Jonathan Thomas (00:21)
Welcome to the Anglotopia Podcast, where we explore British travel history and culture. And I'm your host, Jonathan Thomas. They are the most famous traitors in British history. I'm talking about five young men recruited in Cambridge in the 1930s who rose into the very heart of the British establishment: the Foreign Office, MI5, MI6, and Bletchley Park, and spent decades.

Handing those secrets to Moscow. Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald McLean, Anthony Blunt, and a fifth man whose identity was not publicly confirmed until 1990, John Cairncross an ironmonger's son from a Scottish mining town. And that last detail is where today's episode really begins, because the story of the Cambridge Five is at its heart a story about class, about who Britain trusted and why, and about the one man among them who never quite belonged.

Cairncross was mocked for his accent, made to fetch the tea, and passed over, and went on to smuggle raw decrypts out of Bletchley Park, stuffed in his trousers, feeding Moscow intelligence that shaped the greatest tank battle in history.

my guest today is the man who wrote the book on him, John Cairncross And with me is Dr. Chris Smith, a historian at Coventry University, specializing in intelligence and espionage, and the author of The Hidden History of Bletchley Park and The Last Cambridge Spy.

And he is a returning friend of the podcast who's been with us two times before. This is his third appearance. He's joined us before to demolish the myth that Churchill sacrificed Coventry to protect Ultra and to take us inside Bletchley Park itself. Today he's here to take us into the strange, snobbish, and treacherous world of the Cambridge spies. Chris, welcome back to the Anglotopia Podcast.

Chris Smith (01:59)
well, thank you very much for having me. It's great to be back.

Jonathan Thomas (02:02)
before we dig in, tell us how you came to Cairncross. You'd written the social history of Bletchley Park, so how did you end up writing the first ever biography of this famous mole?

Chris Smith (02:12)
Well it came from when I was doing my PhD and I was looking for resources, particularly memoirs and things like that by people who'd worked at Bletchley Park to find out what life was like there essentially from what people recalled. And John Cairncross's biography was obviously one of these, quite an important book in of its own right, particularly in terms not necessarily of the arguments he makes or the facts he reveals but the way he describes aquasphere and things like that.

So I found it really interesting. And then the more I read about him from the of the standard histories of MI5, things like that, the more interested I got. And I realized once I'd finished my first book and my PhD that I didn't really have any project to do. thought, well, that's sort of just sitting there open waiting for someone to go away and write this. And that's kind of how I got into him.

Jonathan Thomas (02:59)
So let's set the scene for anyone who only half knows the story 'cause I mean it's been dramatized countless times. Who actually were the Cambridge five? When and how were they recruited? And what did they actually do? So give us the kind of the overall arc of this traitorous story.

Chris Smith (03:14)
Well, so the five are Kim Philby. Actually his real name's Harold, but his father nicknamed him Kim after the famous Rudyard Kipling character. So you've got Kim Philby, you've got Donald Maclean who's the son of a liberal MP, also called Donald Maclean. So I suppose Donald Maclean Jr. in this case. You've got Anthony Blunt, who was a very famous art historian.

you've got a man called Guy Burgess who was having a BBC producer among other things before ending up in working for the British government and then you finally have John Cairncross again who's this slightly outside figure by comparison.

So all of these individuals go to Cambridge University around the late 1920s and into the early 1930s. And they all become basically, I would say friends, they're not all of them. So certainly the first four are friends there. So the oldest one is Anthony Blunt.

He's there at the time. Then he's joined by other people like, for example, Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, they become firm friends. They're all Trinity College Cambridge, with the exception of Donald Maclean, who's at Trinity Hall. So they're all quite closely related in that respect. Quite a few of them do things like history. So for example, Kim Philby reads history.

I believe also that Guy Burgess reads history as well. Anthony Blunt actually starts off reading mathematics, but then changes over, I think, to modern languages before going on to become this famous art historian. So they're all traveling in around the same circles around the same sort of time. And they've all developed pretty left-wing views. So a lot of them are in things like, for example, the Labour Club or the Socialist Club, things like that, in a period of increasing radicalization.

And at this time, we have to remember in British society, it's a really perilous period. So the 1930s is famously known, I think, mainly in the United States as the Devil's Decade because obviously the Great Depression. Well, the Great Depression also affects Britain as well, and very, seriously. And unlike the United States, which has the roaring 20s, a period of relative economic growth and stability prior to the Great Depression,

You don't really see a lot of that in the United Kingdom. You do obviously get your flappers and you get your people with their cars and all that sort of thing. There are some very wealthy people, of course. But this is also a period where unemployment never really drops below 10 % in Britain in the 1920s. And a lot of problems also exist within wider Europe. So, for example, obviously, the Soviet Union has turned communist. In Italy, obviously, there's a fascist dictatorship since the 1920s.

And in France, it's often looking like there's an awful lot of problems with stability there as well. And Britain is not immune from this. So in 1926, you've got things like the Great General Strike. You've got high periods of strike action throughout all this period as well. And then obviously, the Wall Street Crash happened in 1929. And that accelerates all of the problems that we've just been considering. So at this point now, by the time it gets to 1930, 1931,

unemployment goes up even further to around 20 % in certain parts of the country. So for example, the Northeast, which is heavily reliant on things like shipbuilding. So this is like talking about Tyne and Wear. You're looking at perhaps up to 60 % unemployment in those industries. And that's because global trade has essentially collapsed again, because of the Great Depression. One of the things that you, if you're making ships is you have

You need steel to do that, you need to have coal to do that, know to fire the forties, all that sort of thing. So that has knock-on effects on these industries. So all of these places which are reliant on these 19th century industries, classic industries, are all in very very serious trouble, particularly in the 1930s. And this creates a very great deal of hardship and horror.

