In
1920 the Communist Party of Great Britain was founded. It made numerous
proselytes among those British who were tired of the class stratification
present since the Middle Ages in the island and the substantial lack of lifts
that prevented an adequate exchange between the various social classes in which
the United Kingdom society was divided. To join the new party were, as well as
members of the weaker social classes, even young people belonging to the upper
class, tired of the rites and snobbish traditions typical of their families of
origin.
The success of the Communist party in England was the consequence of the
reactionary and closed politics that the conservative party adopted in 1925.
Labor had won the elections with a narrow majority in 1924. The Labor
government remained in office for only 9 months. It was replaced by a
conservative government whose policy was the cause of the general strike of
1926. In this atmosphere of social revolt in the University of Cambridge a
communist cell was formed.
The cell was led by the economics professor Maurice Dobb who managed to involve
some university students with his communist ideas. In those years even the
British had to suffer the consequences of the great depression of 1929, born in
the United States, but that had spread in Europe and in particular in the
Anglo-Saxon country. The economic crisis made Marx’s ideology appear to be a
fair solution to shelter the injustices of liberalism that was interpreted in
England with a mix of capitalism and conservatism, deadly for the classes other
than the British ruling class.
Of course, not all British Marxists then became spies, but a small group of
those belonging to the cell headed by Professor Maurice Dobb went over the
legality border and made itself available to the Soviet services. They were
five: Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Duart Maclean, Anthony Blunt, John
Caircross.
Harold Adrian Russel Philby, nicknamed Kim, was born in India in
1912. His father was an English diplomat who had converted to Islam. He did his
studies in motherland. He enrolled at the University of Cambridge Trinity
College attending economics courses. Heated follower of Marxist theories, he
wished to put himself at the service of communism. He asked for information on
the subject of an exponent of the “World Federation for the help of the
victims of fascism” whose president was the German Willi Münzeberg, one of
the most talented Soviet spies.
Philby was enlisted in Soviet services. One of his first tasks was to help, in
1933 after Hitler’s rise, the Germans, mainly Jews, who fled from Germany and
found themselves in Vienna. He met on that occasion and married the German
Jewess Alice Friedman. He became a journalist to better carry out the tasks
assigned to him by the Muscovite services. He was sent to Spain during the
civil war in this capacity, where, in his journalistic accounts, he openly
sided with the pro-Francoists, thus creating a cover of right-wing sympathizer
with the British authorities. In Teruel during the Spanish civil conflict his
car was hit by a grenade. Three journalists died traveling in the same car.
Philby was the only survivor. For this episode he was also decorated by
Francisco Franco himself.
Guy Burgess was born in Devon in
1911. He was the son of Malcolm de Moncy Burgess, a senior officer of the Royal
Navy. He studied at the University of Eton and then moved to the naval academy
of Dartmouth where he spent two years. He enrolled at Trinity College in Cambridge
where he met another of Cambridge’s five spies, Anthony Blunt. Blunt introduced
him to the Cambridge Apostles whose members had embraced Marxist ideas. The
philosopher Bertrand Russell and economist John Keynes were also members of
this association. Burgess was enlisted in the group of spies. After the
university, Burgess was hired as a journalist in the Times and worked as a
correspondent from Spain during the civil war.
Donald Duart Maclean was the son of the British politician Sir Donald
Maclean. He was born in 1913 in Marylebone. He attended the best private
schools before enrolling in 1931 at Trinity College. In Cambridge he began his
process of approaching communism, which was completed with the entry of Donald
into the Cambridge Apostles, where he met Anthony Blunt. Anthony introduced him
to Guy Burgess and the others in the quintet. In 1933 he followed his father’s
footsteps and began his political career. He was an exponent of the Foreign
Office and in 1938 he held a position at the British embassy in Paris, where he
remained until the German occupation of France.
Anthony Blunt was born in Bournemouth in 1907. He, too of good family,
attended the University of Cambridge where he met the other four of the spy
cell that was active in the university. He was a member, along with others, of
the Cambridge Apostles. He was the only one who never explained Marxist
sympathies. He supported his spy activity with his passion for art history. He
held the post of conservator of royal artistic heritage and he was a professor
of art history at the University of Oxford.
John Caircross was born in 1913 in Lesmahagow. He was the only one in
the group who did not belong to an important family. After graduating from
Cambridge, where he met the other four spies, he took part in a competition in
the Foreign Office, where he was ranked first.
