On 19 December 1946, Harold Nicolson wrote in his diary, ‘Dine at Travellers with Preston and Burgess. Burgess been appointed private secretary to McNeil.’1 Burgess’s cultivation of the young Scottish politician Hector McNeil had paid off. The two men had stayed in close touch and Burgess had recently ghosted McNeil’s chapter, ‘The Labour Party’s Foreign Policy Between the Two Wars’, in Herbert Tracey’s history of the Labour Party. McNeil, from his modest provincial background, though some four years older, rather looked up to the urbane Burgess. The two men, both heavy smokers and drinkers, shared an interest in London’s seedier side and it is not fanciful to imagine that Burgess may have exploited McNeil’s particular interest in topless night clubs. Certainly he was to become an important protector of Burgess.
When McNeil was appointed a Minister of State in the Foreign Office in October, he quickly sought to appoint Burgess as a supernumerary personal assistant, speech writer and as a general political dogsbody. He was attracted by Burgess’s range of contacts, his intellectual brilliance, apparent sophistication and his independence of mind. According to Norman Reddaway, private secretary to Christopher Mayhew, who was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Ernest Bevin, McNeil wanted Burgess because he believed he understood left-wingers and Russians.2 Lord Thurlow thought McNeil felt inferior for not having been at university and was uncertain of himself with Foreign Office people. He wanted a personal assistant who was not a career diplomat and had broad political and journalistic experience. As if confirming such a suspicion, the Foreign Office were opposed to the appointment, but they were the orders of a minister and, sensitive to class politics, they had no choice but to agree.3
This was a huge opportunity. Reporting his coup to the Russians, Burgess explained that the routine office work would continue to be looked after by the Foreign Office private secretaries, and his role would be the:
formulation of policy by the study of documents and by personal contacts and conversations with other officials and also with politicians both British and Foreign. There will also be opportunities for direct co-operation with the Secretary of State’s Office. He also wishes me to spend a certain amount of time in the House of Commons. It would, I think, be wrong if I did not say that in my opinion great opportunities are opened to us by this transfer. Apart from telegrams which I shall continue to see, I shall hope to be able to see those minutes and private letters (e.g. from and to Ambassadors) which describe the inception and formulation of policy and to be present at, or aware of, conversations in which future decisions are canvassed and discussed before being arrived at … As I say, I think this appointment is to one of the most desirable central positions in the Foreign Office and I should welcome any instructions as to how to make the fullest use of it and in what manner it can be turned to our best advantage.4
Highly regarded, McNeil often deputised for Bevin but he was also lazy, preferring to go to:
Restaurants, or films, or plays to working at his desk. Guy immediately grasped this and took advantage of it, doing McNeil’s work for him without complaint. When McNeil was asked to draw up a report or analyse a set of classified documents, the job was passed straight to Guy, who was only too happy to oblige. When everything was typed up and ready, all McNeil had to do was sign it and send it on to his colleagues in the government, or to the Prime Minister. In consequence, Burgess was held in deep reverence by his grateful boss, who directed him to keep track of all the reports and telegrams proceeding from the post-war international conferences then under way.5
Though Foreign Office officials disapproved of the appointment of someone who wasn’t part of the Foreign Office and thought it most irregular, it was an appointment befitting the new Labour government, who wanted to do things differently. Burgess acquitted himself well, arriving punctually at work and seldom missing appointments. The only black mark against him was his untidiness in both dress and of his desk, with its overflowing ashtrays. ‘Confidential papers were strewn over it like confetti, yet he could easily retrieve anything wanted urgently by burrowing like a squirrel beneath the daily newspapers and his drawing pad, on which he would sketch libellous caricatures of any subject that momentarily took his fancy.’6 Tom Driberg later wrote:
As an historian [Burgess] had always been fascinated by the idea and character of the eminence grise, the shadowy but influential figure lurking at the elbow of the public man. He liked the company of eminences grises. I have little doubt that, perhaps half-consciously, he saw himself, too, as McNeil’s personal assistant in this role. As Minister of State, McNeil held Cabinet rank. In the absences abroad or through illness of his chief, Ernest Bevin, he often had to act as Foreign Secretary. At last, at the age of thirty-six, his steady inner purpose and his calculations, assisted by a series of fortunate chances and coincidences, Guy Burgess was indeed near to the very centre of power.7
It had indeed brought him to the heart of the British government at a crucial juncture in twentieth-century history, giving him access to almost all papers that came to the Foreign Office ministers, including the minutes of meetings of the Cabinet, the Defence Committee and the Chiefs of the Imperial General Staff, and the positions of Western countries on the post-war settlement in Europe and Britain’s military strategy. He also took advantage of the daily afternoon tea party in the ambassadors’ waiting room, fifty yards from McNeil’s office, to pick up all the latest gossip and expand his network of contacts.