suppose in the United Kingdom. So if you read, for example, the great book, The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell, you get a kind of sense of someone traveling around and looking at the devastation that is wrought by the Great Depression. And a lot of people, particularly young, left-wing, radically minded individuals from the upper middle classes at places like Cambridge University can absolutely see this, you know, is going on. They hear and they read about this kind of thing.

and they become increasingly of the view that something radical needs to happen with Britain. Now, the great hope, I suppose, for these students who become increasingly either socialist or even sort of quite communist in their attitudes is the Labour Party, which is obviously that great bastion of sort of the Labour movement, the Labour struggle, the hopes of the working classes.

and it gets absolutely annihilated in the 1931 general election. They're totally wiped out, more or less. And for a lot of these quite radical individuals, it seems now that as they would see it, absolutely kind of rapacious upper middle classes and establishment aristocracy don't have the moral fortitude to address these kinds of issues with any kind of clarity or energy. And that their hope, which would have been the Labour Party,

has now come to nothing. So they look for an alternative solution to that and that might well be Marxist-Communist or Marxist-Communism, in this case Marxist-Leninism as demonstrated by the Soviet Union, which throughout the 1920s has been giving little tours, very curated tours of places like Moscow to show the brilliance of the communist workers movement in full reality.

And so a lot of people buy into this and they start reading Marx, they buy into the party line, which is being propagated by organizations like the Communist Party of Great Britain. They go on these trips to Moscow. So for example, Anthony Blunt does, though he takes one look at it and realizes that he doesn't actually like that very much and comes back still as a communist, but certainly is not one who actually wants to replicate that experiment in Britain.

But a lot of these people, yeah, they become these true believers in this period. And this is also the time during the early years of the Great Depression that they're now finishing university. So one thing that Kim Philby does is he basically goes up to a communist lecturer at Cambridge University upon graduation, says, what can I do for the movement? Should I become part of the party? know, things like that. And this,

Guy, think it's Maurice Dobb, turns out says, no, no, could solve the revolution in other ways. And basically dispatches them off to Vienna, where he joins the Viennese underground. And there, Kim Philby meets a woman called Litzy, Litzi Friedmann and they fall in love. But she's not just a member of the communist, sorry, the Viennese underground. She's also part of the communist underground and has links to

an organisation called the NKVD, which is basically the Soviet secret service. And so that means that now Kim Philby is put in contact with these people as well and basically agrees to spy for the Soviet Union on his return to Great Britain, which he does with his new wife, Litsy. And then they probably have to get divorced because

Even if he could pretend to no longer be a communist because now he wants to join the establishment, he can't really do that with a very quite well-known communist wife at the same time. they basically have to break up over that. now, yeah, Kim Philby is part of the NKVD. He's a Soviet asset. And now he has to get a job and he has to get a respectable job. And he starts writing as a journalist for The Times, The Times of London.

So that's kind of getting him into the right circles. But one of the things that he's able to do when he gets back is then on the behalf of his KGB, well, we'll just call them the KGB for the sake of convenience. The NKVD goes through several name changes until it becomes the KGB in the 1950s. But that's the term I think most people know. So we'll just call it that for the time being. So he gets in contact with his KGB handler, who's a guy called Arnold Deutsch, and Deutsch tells him...

you need to start recruiting your fellow travelers and comrades back in Cambridge, because he's got this idea that if you can't recruit people who are already in, for example, the civil service, that's quite difficult because they're probably already pretty ideologically committed, or they're in the intelligence services and the same applies. But if you can pick the fruit from the apple or from the tree, rather than when it's fallen to the ground, then you're going to get better results. And that's exactly what Kim Philby sets about doing.

And that's why his friends end up getting recruited. And we could talk more about their individual cases as you like.

Jonathan Thomas (12:07)
So

then the Soviets had a particular talent for finding this talent and cultivating it as long-term investments. And obviously these are their most successful candidates, but I kind of wonder if there were any unsuccessful candidates. But so

Chris Smith (12:22)
So

Jonathan Thomas (12:23)
cause because this was years before they had access to anything important, years before their careers started, but they saw the promise in them just as the establishment saw the promise in them. So what

What really compelled the Soviets to say these guys are our guys?

Chris Smith (12:37)
Well, in the case of Philby, he falls into their lap. He gets sent off to Vienna to work with the underground. He doesn't go off there to work with the NKVD or the communists. But because he meets Litzy and Litzy knows Deutsch and knows these other people, he basically just is a ready-made candidate who just turns up. It's not purely chance, but it's certainly a huge component of that, but they get very, very lucky.

And then once you've got someone like Philby who has this Cambridge connection and has moved in these left-wing intellectual circles at Cambridge, he knows who to pick. He knows that someone like Donald McLean in particular, his very good friend from Cambridge, has the exact same views that he does, if not even more ideologically so, even more clearly. And he knows that McLean is a very, very bright guy. He has the right family connections. He's going to be able to get a job in government.

So that's exactly how this starts to come together. Yeah.

Jonathan Thomas (13:38)
And so I and forgive me if I'm if I'm kind of getting ahead of ourselves here, but was the motivations of these men, these these young post students, was it to make Britain communist or was it to serve the Soviet Union or the both?

