DURING THE 1920S, one of the principal responsibilities of the Special Branch became the gathering of intelligence concerning Bolshevik subversion. The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) had evolved in August 1920 from a number of pro-Bolshevik groups influenced, but not controlled, by the Comintern, and included the Socialist Labour Party, the Communist Unity Group and the Workers Socialist Federation. It represented a threat that the security agencies could not ignore.
By 1920, the CPGB had its first MP in the unlikely figure of Lt Colonel Cecil John L’Estrange Malone who, not unnaturally, attracted considerable Special Branch attention; but his early career contained no hint of his subsequent espousal of the communist cause. Indeed, in the general election in November 1918, he stood as a Coalition Liberal and won the East Leyton seat, although he subsequently claimed that he never actually joined the Liberal Party. Later he became a member of the executive committee of the virulently anti-communist Reconstruction Society and wrote a number of articles strongly criticising left-wing activists.
He was born in 1890, in Yorkshire, the youngest child of Savile Richard William L’Estrange Malone, rector of Dalton Holme, and Frances Mary Foljambe. He was related to the sisters Constance, Countess Markievicz, and Eva Gore-Booth, both Irish nationalists and suffragettes; Constance, moreover, was a member of James Connolly’s Irish Citizens’ Army, and took part in the 1916 rising in Dublin. She was imprisoned for treason but was released under the amnesty in 1917, and in 1918 was the first woman to be elected to the Westminster Parliament. So it can be seen that Cecil Malone’s eventual conversion to communism, though not permanent, was not totally inconsistent with his family’s unconventional background.
Cecil Malone also had a distinguished career in the armed forces, initially in the Royal Navy in which he commanded an aircraft carrier but later, having turned to flying, was appointed Assistant Director of the Air Department at the Admiralty. Towards the end of his career he represented the United Kingdom at the Supreme War Council at Versailles. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire.
It was not until 1919 that Malone first came under the notice of Special Branch when his conversion to communism, already suspected, became apparent after he visited Russia as a guest of the Communist Party. During the next five years he featured regularly in Directorate of Intelligence and Special Branch reports to the Cabinet on ‘Revolutionary Organisations in the United Kingdom’.1 In November 1919, Special Branch, in its Directorate of Intelligence role, reported that:
Lieutenant-Colonel Cecil L’Estrange Malone, MP for Leyton, returned to the United Kingdom on the 28 October, after visiting Moscow and Petrograd. He went immediately to the office of the Daily Express, which has continued to publish his articles, though it is understood that some of them were refused as being too openly Bolshevist propaganda. The following note of Colonel Malone’s earlier activities may be of interest: He held, and still holds, a Commission in the Navy, and he was known among his brother officers as a person of extreme views. In April last a meeting of the Sailors’, Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Union was held at 10a Heddon Street, attended by Commander Kenworthy, Mr Neil Maclean MP, and Colonel Malone. This was the preface to a meeting at the Abbotsford Hotel, Russell Square, where Colonel Malone met Mr Robert Williams, of the Transport Workers’ Federation and Mr W. F. Watson, now undergoing a term of imprisonment for a revolutionary speech. Plans were discussed for seizing Whitehall and Westminster and for feeding the troops who were expected to join the revolutionaries. It is to be remembered that both Colonel Malone and Commander Kenworthy were commissioned officers at the time. Colonel Malone appears to have got into Russia in the following way: He had asked in the House of Commons whether a Commission could be sent to Russia, and was told that it was not considered necessary. He then applied for a passport for himself, which was refused. After this, he appears to have obtained a passport on the pretence that he was attached to the Military Mission in Finland. He arrived at Helsingfors on 20 September, and went to Viborg, where arrangements were made for his journey by Sulo Vulijoki, a Finnish Senator of communist sympathies. He then made his way, with the help of Bolshevist agents, to Lake Ladoga, which was crossed in a sailing vessel. In Russia he was the guest of the Communist Party, and he accompanied Trotsky to a review of troops near Moscow in the same motor car; the Bolsheviks naturally regarding him as a first-rate medium for propaganda.2
(The report is quoted in its entirety, as it is a typical example of the thoroughness, the quality and style of SB reporting which contrasted favourably with the stilted police terminology, reminiscent of the Victorian era, still being used in the 1920s.)
