38 Security Service Archives.
39 Security Service Archives. TNA KV 4/242, s. 52b.
40 ‘Extract from statement made by Dr. Fuchs to the FBI’, 26 May 1950, TNA KV 2/1255, s. 689a; Goodman, ‘Who is Trying to Keep What Secrets from Whom and Why?’
41 PV(50)11, Committee on Positive Vetting. Report, 27 Oct. 1950, TNA CAB 120/30. Hennessy, Secret State, p. 90.
42 GEN 183, 5th Meeting, 5 April 1950, TNA CAB 130/20.
43 Guy Liddell diary, 1 Jan. 1950, Security Service Archives.
44 JIC (50) 21 (Final), ‘Clandestine use of atomic weapons’, 12 June 1950, TNA CAB 158/9.
45 Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only, pp. 184–7.
46 Hennessy, Secret State, pp. xvii–xviii; TNA AVIA IR (50) 5 Final, ‘Ministry of Defence. Imports Research Committee, report to Chiefs of Staff’, 2 Nov. 1950, p. 5.
47 ‘Review of B Division’, July 1950, TNA KV 4/162.
48 Security Service Archives.
49 ‘Security Service action in the case of Pontecorvo’, Ministry of Supply brief drafted with help of Roger Hollis, 6 Nov. 1950, TNA KV 4/242, s. 54d. The best accounts of the Pontecorvo case which draw on declassified MI5 files are Gibbs, ‘British and American Counter-Intelligence and the Atom Spies’, ch. 5, and Walton, ‘British Intelligence and Threats to National Security’, pp. 248–52.
50 G. T. D. Patterson (SLO Washington) to London, 13 Nov. 1950, TNA KV 4/242, s. 64a.
51 Guy Liddell diary, 23 Oct. 1950, Security Service Archives.
52 Ibid., 21 Oct. 1950.
53 ‘Security Service Action in the case of Pontecorvo’, TNA KV 4/242. Gibbs, ‘British and American Counter-Intelligence and the Atom Spies’, ch. 5.
54 Hollis to Geoffrey Patterson (SLO Washington), 23 Nov. 1950, TNA KV 4/252. Gibbs, ‘British and American Counter-Intelligence and the Atom Spies’, ch. 5.
55 G. T. D. Patterson (SLO Washington) to London, 22 Oct. 1950, TNA KV 4/242, s. 45a.
56 Meeting by DDG [Liddell] and Director B [White] with SIS, 21 Oct. 1950, TNA KV 4/242, s. 13a.
57 Michael Serpell, Account of meeting between Prime Minister and Director General, 2 Nov. 1950, TNA KV 4/242. Gibbs, ‘British and American Counter-Intelligence and the Atom Spies’, ch. 5.
58 Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 327.
59 Security Service Archives. Boris Davison’s PF was declassified in 2007: TNA KV 2/2579–85.
60 A. J. D. Winnifrith, ‘The Evolution of the Present Security System in the Civil Service’, 5 Dec. 1955, Security Conference of Privy Counsellors, S.C.P.C.(55)4, 6 Dec. 1955, TNA CAB 134/1325.
61 ‘Boris Davison’, April 1952 (paper handed by DG to Home Secretary on 15 May 1952), Security Service Archives.
62 GEN 183, 6th Meeting, 13 Nov. 1950, TNA CAB 130/20.
63 Ibid.
64 A. J. D. Winnifrith, ‘The Evolution of the Present Security System in the Civil Service’, 5 Dec. 1955, Security Conference of Privy Counsellors, S.C.P.C.(55)4, 6 Dec. 1955, CAB 134/1325.
65 See below, pp. 425–6.
66 GEN 183, 7th Meeting, 17 Aug. 1951, TNA CAB 130/20.
67 A. J. D. Winnifrith, ‘The Evolution of the Present Security System in the Civil Service’, 5 Dec. 1955, Security Conference of Privy Counsellors, S.C.P.C.(55)4, 6 Dec. 1955, CAB 134/1325.
68 GEN 183, 7th Meeting, 17 Aug. 1951, TNA CAB 130/20.
69 Walton, ‘British Intelligence and Threats to National Security’, p. 260.
70 Hennessy, Cabinets and the Bomb, p. 69.
71 The five ministers were Bevin, Morrison, A. V. Alexander (Minister of Defence), Lord Addison (Dominions Secretary) and John Wilmot (Minister of Supply). GEN 163, 1st Meeting, 8 Jan. 1947, ‘Confidential Annex Minute 1. Research in Atomic Weapons’, TNA CAB 130/16.