Kim Philby returned to England after Franco’s victory in the Spanish
civil war. Then he was sent to France. He was able to make contacts at the
highest levels in his capacity as a war correspondent. He saw often the
commander in chief of the British forces in France, Lord Gort. He was able to
get confidential news about the British armed forces with the excuse of
interviewing him. All this information was regularly communicated to the Soviet
services. Philby returned to England after the German invasion of France. He
was hired in Section D of the MI6 (Secret Intelligence Service) with the help
of Burgess. He had as his first job the training of Polish agents.
The double agent Philby was so much appreciated that
he soon became responsible for the operations involving the Iberian quadrant,
which included, in addition to Spain and Portugal, the den of espionage that
was Morocco, especially Casablanca, during the Second World War. He was
instructed to lead Section IX, which was interested in the Soviet Union, after
some brilliant operations that succeeded in neutralizing German activities
against the British navy. He succeeded, in his new guise and in an adventurous
manner, to thwart the defection of a Soviet spy stationed in Turkey who had
intended to announce to British counter-espionage the list of Soviet agents
active in Britain, obviously including Philby.
He was the first secretary of the British embassy in Turkey after the war, a
position that was simply a cover for his real spy activity. In 1949 he was
transferred to the Washington Embassy where he dealt with the relationship
between the SIS (MI6) and the CIA. The CIA noted that the atomic plans of the
United States were aware of the Soviets. Philby was instructed to discover the
spy who had passed the news to the Russians. An error in using the secret code
used by the Soviets allowed the discovery of the spy who had informed them. He
was Agent Homer, codename of one of Philby’s companions in Cambridge, Donald
Maclean, second secretary of the British embassy in the US capital until the
late 1940s. He was then transferred to the embassy in Cairo, Egypt. Philby
informed Maclean meanwhile the SIS decided what to do. Maclean fled to the
Soviet Union, accompanied by Guy Burgess, who was suspected and under strict
surveillance because of his disorderly conduct, conduct that had determined his
early return to England.
Philby was investigated on suspicion of having favored the two traecherous
spies who had fled to the east. Despite the investigations and the surveillance
to which he was subjected, his true activity at the service of the Soviet Union
was not discovered.
In 1956, completely rehabilitated, Philby had a position in Beirut with the
cover of an Economist journalist. His task was to facilitate an agreement
between French, English and Israeli to undermine Nasser from the post of
president of Egypt, facilitating the resumption of control of the Suez Canal
that the Anglo-French had lost after the nationalization of the waterway and
the subsequent debacle in the Suez war against the Egyptians. In 1962 Philby
tried to convince an English Jewess to become an informer of Soviet services.
The woman, Flora Salomon, confided it in some of her friends. The voice reached
the SIS offices in London. A service official, Kim’s close friend, Nicholas
Elliott, was sent to Beirut.
Somehow Philby had become aware of the suspicions about him. He welcomed Elliott saying he was waiting for him: “half expecting” were his words. After Elliott reported this conversation in London, Philby’s capture was decided. They were not in time, Kim warned of what had been decided by Russian diplomat Yuri Modin of the Soviet embassy in London, he embarked on the Russian cargo “Dolmatova” that at that time was moored in the port of Beirut. The ship took off with such haste that hit a pier coming out of the port. It was January 23, 1963. A few days later Kim Philby entered Moscow.
The English spy became alcoholic because cold
reception he received in Moscow. Kim Philby intertwined a relationship with
Maclean’s American wife, Melinda, who married in the Soviet capital after she
divorced her husband. He later held an important position in the KGB. He became
the trainer of spies intended for use in the United States and Australia. In
1972 he remarried with a Russian woman. In 1988 he died of a heart attack. The
USSR granted him a state funeral with all honors. It is said that the writer
Graham Greene, also a secret agent of MI6, resigned from the service because he
had somehow realized the double game of Philby, but he did not want to report
this suspect to his superiors.
Guy Burgess, hired as a journalist by the BBC, was contacted by
Chamberlain, the prime minister, to carry out some delicate covert operations
with the French. Later he was hired in the MI6 section D. He could do his job
as a double agent in favor of Soviet services being in a convenient position,
the SIS power station in London. He was in charge of organizing the
“Semina” operation during the second World War. It was about hitting
the cultivated fields of Germany with incendiary balloons, to destroy the crops
and somehow provoke an artificial famine of agricultural products. He resumed
his work as a journalist with the BBC after the conclusion of this operation.