Special Branch interest in Malone became more acute when, on 27 October 1920, Erkki Veltheim, a communist courier under surveillance by Special Branch officers, was seen to emerge from Malone’s home at 4 Wellington House, College Road, Chalk Farm, with a Miss Gilbertson. The surveillance continued and the next day Veltheim was arrested in possession of a number of documents. He was charged with failing to register as an alien and to answer reasonable questions put to him by a police officer under the Aliens Order of 1920. After Veltheim’s arrest, Sir Basil Thomson wrote to the Home Secretary informing him of Veltheim’s impending trial, in which Malone would be appearing as a witness. Thomson enclosed with his letter to the Home Secretary an article from The Communist entitled ‘From the Gasworks’, in which Malone expressed cynical views of ‘parliamentary democracy’. Sir Basil suggested that the Speaker of the House of Commons should be informed.3
The information leading to Veltheim’s arrest had been supplied to Thomson by Jacob Nosovitsky, the Comintern’s principal courier operating between Russia and the United States. Thomson had taken the opportunity to recruit him as an informant when he was detained in Liverpool in June 1919. Nosovitsky also worked for the United States Department of Justice as Agent N-100 and was used by them to spy on US communists.
At his trial at Bow Street Police Court, extracts from Veltheim’s documents, including the following passage from a letter to Grigori Zinoviev, head of the Comintern, from Sylvia Pankhurst, were read out by Counsel for the prosecution:
The Communist Parties are not large enough, nor intelligent enough, to make capital out of the situation. We are talking of a Communist Council of Action. Colonel Malone with whom I have been speaking, and who is a member of the Executive of the Communist Party (BSP4) tells me his Executive does not wish to join with us but to absorb us. However he will try.
There was also, said counsel, a postscript which referred to an amount of £3,522, said to have been promised to Sylvia Pankhurst on behalf of the Third International in Moscow. Another document in code was deciphered by the Government Communications and Cypher School. This read:
Rothstein or his deputy not here yet. Impossible go successfully Ireland to start party, etc., or negotiate Republican Mission without money. Present using £300 sent to Irish unions while waiting news. Lent Tanner £70 to run his paper. Instruct us how to obtain money by our note from Kobietsky, or instruct representatives here help us immediately. Consult Rosenberg, Foreign Office and send news re exchange Larkin. Reply J. Cowper, 28 Little St., St Andrew Street, London, WC, 20 October.
Sergeant Foster of Special Branch in his evidence to the court stated that the Rosenberg mentioned in the document was an East End Jew who held a high position in the Foreign Office in Moscow. Counsel questioned him concerning a 56-page typewritten document addressed to Louis Fraina, International Secretary of the Communist Party of America. Foster said that Fraina was a well-known revolutionary and that he believed the document to have been written by Jacob Nosovitsky, a member of the Russian Revolutionary Party.
Cecil Malone in his evidence denied knowing Veltheim and was unaware that he had called at his house. He said that as a Member of Parliament many people called at his home to see him even when he was in the House of Commons. Veltheim pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment with hard labour and fined £10 on each of the two remaining charges. He was also recommended for deportation.
In the summer of 1920, Special Branch learned that during discussions taking place between the government and the Russian trade mission over a proposed trade agreement between the two countries, the Russians were clandestinely financing the Hands Off Russia Committee, of which Malone was an active supporter, and were funding the Daily Herald. After a short break in July, for consultations with his government, the head of the trade mission, Leonid Krasin, returned to London to resume negotiations. He was accompanied by Lev Kamenev and brought with him a large consignment of diamonds. Within weeks the Daily Herald was supplied with £75,000 from the proceeds of their sale, and smaller sums were given to other left-wing periodicals and to the CPGB. Special Branch monitored this laundering operation with increasing interest.