Chris Smith (13:55)
Oh, that I think it's a bit of both in that case, but it's also other things as well. So certainly by the time you get to 1933, there's obviously an even worse bunch of quite horrible people in Europe and that's now the Nazis. And they take one look at them, a lot of these people, certainly again, these young student radicals and recently graduated student radicals like for example, Blunt or Philby. And they think absolutely not, absolutely.

these people really are the worst. And are the British establishment going to stand up to these people? Probably not. Well, in fact, almost certainly not. mean, until 1939, they don't really have much choice. They carry on with this policy of appeasing the Nazis over and over and over again. So they certainly don't think that British establishment is going to do anything. They certainly don't think the French establishment will do anything. The United States is busy kind of...

you staring at its own navel at this point, with its policies of isolation. And yeah, they think, the only people who are going to basically save Europe from these fascists in Italy and these Nazis in Germany and these other, you know, pretty unpleasant dictatorships in places like Poland or whatever else, are the Soviet Union. These are the people who've again got the moral authority. So on the one hand, they want to basically

have some sort of counterweight to the rise of the far right, essentially. They also want to make Britain a better place and they increasingly have the view that communism is the way to do that and that the people who going to help you do that, who are going to allow you to win this ideological battle, is the Soviet Union. So it all comes together in that sense.

Jonathan Thomas (15:36)
Feel like we could talk a whole podcast on that topic alone. So I'll have to. So

Chris Smith (15:39)
Maybe another time.

Jonathan Thomas (15:40)
yeah. well, I not to get off track here, but like you've got, you know, the the far right and the Nazi sympathizing in the British establishment is well known. So it's interesting that the counterweight to that was, well, there was also a lot of communist sympathizers in the British establishment as well. It's who was on the side of Britain?

Chris Smith (15:58)
Well, it's more the case of who's on the side of the British working class is the way they would view it. So it's certainly not their own class. It's, you know, there needs to be, as they would see it, Marxist revolution. That's the...

A bit like John Lennon.

Jonathan Thomas (16:11)
Goal.

That's the goal, right? So now to your man. Introduce us to Cairncross. He was from Scotland, he's an ironmonger son, he's one of eight children, and by any measure are f formidable at an intellect. I that's how you get into Cambridge in in this era. So who who was he before he arrived in Cambridge and started being a left wing sympathizer?

Chris Smith (16:33)
Yeah, so he's born in 1913. think that often, I might even be born tonight. I'm always confused whether it's 1930 or 1917. It's in my book. I've got the correct answer there, but I'm pretty sure it was 1913. Look at the show notes, it's probably there. Yeah,

Jonathan Thomas (16:44)
Link in the show notes.

Chris Smith (16:48)
so born in 1913 in a place called Lesmahagow, which is a small mining town, basically a little bit southeast of Glasgow, basically part of the of the Glaswegian hinterland, I suppose.

and the coal there which is extracted, it basically goes to fire things like the lamps and things like that in Glasgow. And that's kind of where this, what had been a pretty agrarian village slash town then becomes this kind of more industrial place. It sort of grows on the back of this coal and the industrial revolution. And getting across this boring to this background, his father basically runs a shop there.

His mother had been, I suppose, the equivalent of an elementary school teacher until she gets married and then she obviously, based on what was called a marriage bar at the time, has to step down from that role because she is deemed to have familial duties such as raising eight children. So that's the kind of family he grows up in. It's probably a relatively small house. Certainly Cairncross and his brother describes it as, this is his brother, Sir Alec Cairncross,

describes a pretty frugal upbringing. So because of eight children, they're not hugely wealthy, but they're lower middle class. And because his father, again, runs a shop, he's able to support them with that money while also being able to afford the cost of a living maid to help with the sort of the family housework and that kind of thing. So they're certainly not rich. They're not even well off really. What they are is much

Better off, I suppose, though, than the really, really poor people in British society who are legion at this point. So yeah, he's the last of all these children, and it's really an amazing family. I think there's something like five out of eight end up with university degrees, including some of the sisters. His elder brother Alec becomes the chief economic advisor to the government in the 1960s and also has a PhD from Cambridge. Another one of his brother...

brothers, Andrew had a PhD in Shakespeare in English Literature and got a job in the United States as a university professor. So we're talking about an extremely accomplished family in that sense. And probably the brightest of them is the youngest, is John. And that's because not only is he intelligent in the of the usual sense, he's pretty good at maths, he's pretty good at, you know, that sort of thing, but he has this amazing facility for languages.

And he's really just learns them all the time. We can talk about this a little bit later, but later in life, I think he spends a few months in China and basically picks up Mandarin, which is almost unheard of. don't know anyone who does that and spends time then translating Chinese poetry into English. I that's, you know, I mean, we've all got to have a hobby. But

Jonathan Thomas (19:32)
Well gotta have a hobby.

Chris Smith (19:35)
his hobby when he's a teenager is reading the works of Molière, Racine and Cornille.

which are 17th century French writers in French. And he enjoys reading his German literature as well. And that's what he's really interested in. And so he first decides when he leaves school at the age of 17 to go to the University of Glasgow, which is obviously very nearby. And he takes the bursary exam to do so. And I think he gets the seventh highest mark out of anyone who applies that year for a bursary at...

at Glasgow and he's doing this a year early at the age of 17. And one of the things I found in the Glasgow University archives was his test scores, his transcripts, and he'd get things like 88 out of 100 in one French exam and then 100 in the next one. He'd get 98 in the German exam and then 96. He'd get, I don't know, 92 in English and then 96 in English.

The only thing he doesn't do particularly well in, I think he has a 68 out of 100 in maths, in mathematics. So he absolutely just blasts this test out of the water and gets given his bursaries to go to Glasgow, which he does. So Glasgow is very different from the places we'll talk about later. So it's a very kind of industrial city. It's a very, very old city. I've got Jonathan, have you ever been to Glasgow?

Jonathan Thomas (20:59)
No, I haven't.

