The Last Cambridge Spy E-Book

Chris Smith

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 470

Beschreibung

John Cairncross was among the most damaging spies of the twentieth century. A member of the infamous Cambridge Ring of Five, he leaked highly sensitive documents from Bletchley Park, MI6 and the Treasury to the Soviet Union – including the first atomic secrets and raw decrypts from Enigma and Tunny that influenced the outcome of the Battle of Kursk. In 2014, Cairncross appeared as a secondary, though key, character in the biopic of Alan Turing's life, The Imitation Game. While the other members of the Cambridge Ring of Five have been the subject of extensive biographical study, Cairncross has largely been overlooked by both academic and popular writers. Despite clear interest, he has remained a mystery – until now. The Last Cambridge Spy is the first ever biography of John Cairncross, using newly released material to tell the story of his life and espionage.

Leseprobe

Dedicated to the memory of my late aunt, Marty Kilby

First published 2019

This edition first published 2022

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Chris Smith, 2019, 2022

The right of Chris Smith to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

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

ISBN 978 0 7509 9172 8

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

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Contents

Foreword by Sir Dermot Turing

Foreword by Professor Richard Aldrich

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1    Lesmahagow

2    The Red Generation

3    A Foreign Country

4    The Third Secretary

5    An Unsatisfactory Probationer

6    LISZT

7    KURORT: Bletchley Park and Ultra Intelligence

8    A Semi-Monastic Life

9    On His Majesty’s Secret Service

10  The Venona Project

11  The ‘Ealing’ Spy

12  New Careers

13  Confession

14  The Hunt for the Fifth Man

15  Agent for the Duration

Afterword

Appendices – Interviews with John Cairncross

Notes

Bibliography

Foreword bySir Dermot Turing

John Cairncross’s own book about his life is called The Enigma Spy. The title is something of an embellishment, since Cairncross spent only a year at Bletchley Park, and what he did there in the way of spying for the Soviet Union was of doubtful value. It is remarkable that Cairncross’s efforts were the high-water-mark of Soviet penetration into the agency which would, in due time, become the front line of the Cold War; in one sense, it is a tribute to the Government Code & Cypher School, the official name of the code-breaking organisation at Bletchley, and its somewhat unorthodox methods of recruitment, that the Soviets did no better.

The sensational title of Cairncross’s book gives something away about who he was, and how he perceived himself. He was a complex figure, who seems to have striven for most of his life to make a name for himself, and to achieve recognition and acceptance. His own story about spying for Russia in World War II is couched in defensive terms : it was acceptable, because Russia was an ally and everyone was trying to defeat Germany, and the Russian victory at the Battle of the Kursk Salient (which Cairncross attributes in part to the decrypts he stole from Bletchley) was an important milestone on the road to Allied victory. Was Cairncross writing to achieve notoriety, to justify himself, to explain away the fact that he had not been exfiltrated by the KGB, or was it an exercise in self-deception?

This new study of Cairncross by Chris Smith re-examines the story of John Cairncross, as a misfit, as a hapless spy, as someone perpetually outside the cliquey British intelligence establishment. We discover that there is a lot more to Cairncross’s life than the selective autobiography was willing to give away. Notwithstanding his unsuitability for tradecraft, Cairncross had a searing intelligence, a superlative gift for language, and a multi-faceted career. Cairncross should never have been a spy : his unqualified successes were in the academic world, and it is the tragedy of Cairncross’s life-story that his spying background ultimately ruined the best chance he had for academic success and the reputation for which he hungered. Although he was ‘the last Cambridge spy’, he was never part of the ‘Cambridge spy ring’ – forever on the outside, and in the final analysis deemed too unimportant by the Establishment to be worth prosecuting. Cairncross’s own book looks like a last attempt to regain entry to the charmed circle.

The Last Cambridge Spy is not just a fascinating, well-paced book about an interesting individual, but it also invites us to re-appraise the very idea of the ‘Cambridge spy ring’. We have been conditioned to think about the Soviet infiltration of British intelligence in terms which show up the failings of old-boy networks, recruitment on the basis of social background rather than skills, and inability to confront prejudices even in the face of overwhelming evidence. That narrative is beginning to look tired: here we can see a more subtle Establishment at work, making a carefully-calculated decision about the value of prosecuting Cairncross through the courts; and the very idea of a homogeneous group of ‘Cambridge spies’ begins to seem less of a reality than a headline for twentieth-century journalists. Perhaps it is appropriate to ask afresh how significant the penetration of MI6 by the Soviet Union actually was. The Last Cambridge Spy is a timely and lively account of an interesting figure, whose confused relationships with Moscow and Whitehall might just help us get closer to an understanding of that question.

Sir Dermot Turing2019

Foreword by ProfessorRichard Aldrich

Chris Smith offers us a remarkable account of John Cairncross, one of the most significant spies of the twentieth century. Less of a household name than flamboyant figures like Guy Burgess and Kim Philby, he was nonetheless effective. He secured thousands of secret documents from the most sensitive areas of British government, including its intelligence agencies and passed them to the Soviet Union between 1937 and 1952. He siphoned off material from Bletchley Park’s cryptanalytic efforts in the run-up to the Battle of Kursk, the greatest tank battle of the Second World War. This was a period when the Russians were at their greatest peril and arguably his espionage had a significant impact on the course of the twentieth century’s most important conflict. The KGB showed its gratitude by awarding him not only medals but money to buy a car and even a wedding present.