72 Lord Cherwell to Prime Minister, 29 July 1954; minute by Churchill, 4 Aug. 1954, TNA PREM 11/761.
73 Security Service Archives.
74 Two other committees reported to the Official Committee: the Personnel Committee (previously the Positive Vetting Committee), chaired by the Treasury, and the Committee on General Security Procedures, under the chairmanship of the Home Office. A Security Service officer, the Hon. J. L. Vernon, was seconded to the Cabinet Office in December 1953 to serve as secretary of both committees. The Personnel Committee, with Director C as the Service representative, worked comparatively smoothly. The Committee on General Security Procedures did not. In 1957, after the exasperated Security Service representative, Michael Serpell (C1), complained to the Home Office that it had not met for nearly two years, it was replaced by a new and more active Security (Policy and Methods) Committee, which also subsumed the JIC Security Committee. Security Service Archives.
75 SCPC(55)5, ‘Role of the Security Service in Personnel Security. Note by the Security Service’, 7 Dec. 1955, TNA CAB 134/1325.
76 How poor security remained was demonstrated on 15 September 2004 when five pro-hunt protesters burst into the Commons Chamber during a debate.
77 S (PS) (54), 6th Meeting, 17 Nov. 1954; TNA CAB 134/1165; cited by Schlaepfer, ‘British Governance, Intelligence and the Communist Threat’, ch. 3.
78 A. J. D. Winnifrith, ‘The Evolution of the Present Security System in the Civil Service’, 5 Dec. 1955, Security Conference of Privy Counsellors, S.C.P.C.(55)4, 6 Dec. 1955, TNA CAB 134/1325.
79 SCPC(55)5, 2nd Meeting, 9 Dec. 1955, TNA CAB 134/1325.
80 Attlee, ‘Britain and America’, p. 202; I owe this reference to Christian Schlaepfer of the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar.
81 Caute, Great Fear, p. 275.
82 Aldrich, Hidden Hand, pp. 426–7. These figures do not agree with those from an unattributable source given in Hennessy, Secret State, p. 97.
83 De la Mare, Perverse and Foolish, pp. 99–100. Aldrich, Hidden Hand, p. 547.
84 Security Service Archives.
85 Security Service Archives.
86 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
87 Security Service Archives.
88 Security Service Archives.
89 See below, pp. 484ff.
90 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
91 Security Service Archives.
92 Security Service Archives.
93 Aldrich, Hidden Hand, p. 549.
94 The first four volumes of the BBC, by Asa Briggs, make no reference to vetting. This subject will, however, be discussed in some detail in the forthcoming volume five by Professor Jean Seaton.
95 Harker told Kell after a meeting with Colonel Dawnay (BBC controllor of programmes) in 1933: ‘I gather that the general [BBC] line is the one which we ourselves try to follow; that is to say that political views which look upon the ballot box as the proper political solution of their problems are reasonable politics; anything that goes outside the ballot box – such as Communism or Fascism – is considered subversive if not seditious.’ Security Service Archives. Reith also sought information about Communists from the Met but was asked by Harker in 1935 to channel all his inquiries through MI5. Security Service Archives. When the BBC finally admitted the existence of vetting in 1985, it also acknowledged that it had been introduced almost half a century earlier at the request of the Corporation. ‘Unions confront BBC after vetting is admitted’, Financial Times, 20 Aug. 1985.
96 The 1937 arrangements were finally admitted by the BBC in 1985. ‘Unions at BBC threaten action on BBC vetting’, The Times, 20 Aug. 1985.
97 Security Service Archives. The only BBC staff to be positively vetted were a small number to be involved in war planning, whose vetting was carried out initially by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications (later by the Home Office). Security Service Archives.
98 These statistics on the proportion of ‘adverse reports’ cover the period (during the Korean War) from 1 January 1952 to 19 July 1952; Security Service Archives. No similar statistics for any other period appear to survive in MI5 files.
99 A statement by the BBC Board of Management in August 1985
declared: ‘Only the BBC decides who to appoint to any post within the corporation . . .’ ‘Unions at BBC threaten action on BBC vetting’, The Times, 20 Aug. 1985.
100 Security Service Archives.
101 Security Service Archives.
102 Security Service Archives.
103 Chris Hastings, ‘Revealed: how the BBC used MI5 to vet thousands of staff’, Sunday Telegraph, 2 July 2006.
104 Security Service Archives.
105 Neil Tweedie, ‘National Archives: Harold Wilson considered scrapping licence fee due to BBC spending’, Daily Telegraph, 29 Dec. 2008. Professor Jean Seaton’s research shows that BBC management, which was closely involved in government war planning, was also worried by possible Trotskyist disruption during a national emergency.