The Centre was thrilled by Burgess’s new access and Kreshin was made personally responsible for translating his communications and, on the order of General Fedotov, the number of people initiated into the HICKS case was limited to no more than five. Security was so tight that even the typists had no access to his material.
Burgess worked alongside Fred Warner, a career diplomat. Seven years younger and six feet five – some six inches taller than Burgess – Warner had also been educated at Dartmouth and had joined the Foreign Office from Oxford and after service in the Royal Navy. A man about town with independent means, he lived in Albany, a fashionable set of apartments off Piccadilly, and he and Burgess quickly became close friends. The two men shared a small, high-ceilinged room overlooking Downing Street, between the minister and a room with clerks, acting as gate-keepers between the Foreign Office and the minister.
Goronwy Rees remembered the two men ‘facing each other across an enormous desk littered with an assortment of official papers and a large selection of the daily press, of which Guy was a devoted and assiduous student. There would also be a few volumes from the London Library, a few sketches and caricatures which Guy had tossed off in the course of the day … overflowing ashtrays, burned-out matches and empty cups of tea …’8
Rees added, ‘Messengers entered, looked vainly for in-trays under the deluge of paper, and dropped their files wherever Guy indicated with a negligent gesture of his hand. Some of the files, marked URGENT, one of the two would occasionally pick up and glance at for a moment, with a look of distaste, and as hurriedly restore to its appointed place among the debris.’9
The private secretaries had access to almost anything they wanted, including cables from embassies and foreign governments, reports from various sections of the Foreign Office and Cabinet papers. All communications destined for the Minister of State first passed through the hands of Burgess and Warner, who decided if they should be passed on, or if additional information was needed. They might then summarise the document, highlighting the most important parts and perhaps draft a response. They were also in a position to make suggestions and their influence was therefore enormous.
The writer Andrew Boyle claimed that Burgess had access to the office safe and all the secrets of State:
McNeil liked him, humoured and pampered him, accepted his undergraduate wit and flashes of erudition in the mistaken notion that the department, the government, and the public were the beneficiaries of his own astuteness in selecting this exceptional personal assistant. Burgess had the complete run of the inner sanctum. If he needed the minister’s keys, he asked for them. If he wanted access to classified files, he secured the necessary authorisation without question by saying that his minister wanted such-and-such at once.10
This was important, as McNeil was the minister liaising with MI6, who sent him their reports in small yellow boxes, but it is not clear if Burgess ever took advantage of this access. It was not until the end of March 1948 that he managed to obtain a duplicate key, either through McNeil or Warner, having smuggled it out to the rezidentura through Blunt. Within weeks however, he had returned the duplicate to one of his Russian case officers, explaining that though he was often alone with the boxes, the risk of opening them was too great.11
Warner and Burgess were drawn together by similar louche lifestyles and lack of respect for authority. When McNeil would ring his bell, ‘the peremptory summons would normally be greeted by some such words as:
“Oh Lord, there’s Hector again.”
“What on earth can HE want?”
The two men would wait to see if the minister would ring again and if he did not they would agree that it couldn’t have been important. All this was a reflection of Guy’s basic attitude that established institutions were created for his own convenience and use.’12
On one occasion, Goronwy Rees remembered, Burgess led his visitor out of McNeil’s office and into a large ornately furnished room where the Foreign Secretary presided on formal occasions. At one end of the room stood a bookcase of reference books, among which was one precious volume that Burgess kept there ‘out of harm’s way’ so that nobody – not even Bevin – would borrow it and then ‘fail to return it’. It was a copy of the recently published Kinsey Report on the sexual activities of the human male, then unobtainable in Britain, which Burgess had promised to lend him. ‘“I had to hide it somewhere safe,” he said. “Everyone’s trying to get hold of it.”’13
As a result of his new job, Russian contact with Burgess, which ironically had been halted just as he took up his post, resumed at the beginning of 1947, after special permission by the Minister for State Security, Colonel-General Viktor S. Abakumov.14
Within days of taking up his post, Burgess had supplied two documents from the Russia Committee, a Foreign Office committee that dealt with all aspects of policy towards Russia. It reported that Bevin and the Cabinet were about to decide ‘whether to extend Great Britain’s present hostile relations with the governments of the countries which he calls Soviet satellites (Poland, Bulgaria, Romania), and whether Great Britain should maintain its present policy of support for the opposition, or whether the time has come to recognise Soviet influence and cease the fight against it’.15 Further documents followed, including various ministerial minutes on German post-war political and economic reconstruction, notably from the Overseas Reconstruction Committee, chaired by Ernest Bevin.