This book sheds light on an elusive figure. Cairncross was above all a shy and awkward intellectual. He left home in 1929 to study at the University of Glasgow, the Sorbonne and finally the University of Cambridge from which he graduated with a First Class degree in 1936. An absent-minded professor type – he was prone to mistakes, lapses of memory and was poor at espionage tradecraft. He finally felt the net closing on him soon after the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean in 1951, but artfully traded a formal confession to MI5 to avoid prosecution a decade later. Hoping to make a name for himself as a translator of Racine and Corneille and also as an expert on Moliere, he was instead exposed in 1979 and spent the latter years of his life in flight from journalists and eager book writers. But Chris Smith has captured him at last and tells his story – it is a riveting read.

Professor Richard Aldrich2019

Acknowledgements

Over the course of writing this book I have incurred a considerable number of debts. Much of the research upon which this book is based was conducted in Scotland and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland were generous enough to provide a grant to subsidise that research. I have also been lucky enough to receive a great deal of advice and help from friends and colleagues. In particular, I would like to thank Richard Aldrich and Chris Moran, who read the manuscript and made key suggestions for improvement. Similarly, I’d also like to thank Benet Vincent, Jim Clarke and Kris Lovell, who also read chapters of the book, spotting errors and highlighting terrible prose in equal measure. My thanks also go to The History Press, and to my commissioning editor Mark Beynon in particular, who have supported this project since its infancy, endured my delays and offered nothing but unwavering support. Rupert Allason also presented corrections for the paperback edition, for which he has my thanks.

The original seeds for this book were planted during my Doctoral research, conducted at Aberystwyth University, under the supervision of Siân Nicholas and Iwan Rhys Morus. Without their formative influence, careful instruction and tireless patience, neither this book, nor my previous effort, The Hidden History of Bletchley Park (2015), could have been written. I have greatly profited from discussion with friends, colleagues and experts who helped me form my ideas. Particular mention must go to Björn Weiler, Peter Lambert, Brett Sanders, John Grima, Jacques Gallagher, Sonja Astley, Darren Reid, Juliette Pattinson, Amy Blakeway, Emily Guerry, Phil Slavin, Philip Boobbyer, Kate Terkanian, Kate Murphy, Rosie Wayne and Angela John. Of particular note is Rosie Toy, a former student whose First Class dissertation has informed my perception of MI5. The staff and patrons of The Cricketers Arms, Leamington Spa, have also been excellent sounding boards for my ideas, so my thanks go to them and, in particular, Ben Houghton O’Connor, who bore the brunt of this – so I apologise for having been the proverbial and literal pub bore.

I am also grateful to the archivists and librarians who held my hand through much of the research process. These include staff at the National Archives, Kew; the British Library, London; the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth; the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; Lesmahagow Library; South Lanarkshire Council Archives, East Kilbride; Glasgow City Library; the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury; the University of Glasgow Archives; the University of Cambridge Library; the University of Bristol Library and the Bletchley Park Trust Archive, Bletchley. Of special note are the staff of the Burns Library, Boston College, Massachusetts, who were kind enough to send me copies of correspondence between John Cairncross and Graham Greene, free of any charge, and have allowed me to quote from this material liberally. I would also like to thank two of my former students Rosie Wayne and Rosie Toy.

I owe a huge debt of thanks to Gayle Gowe, who allowed me to access and quote from John Cairncross’ papers, gave up her time to talk to me about John, and offered encouragement regarding my proposed book. I would also like to thank Frances Cairncross, who has kindly allowed me to quote from the papers of her father, Sir Alexander Kirkland Cairncross.

My mother, Susan Smith, in addition to offering moral support and love, also read sections of the book and assisted me greatly by researching the genealogy of the Cairncross family. Finally, my love and thanks to my partner, Kellie, and our cat, Heath, who have been forced to live with the ghosts of the Ring of Five for many years.

Introduction

In ‘One of us’, a 1986 episode of the BBC’s classic political sitcom, Yes, Prime Minister, Sir Humphrey Appleby (Nigel Hawthorne), is put on the spot by his former boss, Sir Arnold Robinson (John Nettleton). Suspicion has fallen on Humphrey: despite his long, distinguished career, has he been a Soviet intelligence agent operating at the heart of the Civil Service all along? In answer to the allegation, Sir Humphrey indignantly responds ‘But I couldn’t have been, I wasn’t at Cambridge! I’m not one of them, I’m a married man, I’m one of us!’1 The Soviet Union, the show joked, knew more about what was going on in the British government than the hapless Prime Minister, Jim Hacker (Paul Eddington). Soviet spies had infiltrated the heart of Whitehall and had gone unnoticed throughout long distinguished careers in the Civil Service. They got away with their treasonous subterfuge because they were chaps who travelled in the right circles and who had the right school and university ties. They were above suspicion. They were English gentlemen.

Though the subject of comedy by the 1980s, the naivety and class prejudice of the British Civil Service, so mercilessly lampooned in Yes, Prime Minister was very real and very serious. Crude assumptions and prejudices regarding class among Britain’s civil servants facilitated the worst intelligence failure in modern British history, and the Soviet Union ruthlessly exploited this blind spot. Throughout the 1930s, Soviet ‘illegals’ – resident agents operating in Britain – carefully selected, recruited and nurtured emerging talent at Britain’s ancient universities of Cambridge and, to a lesser extent, Oxford. After their graduation these recruits forged high-flying careers in the civil and intelligence services, all the while leaking key information to their Soviet handlers. Their elite education and backgrounds ensured that they were trusted implicitly and without question. Over the course of the Cold War, as these agents were eventually discovered, a steady stream of embarrassing revelations emerged in the press.

Of the agents that Moscow recruited in this fashion, five emerged who stood out from the rest. The quality and quantity of the material they supplied was unparalleled; they were, in the words of the former KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti or Committee for State Security) officer Yuri Modin, ‘the most valuable spies.’2 These men, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby and John Cairncross have widely been labelled the ‘Cambridge Five’. Both fact and conjecture regarding their activities have filled countless books and newspaper column inches.