106 Security Service Archives.
107 See the forthcoming volume five of the BBC official history by Jane Seaton.
108 See, for example, David Leigh and Paul Lashmar, ‘The Blacklist in Room 105’, Observer, 18 Aug. 1985.
109 A. J. D. Winnifrith, ‘The Evolution of the Present Security System in the Civil Service’, 5 Dec. 1955, Security Conference of Privy Counsellors, S.C.P.C.(55)4, 6 Dec. 1955, TNA CAB 134/1325.
110 Security Service Archives.
111 Vassall, Vassall, p. 67.
112 Security Service Archives.
113 Security Service Archives.
114 Security Service Archives.
115 Security Service Archives.
Chapter 5: The Communist Party of Great Britain, the Trade Unions and the Labour Party
1 Security Service Archives.
2 MI5 report, ‘The Communist Party: Its Strengths and Activities: Its Penetration of Government Organisations and the Trade Unions’, 1 April 1948, Annex to GEN 226/1, 26 May 1948, TNA CAB 130/37.
3 Security Service Archives.
4 Security Service Archives.
5 Security Service Archives.
6 Security Service Archives.
7 Security Service Archives.
8 Security Service Archives. Such covert entries, though sometimes referred to as ‘burglaries’, do not meet the legal definition of burglary.
9 Guy Liddell diary, 27 May 1949, Security Service Archives.
10 See above, pp. 179ff.
11 After the war Knight’s section was initially B4C; it was renamed B1K in 1952 and B1F in 1952. In the reorganization of 1953 it became F4.
12 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
13 Security Service Archives.
14 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
15 Security Service Archives.
16 Security Service Archives.
17 Security Service Archives.
18 Security Service Archives.
19 Security Service Archives.
20 Security Service Archives.
21 Security Service Archives.
22 Security Service Archives.
23 Security Service Archives.
24 Security Service Archives. The eavesdropping equipment at King Street was installed in 1942.
25 In 1948, however, an unidentified technician carried out tests for the CPGB which revealed abnormalities in the King Street telephone circuit. Security Service Archives.
26 ‘Source TABLE conversation’, 22 Jan. 1948, TNA KV 2/1777, s. 474bc.
27 Security Service Archives. Philby’s memoirs, published in 1968, revealed the wartime bugging of King Street.
28 Some details are given in the PF for Eileen Palmer, now in TNA KV 2/2508. Most other Communist Parties in the West and the Third World also received secret subsidies, usually delivered by the KGB. For further details, based on Russian sources, see Riva, Oro da Mosca; Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive; Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive II.
29 Eaden and Renton, Communist Party of Great Britain, p. 114.
30 Security Service Archives.
31 TNA KV 2/2042–7. Obituary, Betty Reid, Guardian, 11 Feb. 2004.
32 Beckett, Enemy Within, pp. 121–3.
33 Security Service Archives.
34 Beckett, Enemy Within, ch. 8.
35 Hennessy, Secret State, pp. 78–9.
36 Sir Norman Brook to Attlee, ‘Prime Minister’s Briefs 1948’, 31 Dec. 1947, TNA CAB 21/2244. Sherman, ‘Learning from Past Mistakes?’, p. 10.
37 Rust, Story of the Daily Worker, p. 123.
38 Guy Liddell diary, 9 Aug. 1950, Security Service Archives.
39 The Service’s definition of ‘full-time employee’ included ‘(a) Part-time district officials of the Party; (b) Members of the Party employed at District headquarters in a clerical or other capacity’. Security Service Archives.
40 JIC(56)41, ‘Likely Scale and Nature of Attack on the United Kingdom in a Global War up to 1960’, 10 May 1956, TNA CAB 158/24. Sherman, ‘Learning from Past Mistakes?’, p. 39.
41 Hennessy, Secret State, pp. 132–3.
42 Security Service Archives.
43 Security Service Archives.
44 Security Service Archives.
45 Security Service Archives.
46 A memorandum of 14 December 1962 noted, ‘The Security Service has no primary responsibility for any of the measures in the existing Government War Book’. Security Service Archives.
47 Security Service Archives.
48 Jeffery and Hennessy, States of Emergency, p. 196. Schlaepfer, ‘British Governance, Intelligence and the Communist Threat’, ch. 5.
49 Guy Liddell diary, 17 Nov. 1947, Security Service Archives.
50 MI5 report, ‘The Communist Party: Its Strengths and Activities: Its Penetration of Government Organisations and the Trade Unions’, 1 April 1948, Annex to GEN 226/1, 26 May 1948, TNA CAB 130/37.