Chris Smith (21:00)
So the city center of Glasgow is really interesting. It was called a tenement city for a while, certainly in this sort of period because of the 19th century accommodation, which is built for the industrial workers, they're all in these tenement blocks. looks quite like how you kind of imagine a lot of New York to have looked around the same sort of time, I'd have thought, with all those sort of tenements in

Jonathan Thomas (21:24)
Hmm.

Chris Smith (21:24)
that city.

Jonathan Thomas (21:25)
The the irony is they use Glasgow to stand in for New York now when they film movies. Yeah, they do.

Chris Smith (21:30)
Oh really? I

was in New York over the summer, thought summer, over the winter and I was kind of struck by how similar some of the architecture was to Glasgow.

Jonathan Thomas (21:38)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Smith (21:40)
So that's the kind of place that we're talking about and it tends to recruit pretty locally. So like Cairncross and his brothers, they all go to Glasgow. And these people have no illusions about the working classes at all because they've grown up with them. They're, know,

the clever boys, the people like the Cairncross brothers who'd been the sons of middle class or lower middle class people going off to university who had lived in and around the working classes all their lives. That's not the case for Cambridge and we'll come to that. So he does two years in university there. So normally in England, a university degree is three years. In Scotland, it's rather like the US and it's a four year degree.

what you do in Glasgow at that time, this is the late 1920s, it might be 1930, it must be 1930 to 1932, is you basically then spend a year abroad to where you further work on your language skills, perhaps teaching children English or whatever. And Caincross ends up going to study instead the Sorbonne, which is basically the main university in Paris at this time.

And he basically spends a year there having a wonderful time, drinking wine, eating nice food. These are all sorts of things he'd not really done at Glasgow. So before he goes to Paris, he says he's barely ever even drunk wine. And then he was having it with every single meal while in Paris, taking in the sights, taking in the architecture, the scenery, going to the plays, going to the galleries, all that sort of stuff. And having what sounds like a very lovely time if you're a

a clever and quite cultured young man, which Cairncross clearly was. And he decided to spend another year to basically get an upgrade to his certificates, his license of letters as they're called. So he basically ended up spending two years in Paris. And Paris is quite interesting from our point of view when looking at Cairncross, because he's there from basically 1932 to 1934. And so...

when Hitler comes to power in 1933, all of a sudden he finds that lots of Jewish people are now suddenly studying with him because they've all basically fled Nazi Germany. They've basically decided to take a one look at the Nazi government and said, we're going, we're leaving. So I think he finds that very distressing hearing at least some of the stories about what's been going on back in places like Germany. And at the same time, he's also observing other kind of

horrible right-wing groups, not quite fascist, but not far off it. People like Action Française which is this almost, I'd say, proto-fascist organization in France, which probably has around 60,000 members and around 7,000 of those are in Paris alone. And he kind of sees them on their activities, their activism, all that sort of stuff. Here's what they have to say and basically decides that he doesn't like them very much. And so then...

Once he's got some holiday time, he decides to go to places like Austria. He decides to go to places like Berlin on cycling holidays and things like that. And he basically sees Nazism firsthand and decides he finds it very, very, very worrying. He encounters people who are openly anti-Semitic. He accounts people who

Jonathan Thomas (25:03)
Okay.

Chris Smith (25:04)
want to do things like refight the First World War, essentially. He finds people who

a very, very kind of anti-communist, anti-left wing. And I think he takes one look at this and sees the way that he thinks that Europe is blowing. And this is what I think is the seedling to a lot of his later politics that he's going to pick up. But after two years, he decides to return back to the United Kingdom and his brother Alec encourages him to join him at Cambridge University. So Alec at this

is now studying for a PhD at Cambridge. And so Cairncross agrees and is accepted into Cambridge University for a further two years to complete his undergraduate degree and that's where we first find him in 1934 living in England.

Jonathan Thomas (25:53)
so he's at Cambridge, he's study he's finishing his degree. How was Cairncross recruited? I gather Burgess and Blunt tried and failed, and then it took James Klugmann to bounce him into it.

What does these tell us about these failed attempts and what brought him on to the to the Soviet side?

Chris Smith (26:14)
So I I wouldn't say they were failed attempts per se, but it it means we have to very briefly go back and revisit the others. So by this point, McLean has been recruited by Kim Philby. And then the guy we've talked about earlier, again, I've done it again, Guy, Guy Burgess, has basically worked out that his friends have become communist spies. He's he's sort of worked that out because

Both McLean and Philby are basically masquerading as conservatives now, that they've had some sort of Damascene conversion and they've seen the lights and they've basically decided to become Tories. And Guy Burgess does not find this even remotely compelling. He thinks I just don't see that being true at all. And he basically works and works and works at them until eventually.

He he essentially works it out that this is this is what they've done and and one of them basically confesses that this is this is what's happening. And basically Guy Burgess invites himself into the party and says, I would like to do this as well. They haven't wanted to invite Guy Burgess because he was a deeply problematic figure to say the least, couldn't keep a secret, liked to get drunk all the time, and when drunk, literally tell people that he's a a spy. He would actually do that. And everyone would be like, he's drunk talking, talking rubbish.

But yeah, that these are some the things that he would do. how how PG thirteen is this podcast?

Jonathan Thomas (27:40)
It it it's okay. Yeah, it's okay.