He later returned to the British public administration and was seconded to the
British Embassy in Washington. Here he was involved in the affair of his friend
Maclean, suspected of being an agent of the KGB. Philby, also in Washington,
sent him to London to inform the referent of the group of five, the Russian
Yuri Modin, of the danger that ran Maclean, who was at that time in London and
was about to be discovered. Modin realized that Burgess also ran the same
imminent danger. He prepared their boarding headed to France from where,
crossing half of Europe, they arrived safely in Moscow. In 1963 Burgess died in
the Russian capital because of alcoholism. In 1984 the personal story of Guy
Burgess was told in the film “Another Country”. Rupert Everett was
the star in the film playing Guy Burgess.
Donald Maclean was sent to Washington, after his post as a diplomat in
Paris, from where he had returned the German after invasion of France. He was
appointed as a contact person for the United Kingdom of the “Manhattan
Project”. The project, very secret, aimed at the construction of a bomb
that uses nuclear fission on an element of uranium, the atomic bomb. It will
then be used against Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was able to
give important information to the Russian services relating to US nuclear
secrets from this crucial position. Alcoholic, Maclean used to go in the New
York night clubs to get drunk, telling that he was a Russian spy. Fortunately for
him he was not taken seriously because of the obvious alteration due to
alcohol.
In 1948 he was transferred to the embassy in Cairo as deputy to the ambassador,
thanks to his father’s recommendations. Meanwhile, the CIA had learned that a
Soviet agent, codenamed Homer, was a senior foreign ministry official. Kim
Philby was also collaborating in the investigation. When it became clear that
under the name of Homer, Donald Maclean was hiding, Philby was able to inform
his friend of the danger he was running. Even Burgess had returned to London,
blown by suspicions that hovered over him. Both Maclean and Burgess fled from
London. The two passed from France and Germany, reaching Moscow. Maclean had a
position in the Soviet Foreign Ministry. Mined by alcoholism, also due to the
betrayal of his wife Melinda who had become Philby’s mistress, he died in 1981
in Moscow.
Anthony Blunt was the one that held throughout the story the lowest profile of the group of five spies of Cambridge. He began his activity in London as an art historian. During the Second World War he enlisted in the army and was used in the military police on French country. Never having made known his sympathies for communism he succeeded in being particularly effective in transmitting news reserved to the Soviets. His source was his friend Leo Long, who was converted to communism by Blunt himself. The art historian was so much appreciated in Moscow that he even received letters of thanks for his work.
In the fifties Blunt abandoned his work as a Soviet spy, dedicating himself to teaching art history. He was the greatest world expert of the French painter Nicolas Poussin. In his respectable role as a historian he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth. In 1964 one of his friends, Michael Strait, denounced to the SIS the attempt made by Blunt to convert him to communism and to hire him as an informer of the Soviets. Blunt, to avoid unpleasant consequences, agreed to collaborate with MI5 by providing the names of three spies active in the United Kingdom, also making the name of Caircross, but the inquirers did not find evidence Caircross was involving. He contributed to the dismantling of the Soviet information network in United Kingdom. He continued undisturbed his work as a historian in exchange for information.
In 1979, his role as the fourth spy of Cambridge was revealed in the book “Climate of Treason” by Andrew Boyle. Following this he was deprived of the title of knight, but he did not suffer any consequence due to the collaboration he gave to the services of the United Kingdom. He wrote a dozen essays on French and Italian painting, including “Neapolitan Baroque and Rococo Architecture”. He died in London in 1983.
John Caircross worked in the Foreign Office and the Ministry of the Treasury. He had the opportunity to inform the Soviets of the strategies that Churchill elaborated during the Second World War from his position within the public administration, and he informed the Soviet about the location of the Luftwaffe bases in German territory. He also informed his friends of the existence of the “Manhattan Project”, news was particularly valuable for the Russians to bridge the technological gap with the West. The British services were informed of his alleged involvement among the Cambridge Five by Anthony Blunt. Despite this Caircross denied being a spy in the service of the Soviet Union and he was believed by the investigators.
There were serious suspicions about the true personality of John Caircross and his membership of the gang of five only following the publication of the book The Secret History of the KGB written by Oleg Gordievskji. He spent the last years of his life in the south of France. He died of natural causes on October 8, 1995.
The story of the five spies who came from Cambridge poisoned British political life for decades and kept Western services in constant alarm. Many films, books, television dramas have dealt with this story. The BBC drama “Cambridge spies” of 2003 was one of the last dramas telling it.
(Photo at the top: King’s College, Cambridge, 2005, Cruccone – CC BY 3.0)