It was felt in government circles that these clandestine activities were exerting undue influence on sections of the Labour movement in an attempt to bring the government down by strike action. These were matters that could not be ignored by any democratic government. But Lloyd George was reluctant to expel the whole trade mission, thereby abandoning the hope of solving the unemployment problem. At the same time he had to appease those anti-Bolshevik members of the Cabinet, and the intelligence community, who were demanding action. So when Lev Kamenev returned to Moscow in September 1920, the Prime Minister told the trade mission that Kamenev had been guilty of a breach of faith in secretly financing the Daily Herald and would not be permitted to return to this country but the mission could remain. This solved nothing.
On Sunday 7 November 1920, Malone made a speech at a meeting held jointly under the auspices of the Hands Off Russia Committee and the Communist Party of Great Britain at the Royal Albert Hall, celebrating the anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The authorities took particular exception to one part of Malone’s speech, in which he said:
We are out to change the present constitution and if it is necessary to save bloodshed, to save atrocities, we shall have to use the lampposts or the walls. What, my friends, are a few Churchills or Curzons on lampposts compared to the massacre of thousands of human beings? What are a few Churchills or Curzons against the wall, compared to the bombing of harmless Egyptians in Egypt – compared with the reprisals in Ireland?
As a consequence, DI Fitch was instructed by Sir Basil Thomson to obtain a warrant for the arrest of Malone and to search his home. By the time Fitch visited his address, Malone was in Dublin on business, so his property was searched in his absence. On the premises police found a number of items of interest, including two railway cloakroom tickets, a copy of Malone’s speech at the Albert Hall, two loaded automatic pistols and ammunition and an Underwood typewriter. In his memoirs Fitch describes visiting the cloakroom and collecting parcels that contained bundles of typed sheets, making up twelve copies of a booklet entitled ‘Red Officers’ Course’. Subsequent examination by an expert from the Underwood Company revealed that these booklets had been typed on the typewriter found in Malone’s home. The booklets were instructions in sabotage and subversion to be carried out by a ‘British Red Army’.
The purpose of Malone’s visit to Ireland was to deliver a lecture on Bolshevism to a meeting of Trinity College History Society. Fitch obtained the authority of the Director of Public Prosecutions to request the Dublin Metropolitan Police to detain him for an offence under Regulation 42 of the Defence of the Realm Act. As a result, at about 7.30 p.m. on 10 November when Malone and other guests of the Trinity College History Society were taking tea in the College, the police called to arrest him. He was escorted back to England by the officers and, at Euston Station, placed in the custody of DI Fitch.5
On 12 November 1920, Malone appeared at Bow Street Police Court charged with ‘using words calculated to cause sedition or disaffection among the civil population’, contrary to Regulation 42 of the Defence of the Realm Act. He was remanded on bail for one week in his own surety of £1,000 and those of Mr Neil Maclean MP and Commander Grenfell RN (retired) of £500 each. He appeared again at Bow Street Court on 19 November 1920, when he was additionally charged that he ‘was an evil disposed person and not of good fame and a disturber of the peace and inciter to others to commit breaches of the peace’.
At his trial, extracts from Malone’s Albert Hall speech, which were said to be deliberate and considered utterances, were read to the court. Evidence was given of the items found during the search of his flat and of the pamphlets entitled ‘Red Officers’ Course’ recovered by police from the railway cloakroom.
An introduction to this pamphlet said:
We are soldiers of the International Red Army, that army of proletarians and workers led by the communists who fight – or soon will fight – in every country over the five continents of the Earth. We shall not lay down arms before the world is ours and the dark night of oppression and the blood red stormy dawn of revolution have changed it into the glorious day of freedom and communism. A grim struggle lies before us on our section of the international front. Down with our enemies, the Churchills, the imperialists, and all their lackeys. Long live the Red Army.