The questions regarding Soviet infiltration of the British state first created a media storm in 1951 when the Foreign Office officials Burgess and Maclean sensationally disappeared, only to emerge later living in the Soviet Union. Throughout the remainder of the Cold War and beyond, there has been a constant flow of information regarding those Soviet agents who operated in Britain and the sheer enormity (both in terms of quantity and importance) of the material they passed to Moscow. For many years, from the 1950s onwards, much of this amounted to speculation regarding the identity of these spies and the damage their betrayals wrought. At first, there were the two ‘missing diplomats’, Burgess and Maclean. However, in 1961 the Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn asserted that the two were part of a ‘Ring of Five’.

In 1963, a ‘third man’ was revealed when Kim Philby, following in the footsteps of Burgess and Maclean, absconded to the Soviet Union. The public had to wait until 1979 to learn the identity of a ‘fourth man’, Anthony Blunt, who was publicly unmasked by the journalist Andrew Boyle.3 This was then confirmed on 21 November 1979 by the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, in the House of Commons.4 From that point on, the hunt was on for the ‘fifth man’. This book is about that fifth man – John Cairncross.

It should be remembered that decades later the identity of the fifth man remains controversial. Over the years, authors, journalists, historians and fellow travellers have presented a variety of ‘true’ fifth men. For instance, the Australian writer Roland Perry made the case that it was Victor Rothschild.5 However, today the overwhelming consensus among historians and the weight of evidence – based on what has emerged from Soviet archives and former KGB officers – suggests John Cairncross was that fifth man. For his own part, Cairncross, though admitting that he was a spy, downplayed the extent of his activities; he always rejected the label ‘the fifth man’ and indeed the notion that there was a ‘Ring of Five’ at all. In this book I will present the highly compelling evidence arranged by others suggesting that Cairncross’ espionage activities were far more considerable than he was willing to admit. However, I will also present Cairncross’ arguments and leave it to readers to draw their own conclusions.

*

Today John Cairncross is perhaps most well known as a minor character in the biopic film about the mathematician and cryptanalyst Alan Turing, The Imitation Game (2014).6 The central action of the film takes place in Britain’s secret Second World War code-breaking centre, Bletchley Park, and the main characters are all mathematicians. Cairncross’ role in the film is as one of Turing’s cryptanalyst colleagues, working in secret for Moscow. This is true inasmuch as Cairncross was posted to Bletchley Park and did use his position to pass highly secret intelligence, among the most closely guarded secret information of the war in fact, to the Soviet Union. Such was the significance of the material generated at Bletchley Park, the official historian of British wartime intelligence, Sir Harry Hinsley, estimated that it reduced the length of the war by no less than two years.7 However, Cairncross was no cryptanalyst; indeed, it is near certain that he never met Turing or any of the other main characters depicted in the film. Cairncross, who worked shifts as a translator in a system that operated like a production line, occupied a very different environment to key figures such as Turing.

Nevertheless, Cairncross was indeed there. Contrary to some of the somewhat whimsical claims that the wartime inhabitants of Bletchley Park were the ‘geese who laid the golden egg and never cackled’, Stalin’s intelligence officials had enjoyed first-hand access to Britain’s most secret intelligence nerve-centre.8 Before that he had served in the Foreign Office, the Treasury and had been the personal private secretary to Lord Hankey, a member of the Cabinet. Afterwards he would serve in MI6, the Treasury and the Ministry of Supply.

The Blunt affair of 1979, which revealed that a Knight of the Realm, the Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures and former MI5 man, Anthony Blunt, was a traitor, shocked the nation. In its wake, thanks to revelations provided by John Colville, Cairncross was soon also publicly revealed as a spy in the pages of the Sunday Times by Barrie Penrose and David Leitch.9 Over the course of the early 1980s, Cairncross continued to feature in the press and also appeared in Chapman Pincher’s 1981 and 1984 works, Their Trade is Treachery and Too Secret Too Long.10 Similarly, he also appeared in Penrose and Simon Freeman’s 1986 biography of Anthony Blunt Conspiracy of Silence, was named in Peter Wright’s 1987 memoir Spycatcher, and in Robert Cecil’s 1988 biography of Donald Maclean.11

In all of these books, Cairncross was depicted as a relatively minor figure. However, in 1990 the historian Christopher Andrew, in conjunction with the Soviet defector Oleg Gordievsky, made headlines. They alleged that Cairncross had been the first Atomic spy.12 They further claimed, based on Gordievsky’s information, that they could show definitively that Cairncross was indeed the fifth man of the Cambridge spy ring. Cairncross, they alleged, had leaked many thousands of pages of highly sensitive material to Moscow throughout a lengthy relationship with Soviet intelligence lasting from 1937 to 1952. This was soon followed, in 1993, by revelations from the former KGB officer, Oleg Tsarev, who named Cairncross as the ‘sixth man’ (awarding Michael Straight the title of ‘fifth man’), in reference to the order in which the spies were recruited.13 Adding further fuel to the fire, the memoirs of Cairncross’ former handler, Yuri Modin, presented Cairncross as one of the most important spies the Soviet Union had ever possessed.14

It was in this atmosphere that Cairncross decided to write his own memoirs, which were published in 1997 by his widow, Gayle, two years after his death in 1995. The central argument at the heart of The Enigma Spy was that the author had been motivated by patriotism. Cairncross’ purpose, he claimed, was to serve Britain by aiding Moscow. The logic of this outwardly contradictory position was that if the Soviet Union fell during the Second World War, then Britain would undoubtedly be next. Churchill and his inner-circle were remiss in not sharing the wealth of Bletchley-generated information at their disposal with their Russian allies, so Cairncross had taken matters into his own hands.