Chris Smith (27:43)
It's okay. So one of the things that he is he's he's a very, very I think in in his own words would be a prolific homosexual. And quite a predatory homosexual man as well. He liked to sleep with anybody he could. One of the things he liked to do was try to conquer, sexually conquer straight men. And has this an on and off again relationship with Anthony Blunt, who's who's also gay.

one of the things that Burge would do would would be to get drunk in the mornings on very expensive bottles of wine. He'd he'd been to Eaton college, things like that. so obviously cut comes come from some wealth. And he would walk around in his very fine suits, tailored Saville Row suits, with semen stains on their on their behinds, you know, things like that. And so he's a an absolute party animal, the life and soul of the party, friends with everybody.

But also deemed to be by the other two as a as a very much a loose canon, which, you know, is not an unreasonable conclusion, which is one of the reasons why they don't want to invite him in. And the Soviets actually came up with a list of the people who they might invite. And Guy Burgess is literally the bottom of the list. He's literally the last person you you would invite into this group. But because he works it out, because he's very bright, he yet he gets himself in anyway. I mean, is it better to have him you know,

Outside the tent peeing in or inside the tent peeing out. That's the kind of position I think that they they find themselves in. So he so he's brought in. And because he's a an on and again, off again lover with Anthony Blunt, who who's now a lecturer by this time at Cambridge University in in modern languages, he basically gets him invited in as well, which is really useful from from their point of view because it

Blunt is is a lecturer, he can now spot talent for them. He's there in in per per in perpetuity in all likelihood. So if a a student comes along who's an angry individual, left-wing views, has a bit of a chip on their shoulder, has seen that what the Nazis are like and doesn't like them very much, has perhaps some views which might be deemed favourable towards the Soviet Union, he'd be like, that guy. And that's exactly what happens. So when he's in his

period at Cambridge, Anthony Blunt immediately, I think, decides he really doesn't like John Cairncross as a person. They don't get on. he basically thinks that he's the Scottish upstart who shouldn't be there. And John Cairncross thinks that he's a a snobbish idiot who isn't good enough at languages to have the job he's got. So that's that's that those two as opinion of each other. But that's not what Blunt sees in him on a kind of

professional level, an espionage level for the Soviet Union. Here he sees a an individual who could be potentially converted to the cause. So he his name now ends up on this new list of people who could be recruited into the to the Soviet Union, along with other people like Goronwy Rees, who's an another high flying academic type, but who's who's at Oxford, but is also good friends with with Guy Burgess. So that's that's kind of how that happens.

So in the first year, CN Cross doesn't really engage with much politics. so this is nineteen thirty-four to thirty-five. And he's living with his brother Alec. But at that point, Alec graduates and basically goes off to do whatever Alec's gonna do, which is basically conquer the world of economics and and become, you know, the great man of his of his day. leaving John on his own. And at this point, John starts to attend some communist meetings.

And there's some question or not whether he joins the officially joins with a membership card, the the student communist party group, or even joins the Communist Party of Great Britain full stop. It's it's not entirely clear exactly how much communist engagement he's up to, but he's certainly attending some of these meetings. Which in some ways, for someone like Blunt who's looking on, this is both good and bad, it sort of shows that on the one hand, John Cairncross is at least interested in communism as a as a political project.

But on the other, if he carries on becoming too much of a a fixture at these events, then he looks a bit dodgy. He looks like the sort of person because he's not upper middle class, because he's lower middle class. Is this person with that kind of record going to get into the right places to be useful? But fortunately, Cairncross basically stops going because I just think he doesn't get on with them, the communists, very much. I think he finds them fairly kind of doctrinaire, which

you know, he has a point about. but he certainly seems to have an intellectual interest in in the communist project. So at the end of that year, 1936, he decides to he wants to go into academia, which he is unsuccessful in doing because one of the things that it would be required to become

Jonathan Thomas (32:28)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Smith (32:29)
a university professor at that point in in British history is you need to be a a bit of a a networker.

I think that would be the the word. Do you do you use networker or networking in the US as well? That's so

Jonathan Thomas (32:38)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Smith (32:40)
to you so anachronistically use a modern business management speak thing. John Cairncross is terrible at that. He's he's again he's he's quite he's a very prickly individual who likes to argue with people and took offence very easily. And that's not me saying it, that's to quote his brother. That's his brother's description of John.

And so he's basically, I think, advised by one of his university lecturers by one of his tutors that he's not going to be like to get a job in in academia at this point, that he should find some sort of other alternative, some alternative. And that alternative is the civil service. And he takes the civil service exam. So you take basically two, you take the home exam and you take the foreign exam, usually at the same time, and he gets the top mark in both in nineteen thirty six.

And is duly invited to become a I think it's a third lieutenant, I think that's the or a third secretary, that's the role. A third secretary in in the the foreign office. And the reason why he picks the foreign office is because it's the most prestigious of all of the the civil service departments by far. It's where it's the one you want to be in. A bit like being in a household cavalry if you want to join the army, that's where you want to be. In this case, you want to be in the in the foreign office.

Which I think tells us a lot. Again, Cairncross has gone from Glasgow to the Sorbonne to Cambridge and now he's entered the Foreign Office. So it's a guy who, on the one hand, seems to hate the establishments, but also really wants to be part of it and walk in its corridors and be accepted by it. And so that's that's what he does. And it's then that he starts meeting up with with Guy Burgess.

Or rather Guy Burgess starts meeting up with him.

