David Caute - Red List: MI5 and British Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century

Red List

Red List

MI5 and British Intellectuals
in the Twentieth Century

David Caute

First published by Verso 2022

David Caute, 2022

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

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Verso

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Verso is the imprint of New Left Books

ISBN-13: 978-1-83976-245-1

ISBN-13: 978-1-83976-247-5 (US EBK)

ISBN-13: 978-1-83976-248-2 (UK EBK)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available
from the Library of Congress

Typeset in Sabon by Biblichor Ltd, Edinburgh

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

In Memory of Martha

Contents

The released files available to the public can be found in the National Archive (TNA) at Kew in south-west London, or online.

Within the main text, most of the file references in the TNA have been retained, often beginning KV2, plus some serial numbers and other source data. The reference notes following the text include non-archival sources consulted.

Although the procedure of file-release excludes the living, my apologies to any persons who suffer embarrassment because their loved ones are named or chagrin because they are not (when I was younger we would joke that I would rather die than admit my telephone isnt tapped).

AEU Amalgamated Engineering Union

ARP Air Raid Precautions

BAOR British Army of the Rhine

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation

BFBC British Film Board of Censors

BYFC British Youth Festival Committee

CIA Central Intelligence Agency (US)

CID Criminal Investigation Department

CMF Combined Military Forces

CND Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

COMINTERN Communist International 191943

CPGB Communist Party of Great Britain

CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union

CPUSA Communist Party of the United States

CRTF Czechoslovak Refugee Trust Fund

DG Director General (MI5)

DORA Defence of the Realm Act

ENSA Entertainments National Service Association

FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation (US)

FO Foreign Office (UK)

GDR German Democratic Republic (also DDR)

GPO General Post Office

GRU (Soviet) Armed Forces Main Intelligence Directorate

HUAC House Un-American Activities Committee

HOW Home Office Warrant

ILP Independent Labour Party

IRD Independent Research Department (Foreign Office)

KGB (Soviet) Committee for State Security

LASCAR MI5 telephone intercepts

LCC London County Council

LP Labour Party

LSE London School of Economics

MET Metropolitan Police

MI5 Military Intelligence section 5

MI6 Military Intelligence section 6

MOI Ministry of Information

MOP Musicians Organisation for Peace

MU Musicians Union

NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (US)

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

NCCL National Council for Civil Liberties (UK)

N-CF Non-Conscription Fellowship

NKVD (Soviet) Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs

NMM National Minority Movement

NUM National Union of Mineworkers

NUS National Union of Seamen

NUWM National Unemployed Workers Movement

OBE Order of the British Empire

OCTU Officer Cadets Training Unit

PCF Parti communiste franais (Communist Party of France)

PEN Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, Novelists (Scottish)

PF Personal File (MI5)

POUM Workers Party of Marxist Unification (Spanish: Partido Obrero de Unificacin Marxista)

PWE Political Warfare Executive

RAMC Royal Army Medical Corps

RILU Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern)

RNVR Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve

SB Special Branch of Metropolitan Police

SCR Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR

SHAEF Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force

SIS Secret Intelligence Service (see MI6)

SLO Security Liaison Officer

SPL Subversion of Public Life

SSS School of Slavonic and East European Studies

TGWU Transport and General Workers Union

TNA The National Archive

TUC Trades Union Congress

TW Theatre Workshop

UDC Union of Democratic Control

UCL University College London

UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation

VOKS (Soviet) All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries

WFSW World Federation of Scientific Workers

WMA Workers Musical Association

WOSB War Office Selection Board

WRP Workers Revolutionary Party

YCL Young Communist League

What we here call the Other History of MI5 may be a melancholic introduction to the political mindset and culture of the British state during the twentieth century. We may prefer to imagine MI5 as a shadowy but romantic outfit smoking briar pipes while intent on trapping Nazi fifth columnists engaged in reporting the shallows and tides of potential landing beaches. Or in flushing out clandestine Nazi radios relaying shortage of rifles in Dads Army. Or perhaps the outstanding work of the double agent Juan Pujol, codenamed GARBO, transmitting valuable disinformation to the Abwehr before the Normandy landings.

Here we explore MI5s covert pursuit of men and women arbitrarily designated as subversives, as threats to national security but who were no such thing. Typically, they were unafraid to express dissenting views of the national interest. Most were perceived by MI5 as guilty by association, real or imagined, with the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. Together they constitute MI5s invisible Red List.

This suspicion of a socialist insurrection, at any time, was the core of MI5s values and pursuits for seventy years. The circles of perceived subversion extended out even to Marxist groups critical of the Soviet Union, Trotskyists for example, and also black nationalists challenging white British rule throughout the Empire. While MI5 pursued the national interest as defined by successive British governments, the Security Service was a law unto itself, shielded by secrecy, its principal officers being strong characters engaged in pursuits, prejudices, hunches of their own. Its agenda was firmly focused on the perpetual Red threat on the horizon and the perceived internal dangers from the nations cultural and educational elites.

In The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (2009), Christopher Andrew offers a general claim that throughout its history MI5 scrupulously respected a clear dividing line between national security and party politics. The available record does not entirely confirm that claim. For example, selective information was presented by MI5 to the Labour prime minister Harold Wilson after he took office in 1964 and was considering his team for ministerial office. It has also been revealed that MI5 had a file on Wilson himself and on the future Labour leader Michael Foot, though neither file had been released by 2020.

The hitherto released files and press cuttings also acquired a life of their own. MI5s file-checkers might be hunting for clues from earlier decades, a subversive meeting attended, a recorded Party card, a pro-socialist published article, a marriage to a suspect, a divorce. This is one reason why the individuals on file cannot be inevitably correlated with what historians might regard as the main periods or issues of the era. Investigations often appear random, haphazard and fixated by association.