Cairncross also claimed that the Cambridge Five, such as it was, did not really exist and that he worked alone. Certainly he had known the other key players. He worked with Maclean in the Foreign Office and Philby in MI6, he had been in the same Cambridge college (Trinity) with Blunt and knew Burgess socially, but he claimed to be ignorant of their activities. He categorically denied being part of an intelligence cell with them. Further, he said that the charge that he had been an atomic spy was risible. He had been, he claimed, a very small fish in a very large pond. However, despite his efforts, the accusations continued to flood in as more information from both former Soviet intelligence officers and even the Soviet archives became available.15 Nevertheless, despite the interest and accusations that plagued his later years, no biography, beyond his own account, has yet been dedicated to him. Moreover, though he has sometimes featured fairly prominently in other books narrating the activities of the Ring of Five, Cairncross has typically been awarded only a few pages worth of attention. I aim in this book to remedy this situation.

*

This book cannot, however, possibly be seen as the final word on John Cairncross. Far from it. I have attempted to reconstruct his life from the sparse official files produced by the British state, but also the rather more wholesome letters and diaries that were produced by Cairncross, his friends, his colleagues, and his family. Yet though there have been partial releases, such as the KGB files to pre-selected authors such as Nigel West and John Costello, free and open access to the Soviet Union’s intelligence archives is at the time of writing unavailable. In short, historians cannot check the original records for themselves.

Writing about spies and the dark, dangerous and secret world which they occupied is fraught with obstacles. The key challenge to an intelligence historian typically is acquiring documentary evidence. Exploring the case of John Cairncross has proven to be no exception. Given the extensive penetration of the British state by Soviet intelligence, the scale of the records collected about agents by the British (and American) intelligence services after they were revealed is likely to be vast. This has certainly been confirmed in the case of recent releases of files regarding Burgess and Maclean to the National Archives, Kew, which comprise many thousands of documents. However, there are far fewer materials available relating to Cairncross. Indeed, to date, only four files have been released for public inspection that deal with Cairncross in any serious detail: a Foreign Office personnel file partially detailing the information they collected on him after his initial interrogation in 1952; an MI5 file on the Burgess and Maclean affair that includes reports on those interrogations; a Cabinet Office file; and a Home Office file, heavily redacted, I obtained via a freedom of information request.16 Clearly, there are many relevant files still to be released to the National Archives, Kew, by the intelligence services.

Given the relatively meagre official source material available, it is clear that a ‘standard’ intelligence history, based on careful sifting of state documents, is not easily achievable. Meanwhile, what evidence there is of John Cairncross’ specific activities has already been reported elsewhere. Since the late 1990s, a wealth of material emanating from both former Soviet intelligence officers and Soviet and British archives has become available and outlined in a variety of excellent books, many of which have provided good accounts of Cairncross’ espionage activities.17 Naturally, this biography narrates (and draws upon) much of the same story as already outlined in these works. However, it is not the intention that this biography reinvent the Cairncross wheel. Instead, the central objective is to provide an exploration of John Cairncross’ character, to tell the wider story of his life and to place him within the broader context of twentieth century British society and its history.

Understanding why spies offered their assistance by divulging their country’s secrets to an enemy power is inevitably a key consideration for intelligence historians. In order to understand the why, as opposed to only the what and how, it is necessary to turn to social, cultural and economic history. Unsurprisingly, therefore, issues such as social class and attitudes towards sexuality have been the subject of commentary by authors examining the successful Soviet infiltration of British institutions. However, the exploration of such factors has tended to be fairly limited. With this in mind, in this book, I have endeavoured to invert that arrangement – this is a biography not just of Cairncross, but of Britain’s secret world and it aims to explain Cairncross’ place within it. It also considers his personal and professional life beyond espionage, his relationships with family and friends – not least the celebrated author, Graham Greene.

To date, a number of linked hypotheses have been postulated to explain the actions of the Cambridge Five. Among the first was crude homophobia as satirised by Yes, Prime Minister (Sir Humphrey couldn’t be a spy because, as he explained, ‘I’m a married man’). When, in 1955, the British government finally admitted in a White Paper that Burgess and Maclean had fled to Moscow, it invoked the spectre of homosexuality – Burgess being unapologetically gay at a time when it was still illegal in Britain – but refused to comment on the matter. Naturally, elements of the press jumped on the issue of sexual ‘deviancy’. For instance, the scurrilous Sunday Pictorial asserted ‘[t]his sordid secret of homosexuality – which is one of the keys to the whole scandal of the missing diplomats – is ignored by the Government White Paper.’18 Further impetus was added to this theory when, in 1979, it was revealed that Blunt, also gay, was the fourth man. Andrew Boyle, in the book that paved the way for Blunt’s exposure, was keen to emphasise sexuality, in witheringly negative terms, at one point even conflating homosexuality with Communism.19

This hypothesis, despite its considerable longevity in the imaginations of certain parts of the press and public, holds no water at all. Burgess and Blunt were indeed homosexuals, and although happily married, there has been speculation that Maclean was bisexual.20 However, Cairncross, to borrow the historian Christopher Andrew’s words, was ‘like Philby a committed heterosexual’.21 In fact, on a number of occasions Cairncross demonstrated some discomfort in the presence of homosexuals. For instance, he once described a party he attended with Burgess as ‘markedly and unpleasantly homosexual’.22 Nevertheless, as late as 1995, in an obituary of Cairncross, the journalist Bernard Levin took to the pages of The Times, writing, ‘Then there was Sir Anthony Blunt, who cared for nothing but art and a ripe bum-boy, and who had been an early believer in the wonders of the Soviet Union.’23 While, of course, Levin did not explicitly link Blunt’s sexuality (or his love of art) with his role as a Soviet agent, the purpose of his crass homophobic remark was clear.