To put it more accurately. And the reason for that is because Guyber just wants to now try to recruit Cairncross into this this cell which they're they're building. And so he meets him on a train, for example, invites him to a party, he invites him to a gay club, gay nightclub, I think, or cafe in Paris of all places, which Cairncross doesn't go to. and

in his memoirs has a a a few kind of quite homophobic remarks to say about Guy Burgess and the and the kind of company he kept. But nevertheless, it's starting to look like it's falling through. but eventually he decides to meet in again and all of this is about trying to sound out Kos whether or not he's someone you could trust to invite into this. Because if you get caught being a spy and you get convicted of treason, then in this period then you're gonna

Hang by a rope by the neck until you're dead, you know. It's not not a case of serving a lengthy sentence at his majesty's pleasure. This is this is a death sentence sort of gig. So that's kind of what they're worried about. And then eventually they draw on James Klugmann, who'd been very good friends with Cairncross at university, and he'd also been very good friends with Guy Burgess. And it's then through Klugmann.

that he's then invited into the fold. They they end up going to a park in London. It's like really James Bond or perhaps more likely John le Carré style, where, you know, they they sort of meet somewhere, go for a walk and then all of a sudden James Clucken scurries off and out behind a a a bush out comes Arnold Deutsched, who then says, basically, would you would you like to come and work for the for the Soviet Union? You know, doing some important work for the revolution comrade, you know, that kind of thing.

And yeah, that that's his his route into the the NKVD.

Jonathan Thomas (36:07)
And

so he's now a Soviet spy. He's working in the foreign office. let's let's fast forward a little bit. He ends up in Hut Three at Bletchley Park by nineteen forty two, and he's translating decrypted German traffic. Given that you wrote the social history of Bletchley, how on earth did a Soviet spy working class how did he end up there and and get that material out?

Chris Smith (36:32)
Well, how he ends up there is is again is another quite interesting, if if slightly lengthy story. It means we have to go back to to 1936, 1937 again. So at this point by 1937, Cairncross has been recruited into the into the fold, I suppose. but he doesn't last in the Foreign Office very long. he only spends two years there. because again he just he he's quite difficult to get on with, I think. And again, he doesn't he's not a good fit for the Foreign Office. I already mentioned earlier that it's highly prestigious.

You've got to talk the right kind of way, you've got to network with the right people, you've got to produce work to a a kind of standard in a kind of way that John Cairncross isn't gonna do. And so, for example, he he does things like talks back to his boss. You know, that's not a not a wise move. He gets offended because one of the porters at the at the place, one of the servants, basically tells him that he doesn't have to call his colleague, sir, which is not gonna go down well with with a

With a Scottish person certainly isn't going to go down well with Carn Cross, who is going to call anyone, sir, by and large. So it's it's not a good fit. And eventually his bosses decide to move him sideways and he gets moved to the Treasury. So all the time he's he's leaking information to to the Soviet Union in in ever growing quantities because he's he's kind of feeling his way into it. He starts off with just writing brief reports about what's kind of going on, until eventually he's providing small packages of information.

And the Soviets are really quite disappointed that he's moved over to the Treasury. They're not hugely kind of bothered about it because this is where Donald McLean's working. Anyway, actually, Donald Maclean is is John Cairncross's boss in the Foreign Office,

Jonathan Thomas (38:06)
Yeah.

Chris Smith (38:07)
which kind of gives us an idea of how well penetrated that that that place was. But one of the things they soon discover is the Treasury actually isn't a disaster because if you know what's being paid for.

You know, who he controls the money controls everything, right? In certainly in the British system. And so if you've got someone in the in the treasury, you know what all the projects are which are being done in the country. So all of a sudden, if you've got some sort of weapons R and D program that the Ministry of Defence or the Ministry of War, whatever, want to or the Admiralty want to invest in, they have to go and ask the Treasury, basically. Which means that someone like Pencos is actually quite well placed to to to have information about what's going on. So they they find that quite useful.

But then when the war starts, you can't have someone a lot all these people working for organizations like the Treasury, they you know, they need to move them on into other kind of jobs which are perhaps more vital to the war effort. And Cairncross gets moved into the cabinet office, working for a a guy called Lord Hankey. And Lord Hankey had been for twenty years what's called the cabinet secretary, which is basically the the most important civil servant in in the British state. He's the head of the civil service. It's it's a non elected position. It's it's like a

Do you have a civil service in the US in the same kind of way?

Jonathan Thomas (39:21)
we do, but it's that's a whole conversation. It's not it's not like the civil service of Britain. It it is a civil service. It is but it's not I don't know how to describe it. It's not like yes, minister. It's not in any way. It's there is what we we call the deep state. There's there's this class of people who work in the government who, you know, at

Who work in the government and who usually generationally work in the government and who and but there's also there the the federal government is so big that I mean it's something like three million employees, I think, that that there's not there is a div there is a defined civil service and there are exams you have to take to to to kind of get to the higher levels, but it's not, it's it it works a lot different. It's more

meritocratic than the British system would have been at this this time period. So yeah, yeah.

Chris Smith (40:15)
possibly still now, but

but yeah so basically that's that's kind of what Maurice Hankey had done. And so at the outbreak of war, he's basically retired you know by the end of the late 1930s he he's retired and then he's kind of brought back by Neville Chamberlain on the outbreak of war. so he's put into the House of Lords so that he can now act as a minister. Because you can't be a minister unless you're in the House of sorry the Houses of Parliament

And you could either be in the House of Commons, which means you have to go through an election, there's not gonna be one of those, or you could get put into the House of Lords and serve from there. And so that that's what that's what happens. So Maurice Hankey is is basically brought in as a a minister without portfolio, which basically means he doesn't run a a standard department like for example, the Ministry of Supply, you know, or the Ministry for Health. You know, he's not he's not working for one of those. He he's giving one of those jobs. He's he's basically just is a guy who runs committees, essentially.

And these are really, really important committees. These are the sorts of ones on like how is the British state going to think tank? I I suppose it'd be the equivalent of a think tank, actually, yeah, in government at the time. And it would be a case of you get this really, really great organizer to run these committees which are going to look into developing new weapons technology. That might be one thing that you'd be doing.

