to boot.’ He concluded by quoting Bertrand Russell: ‘Remember your humanity and forget the rest.’ It was an impassioned, witty, beguiling piece of oratory.

  Randle could not compete with that on dramatic impact. Instead, he persuasively delved back into British history, to the great moments when blows for freedom were struck. He referred to the 1688 Bill of Rights, ‘one of the great documents of liberty in this country’, and its prohibition of ‘cruel and unusual punishments’: ‘George was sentenced to forty-two years’ imprisonment and was not even allowed privacy during prison visits. If this is not a cruel and unusual punishment, what is?’ He also knew the value of levity and recounted the story of the trial of two Quakers in 1670. On that occasion, the judge had directed the jury to find the men guilty and when they refused to do so, he locked them up overnight ‘without meat, fire or other accommodation; they had not so much as a chamber pot, though desired’. ‘Now I’m not suggesting that if you bring in a Not Guilty verdict his lordship is going to lock you up . . .’ Randle concluded, to widespread laughter among the jury members.

  He finished by reminding them of the relatively recent Clive Ponting case, when the jury acquitted the civil servant ‘whistle-blower’ of offences under the Official Secrets Act, despite a strong direction otherwise from the judge: ‘The lamp of freedom shone more brightly that day, and a dangerous shift towards arbitrary power was avoided. I appeal to you today to keep that lamp burnished and shining, and to allow considerations of humanity and commonsense to guide your judgement.’

  In his closing remarks, Mr Justice Alliott once again reminded the jury to concentrate on the evidence and the facts of the case. On the defence of necessity, he told them sharply: ‘You must loyally honour my ruling on the law, whatever view you have formed of the defendants.’

  Three hours later, the jury emerged. They had ignored his strictures and returned verdicts of Not Guilty to resounding cheers from the public gallery.

  The press were less impressed. ‘Crazy Verdict’ was the headline in the Daily Express the next day, and no doubt there were those who agreed with the paper’s writer: ‘Yesterday’s decision mocks the idea of national security. It mocks the law itself. Above all, it mocks our complacent faith in the jury system.’ If somewhat odd, the analogy offered by the Telegraph was no less disparaging: ‘The acquittal suggests a frivolous preference for moral gesture over moral reality that resembles the animal rights activism that frees mink from captivity to roam and destroy at will.’

  In Moscow, the relief and joy were palpable. Blake had vowed that if his friends were imprisoned he would turn himself over to the British in exchange for their release. Whether the Home Secretary would have countenanced such an extraordinary offer was moot. ‘It’s incredible,’ Blake told the Guardian. ‘I’m absolutely delighted. It almost makes me cry.’

  At the time of Randle and Pottle’s trial, Blake had already embarked on his own, lengthy legal battle with the British authorities over the publication of his autobiography in the United Kingdom. No Other Choice – the original title was The Georgian Enigma – immediately sparked off a series of high-level discussions in Whitehall, with civil servants consulting widely to assess whether it breached national security, or was likely to cause any material damage to SIS. The answer to both questions was no, according to a memo the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robin Butler, sent to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Principal Private Secretary, Andrew Turnbull, on 13 September 1987. Butler argued that there was therefore little point in trying to stop publication of the book, but did make a case for trying to prevent Blake from making money from the enterprise, and a six-year legal battle over the royalties began.

  SIS itself had been wary of engaging in a publi
c dispute with Blake over the contents of his book. Senior officers in the Service who read No Other Choice could find no revelations serious enough to warrant them challenging Blake and exposing the organisation to public glare, and, anyway, they had seen the way MI5 had been dragged onto the front pages two years earlier by the controversy over Spycatcher, the memoirs of former officer Peter Wright. At the conclusion of that long, drawn-out case, the Law Lords did decide that Wright’s book had constituted a serious breach of the confidentiality owed to the Crown by an intelligence officer. More pertinently, however, they ruled that the media was free to publish extracts because the damage to national security had already been done by the book’s publication abroad. The whole affair had been a mess, and both the Government and MI5 had come out of it badly.

  At the same time, forward-thinking officers like the new SIS Chief, Sir Colin McColl, realised that in the new post Cold War landscape, they needed to open the doors just a little and let some light shine on the workings of the Service. The fiction – prevalent in Blake’s day – that a few mysterious figures in some small corner of the Foreign Office were carrying out the nation’s vital clandestine work, had become an absurdity. The Secret Intelligence Service had, for some time, no longer been secret in the minds of the public. In 1994, the Intelligence Services Act placed the Service’s operations on a statutory footing. The opening words of this new legislation highlighted the pretence under which the Service had been labouring for the previous eighty-five years: ‘There shall continue [author’s emphasis] to be a Secret Intelligence Service under the authority of the Secretary of State.’