Of course, associating hostile espionage and Communism with homosexuality in the 1950s (and beyond) reflected the attitudes of the period. However, it muddied the waters. Rather than demanding a serious investigation into how the Soviet Union had infiltrated the nation’s instruments of government and security, publications such as the Sunday Pictorial instead encouraged fruitless sexual profiling. A significantly more nuanced and persuasive argument regarding sexuality has been proposed by both Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones and Christopher Andrew. Each of the Cambridge Five, in their own way, found the sexual mores of their class to be ostracising, be it womanising or homosexuality. The promise of a more enlightened future under Communism, coupled with class rebellion, made a compelling cocktail.24

A second hypothesis is that these men were drawn to ideological Communism. Certainly, in the case of Maclean, his biographer Robert Cecil noted that once in Moscow, he was happy to have left pretence behind him and embrace the Soviet ideology openly.25 Cairncross, on the other hand, even after his wide public exposure as a spy, denied anything other than a brief and youthful flirtation with Communism while at Cambridge. However, it is difficult to accept that conclusion after examining his life. After all, he did spy for the Soviet Union. One of his later MI5 inquisitors, Peter Wright, claimed that even long after his espionage career was over, his Communist sympathies remained undiminished.26 However, this still leaves the question of why Cairncross found Communism attractive in the first place. Despite his careful efforts to underplay this issue in his autobiography, Cairncross grew up in the coalmining community of Lesmahagow in South Lanarkshire, which was beset by considerable social and economic hardship and upheaval. It is, therefore, imperative to at least consider the impact of episodes such as the post-First World War recession, the 1926 General Strike, and the Great Depression on his development.

The third hypothesis often cited is that the rise of fascism in Europe had a profound influence on the mindset and political outlooks of Britain’s Soviet spies. In particular, they were concerned by the rise of Nazism in Germany and the threat it posed to peace, security, minority groups, both in Germany and the world more generally. The Cambridge Five seem to have viewed western democracies as lacking both the moral fibre and the ideological commitment to defeating such a menace; salvation could only lie with the Soviet Union. Certainly, although Kim Philby was already a Communist, it was only after a period aiding stricken refugees from Nazi Germany, while in Vienna in 1934, that he turned decisively towards the Soviet Union.27 As we will see, Cairncross as a young man also saw Nazism first hand and this would prove a significant moment in his political development. It was this, in combination with his early awareness of the injustices of poverty and hardship, which would steer him towards the Soviet Union.

Perhaps more important though was the fact that Cairncross never fit in with the aristocratic and upper middle-class world that he would join. He was a difficult man, keen to argue and lacked the social and economic graces to succeed in an environment where born privilege ruled. He was propelled to reveal his country’s secrets, not only because of a contrarian personality, but because he felt rejected by the high society he had worked so hard to enter – a fact that he greatly resented.

*

A brief note on terms: throughout this book the Soviet intelligence apparatus that conducted foreign intelligence is described as the NKVD (Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del or the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) and, after 1954 as the KGB. Strictly speaking, this is incorrect. The organisation went under numerous guises, names and bureaucratic restructuring before finally becoming the KGB in 1954. Yet, for the sake of simplicity, prior to 1954 the organisation will be referred to as the NKVD and after as the KGB.28

1

Lesmahagow

The Cairncross family was an old and prosperous one, which had produced a number of senior clergymen. In 1390, a Simon de Cairncross was noted in the Exchequer rolls and in 1439, under the great seal of Balmashannar, the family was granted lands in Inverness, Forfar, Perth and Aberdeen.1 A century later, Robert Cairncross was appointed Bishop of Ross in 1539 and served as Chaplain to James V.2 In 1585, Nicol Cairncross, president of the Edinburgh Dean of Guild, built a home comprising three towers at Colmslie Hill on their land near Melrose; this was an estate of no small worth and by 1643 was valued at £1,630.3

Alexander Cairncross (1637–1701), the son of a dyer in the Canongate at Edinburgh and the heir to the Colmslie estate, like Robert before him became an important clergyman. An educated man, Alexander gained a Doctorate, at the University of Edinburgh. As he was a favourite of the Duke of Queensbury, it was eventually arranged that a small bishopric be provided for him in 1684. However, before the end of the year he was promoted further to become the Archbishop of Glasgow and with it Chancellor of Glasgow University, positions he enjoyed from 1684 until 1687.4 However, he fell out of favour with the Lord Chancellor (the Earl of Perth) and lost his position. In 1693 he obtained a position as a bishop in Ireland, which he retained until his death.5

By the eighteenth century, John’s branch of the family had lost its status and Alexander Cairncross (b. 1777), John’s great-grandfather, worked as a gardener at Douglas Castle in South Lanarkshire, not far from Lesmahagow. This was the estate of Charles Douglas-Home – the 12th Earl of Home and the grandfather of the future Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home. Alexander’s tenth child, Andrew, was a businessman, and rose to be the chief buyer at a major Glasgow warehouse with a handsome salary of £600 per annum. In 1864 he left the firm to marry Margaret, the daughter of Thomas McCartney, a Lesmahagow draper, who owned a shop on the village high street.

Thomas was a man of some wealth, but his daughter and her children saw little of it upon his death. At the age of 83, Thomas remarried and left his property to his new wife. Within six months he had died and his widow promptly left the village, taking the inheritance with her. Instead, Andrew, Margaret and their eldest son sustained and developed the drapery and eventually converted the family business into an ironmongery. Margaret and Andrew’s son, following family tradition named Alexander, would go on to marry Elizabeth Wishart, an elementary school teacher.

Alexander and Elizabeth had eight children; the final child, John, was born on 25 July 1913. This large family, comprised of two parents, four boys and another four girls, was certainly not affluent. Her marriage and the birth of her children ensured that Elizabeth’s career in the classroom had come to an end long before John was born, leaving Alexander, a partner in the family business, as the sole earner.