The British sort of defence network in terms of radar stations and stuff like that. That's the sort of thing which Hankey might be organising. Or in one case, what's called the Maud Committee, the MAUD Committee, which is basically Britain's initial investigation into the possibility of building a nuclear weapon, building an atomic bomb. And Cairncross is there at that time.

So the argument, according to Christopher Andrew, who's a very famous historian of all of this, is that Cairncross is actually the first atomic spy because he's the first person who lets the Soviet Union know that this is the kind of thing that the British are interested in developing. Obviously, the the Russians they get far better spies for that kind of work. So people like Klaus Fuchs, the the Rosenbergs people at that who are all infiltrating the Manhattan Project, which comes a little bit later. But

argument is in Cairncross's case he he starts that Soviet war rolling of trying to infiltrate these kinds of these kinds of spaces and this is done through again through the cabinet office so that's arguably Cairncross's most important work as a spy so the first person to let the the Soviets know that the British are even considering whether it was possible to build a nuclear bomb. And that project then goes on to be called tube alloys but that's that's

Not interesting from our our point of view. so when Churchill comes in, Hankey basically doesn't he survives about another year or so, two years, but then eventually gets sacked. He's he's he's basically gone from the government because Churchill doesn't want him there. and Minister Server you know the discretion of the and the pleasure of the Prime Minister. So that's that was that. And that happens in nineteen forty two.

And this leaves Cairncross with a problem. So his Soviet handlers are not impressed, as you might imagine, that they'd be getting all this gold first from the Foreign Office, then from the Treasury, and then from Lord Hankey's office. And then all of a sudden, John Cairncross is out of a job, which which is a bit of a problem. but because Cairncross has been moving in foreign office circles or whatever else for quite some time, he was able to basically worm his way a job into working at Bletchley Park. So he just asked a guy to

write a letter to the right person in the right part of government and yes, Cancros is is appointed to Bletchley Park to work in Hut Three. So that that's kind of how that that happened. background checks are are not really things that happen at this point. inasmuch as you might get interviewed and they'd look at your CV think, yes, Cambridge, Trinity man. You know, very good. Very good. I'd heard he'd been a bit of a communist while at university, but childish stuff, you know. He he's

He's a scholar and a gentleman, in let him in, that kind of thing. There's a lot of that that goes on. And so, yeah, that's how how Cairncross finds himself at Bletchley and immediately gets up to his his old tricks. There's some suggestion that it was even suggested by Soviet handlers that he tried to get into Bletchley because they wanted a man there, which seems perfectly plausible to me, because they knew before well that Bletchley existed. because they'd so thoroughly penetrated the British government. So

they even had someone who was on the Bletch Park training program that we don't know the identity of, but they certainly had someone working there. I think it was one of the people teaching cryptanalysis or Japanese, a Bedford Training S Center for for all of this. But they hadn't actually got someone inside the actual gates of Bletchley Park, though. Or, you know, within the in organization proper. And so Kayacros getting sacked from basically losing his job with Lord Hankey.

now gives him this this opportunity to to go to Bletchley which obviously the Soviets like very much because he's now able to provide all sorts of information directly from what the Germans are getting up to and what the German High Command is saying. So that's that's kind of of how we how we got ourselves into into Bletchley. And it turns out that stealing information from Bletchley is not that hard at that time.

You know, there's nobody ever checks him on the way in or out. No one, you know, there's no sort of random bag searches or anything like that. He just stuffs raw decrypts down his trousers and walks out the park. That's and then gets on the train to London. That's that's that's all it took. If you're trying to get into Bletchley Park and you haven't got a pass, then you're gonna get in trouble. Then you might get shot. But leaving, no can you sort of imagine that now though, like sort of trying to get into the CIA headquarters in Virginia?

And it's

Jonathan Thomas (45:48)
No.

Chris Smith (45:49)
walking you know, walking out without being checked. It

Jonathan Thomas (45:52)
so the the most consequential thing he did while at Bletchley Park was he passed intelligence that fed into the Soviet preparation for the Battle of Kursk in nineteen forty three. So can you tell me what he handed over and what difference it actually made in the battle and how much of the popular claim it stands up to scrutiny?

Chris Smith (46:10)
yeah, so basically what what Hut Three is tasked with, so I I'm sure people can go back and listen to our Blechty episode to to to learn more about this, but just very briefly rehash it. You've got a a building called Hut Six, which is where they literally do the cryptanalysis work and they turn you know, this is the people who actually the the you know, the the very clever maths guys who are, you know, like the Qs of of James Bond. The Q the Q guys.

And they're the ones doing the math to actually make stuff readable. And then what you have is HUT 3, which is taking all the actual messages, which are now written in German plain text, and then translating them and sorting them, prioritizing them and doing some intelligence analysis. And that's what John K and Cross is doing. And once you've translated the the basically the sheets of paper, which are just of all the German plain text, they'll be put into a a different room where they're basically waiting to be incinerated.

And that's basically the stuff he's stealing. And so because he's dealing with pretty high level stuff, we're talking about certainly stuff which is going to be produced by Enigma, so very high level enciphering system, but also by the Loren Lorenz systems, which are even higher level. So these are sort of high command, high command level. This means that he gets access to some information, some messages, snippets of of piece of information about what the Germans are planning.

You know, so it'd be sort of like a an order to move XYZ

Jonathan Thomas (47:35)
Yeah.