After that came a syllabus of lectures which made it clear that the book was intended for the use of persons in an armed insurrection. The course was designed for ‘comrades of a determined revolutionary spirit’ and its object was to train communists and give them sufficient knowledge of military work to enable them, in the near future, to carry out duties as officers of a British Red Army. When trained, they were to be at the disposal of a Communist Revolutionary Authority at the time of an actual revolution, when the order for mobilisation would be issued. That authority, said the pamphlet, could not at present be defined and, for the present, the work must be carried out underground and in strict secrecy. It referred to the British Army as ‘the enemy’ whose skill and discipline could be ‘broken by propaganda, and parts of it may be got over to our side’. Cadets were warned to treat the course as secret and it concluded with the ominous warning that those ‘who betray their comrades must be punished with death’.
DC Brown, Special Branch, who had taken shorthand notes of the defendant’s speech in the Royal Albert Hall, gave evidence of what he had heard and recorded, and of the mood and composition of the meeting. In the witness box DI Fitch gave evidence of searching the defendant’s flat, where he broke open an office door and found a typed draft of the Albert Hall speech, the firearms already mentioned by Counsel and a typewriter. Two days later, on 11 November, he arrested the defendant at Euston Station on his arrival under escort from Ireland.
Malone was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment which, having regard to his character as a soldier in the past and for that reason only … would be in the second division. In addition he was bound over in his own recognisance of £2,000 to be of good behaviour and keep the peace for months and ordered to find two sureties of £1,000 each – Lt. Cdr. Grenville RN (retd.) and Miss Ann Withers were accepted as sureties. His appeal against conviction and sentence failed. He was released from Pentonville on 1 June 1921, having been granted a remission of one month.
The Globe newspaper saw the Malone trial as a worrying manifestation of the threat posed by Leninists and other revolutionary organisations. An article published in the newspaper after the trial warned that revolutionary organisations were being quietly and efficiently perfected and that ‘persistent propaganda is being carried out not only among the industrial classes, but in the army and the fleet, and hardly anything appears to be done to counteract its malignant effects’.
On his release from prison, Malone was stripped of his Order of the British Empire but remained a member of the House of Commons. He continued to work in politics but left the Communist Party to join the Independent Labour Party. He subsequently moved to the right wing of the Labour Party and in a by-election in 1928 was elected by a small majority for the Northampton constituency.6 But gradually this fascinating character, who had loomed large on the Special Branch horizon for a few years, faded into relative obscurity. In 1940 he wrote to Winston Churchill offering his services in the war effort; his offer was declined. He died on 8 June 1965, aged seventy-four.
In January 1924, for the first time, a socialist government, with Ramsay MacDonald as Prime Minister, came to power. His Cabinet had modest objectives and was anxious to demonstrate that Labour was fit to run the country; but fate conspired against him. He immediately alienated the right-wing press by entering into trade negotiations with the Soviet Union.
This section of the press was further antagonised when the Attorney General refused his fiat over an article that appeared in the CPGB’s official organ, Workers’ Weekly, on 25 July 1924. Entitled ‘An Open Letter to Fighting Forces’, the piece called on the armed forces to
Unite to form the nucleus of an organisation that will prepare the whole of the soldiers, sailors and airmen, not merely to refuse to go to war, or to refuse to shoot strikers during industrial conflicts, but will make it possible for the workers, peasants and soldiers and airmen to go forward in a common attack upon the capitalists and smash capitalism forever, and institute the reign of the whole working class.
John Ross Campbell, the acting editor of Workers’ Weekly, was arrested by Special Branch and charged under the Incitement to Mutiny Act of 1797.7 The Conservatives and Liberals were outraged at the Attorney General’s decision and on 8 October tabled a vote of censure on the government. The government was defeated and a general election was called.
Before the election could be held, however, the government was to face further censure over the ‘affair of the Zinoviev letter’. The letter purported to be a communication from the head of the Comintern, Grigori Zinoviev, to the Communist Party of Great Britain, instructing it to persuade the British proletariat to support the ratification of the Anglo-Soviet trade treaties. It also contained an incitement ‘to prepare for future armed insurrection and a class war’. This letter was not very different from other intercepted communications from Zinoviev to the Communist Party of Great Britain. Its authenticity was confirmed to the Foreign Office by the Secret Intelligence Service, who had received a copy from an agent in Riga.