51 Aldrich, Hidden Hand, pp. 443–4. GEN 226, 2nd Meeting, 1 June 1948, TNA CAB 130/37.
52 Aldrich, Hidden Hand, p. 454. Security Service Archives.
53 Taylor, Trade Union Question in British Politics, p. 43.
54 Security Service Archives.
55 The paper given to the Home Secretary did not identify the intelligence sources. ‘Industrial Policy of the British Communist Party’, Security Service Archives.
56 Security Service Archives. F1 did not mention exactly when the provision of industrial intelligence to the Ministry of Labour began, but said that it ‘certainly antedates my own experience of sixteen years’.
57 Untitled note handed to Home Secretary by Sillitoe ‘at Room 16 H[ouse] of C[ommons]’, Security Service Archives.
58 Security Service Archives. The Ministry of Labour was initially involved in the working group, but subsequently withdrew.
59 Security Service Archives.
60 Security Service Archives.
61 Security Service Archives.
62 Security Service Archives.
63 Preface by John Freeman to Rolph, All Those in Favour?, pp. 9–10. Chapple, Sparks Fly!, p. 57.
64 Chapple had no doubt that Woodrow Wyatt was ‘our best media friend’. Chapple, Sparks Fly!, pp. 63–4. Wyatt also provided financial support for Chapple (and possibly for Cannon) as they prepared for the civil action against the ETU leadership.
65 Ibid., ch. 6.
66 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
67 Security Service Archives.
68 Security Service Archives.
69 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
70 Chapple, Sparks Fly!, p. 65.
71 Recollections of a former Security Service officer.
72 Rolph, All Those in Favour?, ch. 6.
73 Thompson, Good Old Cause, p. 127. Eaden and Renton, Communist Party of Great Britain, p. 133. Francis Beckett also concludes that, when the CPGB denied any knowledge of ETU ballot rigging, ‘The balance of probability seems to be that the Party was telling the truth’; Enemy Within, p. 151.
74 Eaden and Renton, Communist Party of Great Britain, p. 133.
75 Hyde, I Believed, p. 212. In 1951 SIS forwarded notes from Mal
colm Muggeridge, a wartime SIS officer, on his discussions with Hyde about crypto-Communists, fellow-travellers and other matters. Graham Mitchell noted: ‘I think this is interesting and good. It fits in very well with what is known. It should certainly be followed up.’ Security Service Archives.
76 Beckett, Enemy Within, p. 104.
77 Security Service Archives.
78 Lilleker, Against the Cold War, p. 86.
79 Aldrich, Hidden Hand, pp. 456–7.
80 Douglas Hyde believed that Platts-Mills, Hutchinson and Solley were ‘crypto-Communists’ at the time of the 1945 election, but that Hutchinson left the CPGB soon afterwards. Zilliacus, however, he rated only as a fellow-traveller. Hyde also identified Stephen Swingler, Harold Lever and Geoffrey Bing as ‘crypto-Communists’ in 1945. All had subsequently left the Party, though Hyde thought Bing had rejoined. Security Service Archives. ‘ “I Believed” by Douglas Hyde’, n.d. [c. Feb. 1951], Security Service Archives.
81 Lilleker, Against the Cold War, p. 89.
82 The fifteen Lost Sheep, in the order in which Morgan Phillips placed them on the list, were: J. Mack, S. Silverman, B. Stross, W. Warbey, G. Bing, S. Swingler, G. Wigg, H. Austin, G. Cooper, H. Davies, I. Mikardo, J. Silverman, C. G. P. Smith, W. Vernon and R. Chamberlain. Morgan Phillips, ‘Lost Sheep’ file, n.d., General Secretary’s papers, Labour Party Archive, National Museum of Labour History, Manchester.
83 Security Service Archives.
84 Guy Liddell diary, 27 May 1949, Security Service Archives.
85 Lilleker, Against the Cold War, p. 100. Zilliacus lost his seat in the 1950 election but returned to the Commons in 1957.
86 Security Service Archives.
87 Chapman Pincher, ‘A Communist Spy in the Labour Machine’, Daily Express, 28 June 1968.
88 The handwritten list, on House of Commons notepaper, read as follows:
CP:–
Possible
W. Owen
Zilliacus
Warbey
V. Yates
Leo Abse
A. Lewis
F. Allaun
S. O. Davies
J. Silverman
B. Stross
J. Baird
Emrys Hughes
J. Mendelson
W. Griffiths
The Defence of the Realm Page 129