*

Lesmahagow is situated in the heart of the Scottish lowlands, some 20 miles south-east of Glasgow as the crow flies. The village had been the site of a medieval priory founded in 1144, which was burned to the ground by Edward III’s brother, John of Eltham, Earl of Cornwall, in 1336. It was soon rebuilt, only to be destroyed yet again in the early 1560s by the iconoclasts.6 Primarily, the community was centred on agriculture, and would remain so for many centuries. By 1801 the parish was comprised of some 3,070 people, around two-thirds of whom made their living from the land.7 There was, however, a major economic resource beneath the soil – coal.

The first individuals likely to have exploited coal in the area were the medieval monks of the priory; mining continued in the years thereafter, presumably on a relatively small scale. By the eighteenth century, the local Stockbriggs estate was drawing a sizeable income from the ground.8 However, agriculture continued to be the chief source of income and employment in the parish. Such was its status that, in 1805, the Lesmahagow Farmers Society was founded.9 The early nineteenth century was a point of transition away from arable farming and increasingly towards animal husbandry. By the mid-nineteenth century, the sale of dairy produce had become the chief source of rents for the farmers and an annual cattle show attracted large numbers of spectators.10

This situation would not, however, last much longer. Interest in exploiting resources beneath the ground was growing. When gas lighting was introduced in Glasgow, local sources for coal gas became increasingly significant. In 1832 some 8,000 tons of coal were mined; by 1857 that would rise to 60,000 tons.11 This increase followed wider trends throughout the lowlands of Scotland, described by Christopher Harvie as an ‘unlovely “third Scotland” [that] sprawled from South Ayreshire to Fife … neither much liked nor at all well known’.12 This region rapidly dominated the Scottish coal industry and, in turn, other industries reliant on coal-fire smelting. By 1870 some 158 blast furnaces were in operation in Scotland, ninety-two of which were located in Lanarkshire, and by 1890 some 63 per cent of those living in west central Scotland were employed in the mining industry.13

The natural impact on Lesmahagow was that the population of the parish began to rise as individuals flooded in looking for work. Where the population of the parish stood at a little over 3,000 at the beginning of the nineteenth century, by 1861 it had risen to 9,266.14 The increase in the population led to social and economic side effects, such as rising rates of pauperism, from an average of forty-two paupers in the parish at the end of the eighteenth century to nearly 200 by 1862.15 The increasingly urbanised industrial population also brought with it a certain disapproval from wealthy observers, such as J.B. Greenshields. ‘It does not, however, appear very evident,’ he wrote in 1863, ‘that either the conduct or morals of the people have been improved by the increased facilities of education; the vices of drunkenness and pilfering … have certainly not decreased, while discontent has made rapid strides.’16

All the while the mining industry would continue to grow, reaching its peak levels of production by the outset of the First World War.17 In short, Lesmahagow, like many other communities in the immediate region of south Lanarkshire, had become increasingly in thrall to the coal mining industry. The industry not only changed the nature of employment within the community and parish, but transformed its very shape and population. What had been a small agricultural community had become a small urban town, complete with outlying mining villages, centred primarily on that single industry.

*

It was into this small mining and agricultural community that John Cairncross was born in 1913. As we have seen, his was a large family and it is clear that the Cairncrosses were certainly not wealthy. Cairncross himself remembered that there were financial burdens, but they endured. He wrote that the family’s ‘needs were simple – food and basic clothing – but even there economy was practiced.’18

It has been on this basis, the community from which Cairncross was born and raised and the relatively low socio-economic status of his parents, that he has been assumed to have been a working-class Scot. Such a claim is indisputably untrue; Cairncross was very clearly lower middle class. Not only did he identify his own status as lower middle class, but so too did his other family members. His brothers, Andrew and Alec, both described their father as a ‘merchant’ on the University of Glasgow matriculation forms.19 Alexander senior, when surveyed for the valuation and assessment roll for the 1926–27 financial year, was similarly listed as a merchant as well as the proprietor (as opposed to tenant) of his property. Its yearly potential rental value was judged to be £30 8s.20 To provide some context for that sum, a Lesmahagow miner, Guy Bolton, a filler in a nearby pit, recalled the joy of briefly earning double pay in 1926: ‘If you earned twelve shillins a day you wouldnae tell naebody. That was a big wage.’21 This was indeed a lot of money. A few years earlier, in 1920, the average weekly wage packet for coal miners was 16s 9d – approximately £45 a year according to the Miner’s Federation of Great Britain.22 Thus, while Alexander Cairncross was certainly not a wealthy man, he was part of the lower middle-class professionals, a self-employed shop owner as opposed to a member of the working classes, and from his business he clearly was able to draw a reasonable income. Indeed, despite the expenses incurred in raising a large family in a period of economic hardship, Alexander could still afford to ease the household burdens on his wife by hiring a live-in maid.23

John Cairncross placed significant store by his lower middle-class origins. He went as far as to complain that he had been wrongly pigeonholed as a working-class ‘rebel against social injustice. In fact, my parents were sturdy middle class, and though we were not high up the ladder, my father was proud of his relative eminence.’ His father was also a ‘staunch Conservative’, in contrast to the Labour-voting miners. Cairncross was also keen to note that though the Clyde valley has a reputation for working-class militancy, Lesmahagow saw little of it. Moreover, he was insulated from the lives and travails of the working-class miners in the town, which he described in less than a page of his autobiography. Highlighting this point he wrote, ‘we remained apart from the grime of the coalpits.’24