On 10 October 1924, the permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office was shown an English translation of the letter but decided not to inform the Prime Minister until corroboration that it was genuine was received. When the Prime Minister did see it and was assured of its authenticity, he stated that he was in favour of publication. A letter of protest, which the Prime Minister had only seen in draft form, was sent to M. Rakovsky, the head of the Anglo-Soviet Trade Delegation, on 24 October. He refuted the allegations the following day and described the Zinoviev letter as a gross forgery. A further letter from Rakovsky on 27 October, on the instructions of the Soviet government, offered to co-operate in proving that it was a forgery intended to disrupt relations between the two governments. The Prime Minister believed that the official who signed the note on his behalf had misunderstood his instructions.
The publicity surrounding the publication of the Zinoviev letter, which had been leaked to the Daily Mail and the Conservative Party on the eve of the election, probably did not damage the Labour Party as much as has been claimed, for the Conservative Party had a landslide victory. Controversy over what was undoubtedly a forgery has continued to rumble on over the years without resolution. Various culprits have been suggested as being involved in publicising the letter, including SIS and Security Service members.8 There has not, however, been any suggestion that Special Branch had any part in the leakage of the letter to the Daily Mail. Wyndham Childs believed the letter to be genuine, as it was similar in content to other intercepted letters from Zinoviev already in the possession of Special Branch, who watched the scandal unfold with interest and collected a vast number of press cuttings from the case.
All the evidence points to the letter being a White Russian forgery intended to prejudice the trade agreements. Whether officers of the Security Service and SIS, who were consulted about its probity, were involved in an opportunistic conspiracy with Conservative Party officials and the Daily Mail remains a mystery.
Early in 1925, intercepted mail from Moscow to the CPGB indicated that the Comintern had decided to establish a ‘Lenin School’ in Moscow, for the political education of Communist Party members. Five worker-students from Britain were selected to attend for a period of eighteen months, with a view to full-time work for the party on their return. A similar central school was proposed in Britain to accommodate twenty students for a six-month course. Fears were expressed in Whitehall that this might foreshadow Russian attempts to undermine the discipline of the armed forces.
On 14 October 1925 Special Branch officers arrested eight Communist Party officials on warrants alleging the publication of seditious libels. The party’s headquarters in King Street and other premises were searched, resulting in the seizure of large quantities of literature, which were taken to New Scotland Yard for examination. At King Street, DCI Parker, deputy head of Special Branch, arrested Albert Inkpen, the general secretary, and Ernest Cant, the London organiser, of the CPGB. DS Foster arrested Tom Winteringham and John Ross Campbell, the assistant editors of Workers’ Weekly, at Dr Johnson’s Buildings in the Temple. DI Norwood arrested William Rust, the secretary of the Young Communist League, and Harry Pollitt, the secretary of the National Minority League, was arrested at 38 Great Ormond Street. William Gallacher and Tom Bell were detained at their homes in Scotland. On 22 October, Special Branch officers arrested a further four officials; DCI Parker arrested Arthur McManus and John Murphy at King Street and DS Foster arrested Wal Hannington at Paddington Station, while DS Van Ginhoven searched his rooms in Hampstead. Robin Page Arnot, the head of the Labour Research Department, was detained at his office in Mecklenburgh Square. Thorough searches of all the prisoners’ homes and offices were carried out and further items were seized and taken to New Scotland Yard. The prisoners were all charged with conspiracy to publish seditious libels and to incite mutiny in the armed forces.
They appeared initially at Bow Street Court and were granted bail; George Bernard Shaw and the Countess of Warwick were among those who offered themselves as sureties. The case was subsequently tried at the Central Criminal Court, in a trial lasting eight days, with the Attorney General, Sir Douglas Hogg, leading for the Crown. All twelve defendants denied the charges but were convicted on 25 November 1925; Inkpen, Pollitt, Hannington, Rust and Gallacher, who had previous convictions, were each sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment. The remaining seven had the option of being bound over to be of good behaviour, but declined, and were each sentenced to six months’ imprisonment.