At the beginning of March, Burgess met his Russian handler with details on the four-power conference of foreign ministers in Moscow, which was to take place over the next six weeks. The Council of Foreign Ministers had been created at the Potsdam Conference in 1945 and included representatives from each of the four occupying nations, with meetings rotated among the capital cities of the four powers. The Moscow Conference would deal with issues such as the future government of Austria and Germany, reparations and boundaries, and the negotiating position, and Burgess provided it, helped unwittingly by Edward Playfair, a member of the delegation.16 It was also an opportunity to meet Kreshin’s replacement, Mikhail F. Shishkin (ADAM), operating under press attaché cover at the embassy. So pleased were the Russians by Burgess’s documents that Abakumov was authorised to pay a bonus of £500 – almost a year’s salary.17
Squadron Leader Richard ‘Dickie’ Leven often encountered Burgess at the Reform. ‘He always seemed to make a point of talking to me, although I found his approach was rather oppressive. I never could understand why he always wore the Old Etonian tie, no matter what clothes he was wearing.’ One evening they had an argument over rumours Russia intended to invade Yugoslavia. ‘Guy Burgess surprised me by declaring, “I am the adviser to the British government on Russian affairs and the government will do as I advise.” I replied at once that if this was the case, then he would be mad to let the Russians go into Yugoslavia. Guy laughed, “For once,” he replied, “I agree with you. In fact I have just told Bevin what to do about the matter.”’18
Leven didn’t give the impression he believed him. Burgess was furious and stormed off in a taxi to the Foreign Office, returning an hour later. ‘I read two memos from Burgess to Bevin, in which he had asked to be allowed to negotiate direct with the Russians. He hoped to persuade them to let the British government come to financial negotiations with the Yugoslavians and for Russia to refrain from military intervention. I read a handwritten note from Bevin to Burgess telling him to use his own discretion in dealing with the Russians, as he felt it would be in the best interest of our country.’19
If Burgess thought a Labour victory might lead to closer relations with the Soviet Union, he was swiftly disabused when the new Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, refused to criticise Churchill’s speech at Fulton, Missouri, in February 1946, arguing that an Iron Curtain now divided Europe. He found, too, that Bevin and McNeil were strong anti-communists and would later claim that he ‘became increasingly unhappy and ill at ease in the service of a minister and policies that he was convinced were disastrously mistaken’.20
With his great sense of Britain’s imperial past, Burgess found it dispiriting to see Britain economically and ideologically becoming a satellite of the US. Fred Warner remembered, ‘I can’t recall that Guy automatically followed the Stalinist line. In fact, I doubt very much whether he cared a rap for the teachings of Marx or Lenin. In those days he sought to convey the impression of being a radical social democrat, who believed firmly in Tawney.’21
Added to concerns about his tidiness, there were increasing complaints about Burgess’s disregard for regulations. Andrew Boyle wrote:
McNeil did occasionally try to remonstrate with Burgess, but to little or no effect. Contrition came as readily to the capricious lips of his personal assistant as insouciant devilry. Yet if Hector McNeil felt at times that he was being let down by Guy, his friend, then Burgess could only say how deeply upset he was to hear it; and he would solemnly promise to behave in future like an adult.22
In September 1946, George Carey-Foster, a former group captain in Bomber Command, had been appointed as the Foreign Office’s first full-time chief of security. Carey-Foster slowly built up a department of seven, recruiting officers from the services to handle security in overseas embassies, and a couple of MI6 officers were loaned on a temporary basis. Security until then had been lax, with offices left unlocked, files not put away, and everything depending on trust. The Foreign Office felt like a large family – many of the staff had been educated and grown up together – paternalistic and trusting. Because they thought they acted honourably, they assumed everyone else did as well. As a result, Carey-Foster didn’t find his colleagues, especially in personnel, were particularly helpful; for example, his recommendation that all Foreign Service officers be vetted was rejected by Harold Caccia, the chief clerk.23
Carey-Foster was unimpressed by Burgess’s ‘dishevelled and unshaven appearance. He also smelt so strongly of drink that I enquired who he was and what his job was.’24 When he questioned Burgess about taking documents home, Burgess responded he was simply ‘a zealous martyr to duty’.25
In April 1947, encouraged by McNeil, Burgess applied for the more senior A Branch, going before the Civil Service Commission as an ‘over-age’ candidate. In his application he gave his address as the Reform Club, and his mother’s address as Oakhurst House in Berkshire, a large Victorian house with a lake and park, exaggerating his academic achievements by implying he had taken a First in his finals. His references were Blunt and Maconachie. His medical examination on 26 August showed him fit with good eyesight, though near-sighted, to be 5 feet 11.5 inches and 12 stone, with a small scar over his left eye, where a cyst had recently been removed.26
The BBC in response to the question, ‘Whilst in your service was he honest, sober, and generally well conducted?’ had replied, Yes. ‘Are you aware of any circumstances tending to disqualify him for the situation which he now seeks?’ No. S.D. Spring at BBC Talks confirmed he was ‘honest, sober and generally well-conducted’ whilst at the BBC and there was no reason why he was not suitable for a Foreign Office post, with the head of the News Department describing him as ‘a keen, able and resourceful officer’.27
Burgess appeared to be a good candidate.