His elder brother, the economist Sir Alec Cairncross, however, took a very different view in his own autobiography. For him the miners and the industrial struggles of the period played a formative role in his early life. As he explained, ‘Glasgow and the region around it had begun to feel the effects of the Depression, of the long miners’ strike of 1926 … for an economist … it was an ideal environment in which to grow up.’25 He further described, as a child, watching the miners returning from the pits, black with coal dust.26 He also grew up with the children of the miners; they went to the same village school and Boys’ Brigade. His early life ‘involved contact … with a wide variety of occupations and very different social backgrounds.’ On the subject of class, he wrote ‘to a boy who lived in the village community … the reality was never class [difference] as such but manners and interests. … there were those who drank heavily and led disorderly lives. Then there were those of less aggressive habits who enjoyed a game and had interesting hobbies or unfamiliar skills.’27

*

The years in which the two youngest Cairncross boys, Alec and John, were in school, first in Lesmahagow and then at Hamilton Academy, were tumultuous ones. The community in which they lived had undergone a radical evolution on the back of the coal industry in the previous century. By the inter-war period that community was, as Sir Alec suggested, again in the midst of rapid change.

This was a period of marked industrial decline, and the reasons for that decline were many and multifaceted. In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, Britain enjoyed a brief economic boom as wartime controls on markets and labour were lifted. This, however, was followed in 1920 by collapse. Demand for British products abroad sharply declined as a global recession set in and people and nations began to tighten their belts. This resulted in sharp falls in exports (30.1 per cent), industrial production (18.6 per cent), real income (3.2 per cent) and employment (14.4 per cent).28 The coal industry was closely tied to other traditional industries, such as iron and steel production, industries that were suffering as the export market collapsed and the home market was inundated with cheap steel from abroad.29

For the workers of Glasgow, the brief boom enjoyed by the rest of the country prior to recession in 1921 never materialised. The two major industries in the city were shipbuilding and engineering; as military and civil demand for both fell in the advent of peace, joblessness in the city rose. Unemployment in these two key industries rose from 0.15 per cent and 0.5 percent cent during the war to 4.9 per cent and 8 per cent by February 1919.30 The sharp decline in these local industries was soon followed by major problems in other industries, such as iron and steel. This perfect storm in turn led to further catastrophe in west central Scotland’s coal mining industry.

In the year that John Cairncross was born, 1913, there were a little under 80,000 people employed by the coal industry in west central Scotland. That figure would remain at around the same level in 1919, representing the peak of employment in the Scottish coal industry. Over the following decade those numbers would come tumbling down. By 1929, the year before Cairncross departed to the nearby city of Glasgow for university, the tally stood at approximately 50,000. By 1932, during the heights of the Great Depression, the figure fell to below 39,000.31 Though all other mining communities in Scotland suffered, none did so like the communities in the small towns and villages of Lanarkshire.

Miners also had to contend with the steady increase in the number of machines down the mines. These were coal-cutters, hulking devices armed with saws and disks that ate into the seam. The purpose of those machines was specifically to replace the hewers. These skilled men were relegated to the even more arduous, yet menial, job of removing the undercut coal from the seam, breaking it up, and loading it for transport back to the surface. The shifts also grew longer, due to machine malfunctions and the need to complete the length of a wall before the next shift began.32

Such rapid changes to the industry and, after the First World War, declining employment and poor conditions, resulted in increased industrial action. The mining industry in west central Scotland was no stranger to strikes in the ten years prior to the First World War, with an average of fifteen per year. Yet, the number of recorded strikes in the decade after the war was twice that figure. Moreover, these strikes were also considerably more intense, involving many more workers.33

*

The social and economic impact both of the recession and of industrial action on Lanarkshire towns was severe. Out of work or striking miners and their families were regularly forced to call upon the generosity of the parish and local council. During the 1920s, new applications for poor relief poured in. In the final two weeks of September 1921 alone, during the post-war recession and a year of widespread industrial dispute, there were more than 131 recorded applications for poor relief. As the wider economy began to improve the number of applications reduced over time to an average of twenty to twenty-five applications a month. This lasted until the end of the decade, when the Great Depression hit, after which numbers reached an average of forty-six a month during the first quarter of 1930.34

The impoverished also had to turn to the parish for other forms of assistance. Each year, throughout the 1920s and ’30s, the parish clothing committee bought and collected items of clothing and fabric. These were distributed to men and women who had been so impoverished that they were incapable of clothing themselves or their children. To give an example of just one individual, Alec Susley received 3.5yd of yarn, two suits, two shirts, two combs and three pairs of boots in 1930. He also had to clothe his little girl and so received a dress, a chemise, a pair of knickers and a petticoat. Such items were not always of the highest quality. In 1930 the Second District Council received complaints regarding the poor quality of dresses being issued to girls. The articles were soon inspected by the councillors.

After careful consideration, the district council unanimously agreed that the type of dresses supplied was made of unsuitable material, especially for exposed rural areas, and they recommended to the public assistance committee that a heavier dress material should be issued as well as knickers and petticoats for girls.35

Despite being of sometimes questionable quality, in that year alone, the parish would distribute: more than 400 yards of fabric; more than seventy suits; more than 100 shirts; nearly 100 chemises; and more than 200 pairs of boots and shoes.36 As a relatively successful member of the community and proprietor of a local shop, Alexander Cairncross did his bit in aiding his neighbours. In 1923 he and his business partner were recorded and thanked for having sold clothing to the parish for poor relief.37

Yet even with these forms of assistance and intervention on both the district and parish level, food poverty was a major problem and some resorted to crime. In 1921, Guy Bolton, then aged just 14 years old, had recently begun working in the coal mines at the nearby village of Coalburn, when a wave of industrial action saw him on strike for thirteen weeks. He was forced into acts of petty theft of food to support himself. He too endured clothing poverty. As he explained, he was:

out stealin’ hens’ eggs, stealin’ tatties [potatoes] and turnips. In fact, that’s a’ ye got tae eat after the first couple o’ weeks. But your mother went in debt in the Store and she got the basics, jist the rough basics. … maybe ye got a pair o’ troosers frae [from] the minister tae weer cut doon. … You got a pair o’ boots, tacky boots, aboot the month o’ October. And when thae boots war run down – and that wasnae to long – that was the summer started. It wis your bare feet then till October again, no matter the weather. That was the position then: a’ the bairns [children] went wi their bare feet.38