In 1926 a long, drawn-out miners’ strike took place when the mine owners told their employees that they would have to accept a cut in their wages. When the miners’ representatives refused, there was a lock-out. In sympathy with the miners, the TUC called a general strike on 4 May. Although the CPGB was involved in supporting the strike it did not cause it, nor was it able to exploit its full revolutionary potential. Individual CPGB leaders played a part, as did many of the rank and file. Robin Page Arnot, for instance, who was released from prison on the eve of the strike, helped to form the Northumberland and Durham Joint Strike Committee. Just how much communist involvement there was during the few days of the strike is difficult to say, although the Comintern encouraged revolutionary situations wherever they occurred. However, the TUC capitulated on 12 May, leaving the miners bitter and betrayed. There was little public support for the strikers and because volunteers from all walks of life manned the essential services it was very quickly over. In the absence of any concerted involvement in the strike by the CPGB or other revolutionary movements, Special Branch interest in it was confined to a watching brief. However, the Branch was very much involved in the political furore that followed.
On 16 June 1926, the Home Secretary, William Joynson-Hicks, submitted a memorandum to the Cabinet in which he raised two issues. The first was whether the staff of the All Russian Co-operative Society (ARCOS) and other Russian state institutions in London, including the Russian embassy, should be expelled from the country, in view of the fact that Russian money had been contributed to the miners’ strike fund during their stoppage. He said that he and the Foreign Secretary took the position that the Soviet government could not escape responsibility for the actions of the Comintern run by Zinoviev, whose objective was to capture the British trade unions through the National Minority Movement. The second question was whether he should invoke his powers to stop the influx of foreign money, whether from Russia or some other foreign source.
He added that he was aware, as the result of intercepted telegrams, that ARCOS had sent £25,000 in May to the Trades Union Congress. This gift from the All Russian Central Council of Trades Unions and the International Workers’ Aid Society to support the strikers was returned by the TUC. This was followed a few days later by the transfer of £200,000 and then by a further £300,000 through the banking system, for the aid of the strikers. The Home Secretary used his powers under emergency legislation to stop some of these transfers.9 While the government was deliberating on what further action should be taken, events were taking place elsewhere which were to have an influence on their decision.
In 1927, Wilfred Francis Remington Macartney, a former intelligence officer in the British Army, was working as a Soviet agent. After leaving the army he had inherited, and squandered through high living, a considerable sum of money; he resorted to petty crime but was imprisoned and afterwards was converted to communism, which he claimed to see as a ‘clear burning light in a corrupt society’. He was a flamboyant, undisciplined character who lacked the tradecraft of a spy and, in his early months as a Soviet agent, was arrested twice for being drunk and disorderly.10
In March 1927, Admiral Sir Reginald Hall MP, the former Director of Naval Intelligence, was informed by a reliable contact, George Monkland, a former army officer, that Macartney had approached him and asked whether he could supply him with details of arms shipments to countries bordering the Soviet Union. Monkland was put in touch with Freddie Browning, the former Deputy Chief of SIS, and handed him a questionnaire that Macartney had given him concerning the Royal Air Force, which bore the hallmarks of having been compiled by an intelligence expert. Monkland was interviewed by Desmond Morton, a senior SIS officer, who introduced himself as Peter Hamilton. Both Monkland and Macartney were put under surveillance and their letters and telephone calls intercepted. This involved bringing Special Branch and MI5 into the operation.
By now it had been decided that the offices of ARCOS should be raided, but the picture of events leading up to the raid on ARCOS at this point becomes blurred. One version suggests that a fake ‘secret document’ was given to Macartney by Monkland in order to entrap him when he passed it on to his Soviet contact in ARCOS; information was received, by SIS, from a British member of the ARCOS staff that a ‘military code book’ had indeed been copied in the ARCOS office. As this was a case of espionage, it fell within the province of MI5 and was passed to them to continue the investigation. Desmond Morton (SIS) claimed that Kell and Holt-Wilson took a month to check the information before preparing a case for the Director of Public Prosecutions. More prevarication followed but eventually the story reached the ears of the Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister, who agreed that the offices of ARCOS must be raided by Special Branch to recover the ‘fake document’.11
Preparations for the raid on the morning of 12 May 1927 took place in great secrecy. It was hoped this would put an end to Russian espionage and other subversive activities which the government knew were being carried on by ARCOS. The police raiding party was not aware of the actual target until it arrived at the premises. ARCOS shared its offices in Soviet House, Moorgate, with the Russian trade mission, which enjoyed diplomatic privilege; as the premises were situated in the City, the City of London Police executed the search warrant and then handed over the search to Wyndham Childs and his team of fifty SB officers; they had not been briefed about what documents were to be seized and none of them could read Russian. After an exhaustive three-day search, and the seizure of numerous documents, the military code manual remained undiscovered. It is believed to have been spirited off to Berlin some three weeks earlier. The Russians tried to destroy some documents but were physically restrained. A government statement after the raid suggested that the persons responsible for the theft of the code book had already been prosecuted.
Although no sign was found of the elusive code book, a vast number of documents relating to Russian espionage was discovered, sufficient for the government to demand the closure of ARCOS and expulsion of the Russian trade mission; at the same time, diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union were severed.
Rumours that the Russians had been forewarned of the raid were difficult to support. Apart from unsubstantiated claims from the unreliable Macartney that he had received foreknowledge of the raid from a police clerk, there was no evidence to show that the police had leaked information about the operation; indeed, even Sir Wyndham Childs had not been put fully in the picture until the morning of the raid. The only other agencies who were known to be privy to the operation were MI5 and SIS. It must be said, however, that the following year two SB officers, Jane and Van Ginhoven, were dismissed for allegedly supplying information to a Soviet spy ring, although no evidence was produced to suggest that, in this instance, either of the officers leaked the information (see Chapter 12). In fact, MI5 was later told by a renegade member of the same spy ring that the head of the group only learned of it after it had taken place.
MI5 dropped their interest in Macartney but Special Branch continued to maintain constant observation on him for another six months and his mail was still intercepted. As a result, it was known that he was to meet an important contact in Hampstead on 16 November 1927. He was followed and met a man known only to the police as ‘Johnson’ in a café opposite Hampstead Underground Station. Detective Superintendent James McBrien and DCI Edward Parker, the Branch’s most senior detectives, followed him from the café to the station, where they arrested him. Meanwhile DIs Patrick Byrne and Roddy Cosgrove arrested ‘Johnson’ in the café where the meeting had taken place. ‘Johnson’ was identified as Georg Hansen, a German, who was Macartney’s Soviet controller. Both men were charged with offences against the Official Secrets Acts and were tried at the Central Criminal Court in January 1928. Each received a sentence of ten years’ penal servitude. Hansen was deported to Russia in 1935.
The Secret Service Committee enquired into the circumstances of the ARCOS raid and interviewed the heads of the services separately. Their main criticism was directed at Kell, who had bypassed the civil service by directly approaching ministers.
1 Numerous documents in the TNA CAB 24 series
2 Directorate of Intelligence report No. 28, dated 6 November 1919. TNA CAB 24/92/71
3 Letter from Sir Basil Thomson to the Home Secretary, dated 1 November 1920. TNA HO 144/22952
4 The British Socialist Party faction of the Communist Party
5 Fitch, Traitors Within, pp. 87–9
6 The Conservative Fritz Forbes was expected to win, and might well have done so had his mistress not been on the platform at a public meeting. His mother turned up to support him but, on seeing the mistress, she mounted the platform and publicly berated the candidate, who subsequently lost the seat by some 200 votes.
7 Report of Cabinet meeting held on 6 August 1924. TNA CAB 23/48/23
8 Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, pp. 149–50
9 Foreign Office Memorandum, dated 16 June 1926. TNA CAB 24/180/50
10 Christopher Andrew, Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1986), pp. 467–9
11 Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, p. 154