The most significant industrial action of the 1920s was, of course, the General Strike of May 1926. As Sir Alec Cairncross noted, the General Strike had a profound impact on the lives and living standards of the Lesmahagow miners. Just as the industrial action of 1921 sent miners in search of poor relief from the parish, so too did the General Strike – only on a vast scale. There was a huge spike in the number of applications that month to a staggering 415.39 Once again, Guy Bolton described the crushing poverty that ensued, ‘Ye had tae go oot and look for your food, because there was nothing, nothing.’ Unlike in 1921, however, rather than acts of petty theft, he and his brothers and friends resorted to poaching. This soon landed him in trouble with the authorities and he was fortunate that the older boys deliberately took the entire blame to spare the younger among them. The older boys each received three-month prison sentences.40

*

Against this backdrop of growing poverty and hardship, the inter-war period saw working-class political activism and militancy. Though a politically Liberal city by the turn of the century, Glasgow was at the heart of the growing Labour movement, the Labour Party and the Independent Labour Party, the latter of which was founded in 1882. The ILP’s early newspapers of the Labour movement, with titles such as Labour Leader and the Miner, were published in Glasgow.41 Its leader, who is now perhaps more closely associated with the Labour Party, Keir Hardie, was a native son of the Clydesdale area. This was also the era of Red Clydeside, a period of intense political radicalism and revolutionary sentiment. Cairncross’ Clydeside was, then, a place of rebelliousness.

Unsurprisingly, the Lesmahagow of Cairncross’ childhood was also a politically active town, though he himself claimed that this activity was relatively low level and rarely crossed his radar. The only political activity he was to describe was a march during the 1926 General Strike, when mine workers proceeded to the town hall in protest that poor relief payments had been suspended.42 Aside from the usual activities at election times, this was not the full extent of political activity in the area. Lesmahagow contained an active branch of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement (NUWM), an organisation founded by the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1921, to highlight the plight of the unemployed.

During the Great Depression, activists such as Bolton were able to call NUWM meetings that would attract hundreds of participants and later, in the mid-1930s, organise hunger marches.43 By his reckoning, the Lesmahagow branch of the NUWM had a thriving membership of no fewer than 300 by the Depression years of the early 1930s. By and large, these men (and they were nearly all men), though not necessarily all card-carrying members of the CPGB, were at least sympathetic to its aims. ‘I couldnae tell ye how many o’ the N.U.W.M. Members were in the Communist Party,’ he recalled, but ‘There was a goodly number. But I can say that they were to a man behind the Party leadership. … We had a good solid core and that was the main thing.’44 Bolton, who himself had joined the CPGB years earlier in 1924 at the age of just 17, had a long history of political activism that had, on occasion, cost him his job.

The poverty of mid-central Scotland did not go unnoticed by Cairncross’ siblings. Andrew recalled in 1964, an ‘early boyhood pastime’ involved watching the miners, covered in coal dust, returning to their homes. ‘They would speed down the hill and through the streets, all of them on bicycles, you know. They looked like a black, moving line.’ He was also closely familiar with the rural element of Lesmahagow’s population, spending his school holidays tending sheep.45 However, Andrew, who was born in 1901 and had departed to university in the early 1920s, would likely have been more removed from the impact of the inter-war years on his home town than his brothers and sisters.

For Sir Alec, the General Strike and the Great Depression, had a profound impact. Not only was he clearly aware of the impact of industrial disputes, particularly the 1926 General Strike, it shaped his entire future. These events ‘reduc[ed] many of the miners’ families to extreme poverty. These economic and social strains formed the background to my years at university.’46 It was no coincidence that he would go on to forge a career as an economist, since that was the discipline asking the central questions relating to the future of the community in which he had been raised:

How could alternative employment be found for the miners and what could be done in the meantime to provide them with a livelihood? The social consequences of high unemployment in poverty, ill health and low morale were all too apparent. The tensions of the General Strike in 1926 and the deepening of the depression a few years later brought home to me the urgency of seemingly intractable problems and the importance of economics as a discipline for resolving them.47

It is impossible to know how much, if at all, the economic hardship he witnessed as a child influenced John Cairncross’ view of the world, his politics as an adult or his sense of place in a class-riven society. Nor can we establish with certainty whether the rebelliousness of the Clydesdale region had much, if any, effect on him. However, it is difficult to reconcile his own account of his childhood with that provided by his brothers. In John’s case, his childhood might have been somewhat Spartan, but nevertheless a middle-class cocoon that insulated and isolated him from the harsh realities faced by the majority of his neighbours. Yet, according to Sir Alec’s autobiography, his observations of poverty and industrial dispute proved formative and they loom large in his account of everyday realities of Lesmahagow. Such crushing poverty was ubiquitous, as Guy Bolton observed, ‘if I knew the population of Lesmahagow at that time I could tell you hoo many were unemployed. … There wis nae industry – nothing.’48

2

The Red Generation

In 1934 at Trinity College, Cambridge, resided a young don named Anthony Blunt. Blunt had arrived at Cambridge in October 1926 to read Mathematics. He was soon joined by the other young Communist radicals with whom he would become forever associated: Kim Philby embarked on his Cambridge studies at Trinity in October 1929; Guy Burgess arrived at Trinity in October 1930; Donald Maclean started at Trinity Hall in 1931.1