Chris Smith (47:37)
Luftwaffe wing to wherever. If you see what I mean. It'd be it'd be that kind of level of of of stuff. I mean it's not gonna be the full order of battle, though you could probably piece it together. In fact the British do piece it together with all the information they're able to collect. But you get bits of it, which basically means that you can

In some ways, work out what what it is that the Germans are planning, what it is and the Russians also know what what they're planning as well. And so one of the sort of big examples of this is again, as you say, the lead up to the Battle of Kursk. Kross is able to report that there's a certain number, several hundred German aircraft on the ground. And that's where you want the the German aircraft to be, is on the ground because they're better than you in the air.

You know, the RAF for all of its great planes like the Spitfire also has a big problem with German aircraft in the air. You want them on the ground because then they're easy to destroy. They you send in a bombing run, whatever it is you can do. And that's exactly what the Red Army Air Force is able to do with the information that Cairncross supplied with this stuff. And it depends on who you read. If you read someone like Yuri Modin, who's one of Caircross's handlers.

I think he says it's something like six hundred aircraft are destroyed on the ground, but you don't take Yuri Modin's word necessarily seriously. I mean the guy liked to inflate how brilliant the the KGB were and how brilliant he was and how brilliant his his agents were. So I wouldn't necessarily buy into that. I I think it's Cairncross who sa himself says between four or five hundred, something in that kind of order. And there's other people who suggest maybe two to three hundred.

You're still talking about a very serious individual blow to the to the German ability to wage this battle. If you take out that sort of a significant part of their air power in one go, then that's that's that's obviously quite important. I mean, but then again, how much of this is you know, would they not have been able to have that information anyway? Because they've got their own air reconnaissance, they've got deserters who are coming across the lines every single day. There's other spy rings which are operating.

Whether or not Cairncross provides the the information that directly leads to this and directly leads to sort of you know, is is quite questionable really. I mean the the the importance of of of it is is is is difficult to know and whether or not it he'd be the only source is is very is it's impossible to know, essentially. So that's that's kind of where that fits in.

In terms of importance as a spy, I don't think we can sort of look at it as a say, here's the one document that say Kim Philby hands over or John Cairncross hands over, which demonstrates their importance. It's it's the volume, quantity, and quality over years which makes them so important to the Soviet Union, not the sort of the one James Bond, Jason Bourne style moment that we we kind of imagine from from TV.

Jonathan Thomas (50:25)
Soviet archives credit him with with smuggling s nearly six thousand documents. He was given the order of the red banner, and yet he has always insisted that he never harmed Britain. Is that he was simply helping an ally that a right wing clique was keeping in the dark. How do you defend that position as a historian? Is is he right or was he a committed communist who was betraying his country?

Chris Smith (50:47)
Certainly think by the time he came to write his memoirs, he believed that. I think he I think there's an expression that they're getting higher on his own supply a little bit. I I I don't think it's true, no. I mean for a start, I think he's quite proud of the fact that he got the order of the red banner. He talks about it in his in his memoirs, as you know, in a quite a prideful way, sort of having it

I think it's in there, but getting shown to him and then it being taken away. And certainly Yuri Modine, when he talks about Cairncross, describes him as a very committed spy. And the important part with that is not so much what he does or doesn't do during the war, it's what he does before and after the war. So he's definitely supplying information before the fur sorry before the second world war, between 1937 and 1939. And you could make the argument he

as he does that he's doing that because he feels that the nkbd the kgb were entrapping him he also makes the argument that he didn't like the policy of appeasement and so therefore he was doing what neville chamberlain should have been doing anyway but that that argument then unravels after 1945 it simply does and we we know that he's still supplying information from again from the Soviet archives Oleg Zarev who's a a Russian scholar

And Nigel West actually well you Zarov actually got to see some of this material, I believe, in the late 90s, back when things started to open up in Russia a bit again, and got to see some of the materials. And there Cairncross is apparently providing documents after 1945. So I think the argument just collapses really. why would you carry on? So a Anthony Blunt, interestingly, though he is a committed communist of sorts, at least on an intellectual level.

He quits in nineteen forty-five. He's had enough. He occasionally acts as a courier again, or whatever, but he's he's he basically has nothing to do with this anymore. He leaves his position by this point, which is working for MI5, and goes off to become an art historian. Leaves government. And Canecross could could, you know, doesn't have to continue if he doesn't want to, I don't think. And so I I just don't buy his his argument. I don't think any of the evidence.

stacks up, it's just his word against other people who were there at the same time, and also against what apparently is in the archives.

Jonathan Thomas (53:04)
And so let's let's fast forward then to post war. the the landscape is completely different. We're now in a cold war with the Soviets. They're they've gone from ally to enemy. and so that's when this this network of spies kind of starts to unravel. it starts with Burgess and McLean in nineteen fifty-one. Philby eventually defects, Blunt is quietly protected by the establishment for years. So how did how did the establishment

handle

its own and then what when did they figure out that Cairncross was a spy and when did they, you know, when did it matter? Was he prosecuted? Wha was there a cover up? I mean, what happened here?

Chris Smith (53:45)
yeah, so in order to understand this, we actually need to understand how they were caught to to answer any of these questions fairly. So because the manner in the in the way they're caught determines whether or not they can be prosecuted, because it's about evidence which you can then bring to trial. And the main evidence which got these guys caught was a a US cryptanalytic project run by the National Security Agency and its forerunners, called the Venona Project.

Which is one of the longest running intelligence operations in US history. It lasts until about 1980. And basically what's happening is that the the embassy, the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC, is sending out highly, highly secure top level communications back to back to Moscow, which are basically unreadable because they operate under what's called a one time pad, which is basically for anyone who's a crypto

geek will will know is basically mathematically insoluble. You can't break it. Unless the operator or the people making the one-time pad do bad things. And that's exactly what the Soviets do. They cut a load of corners, which basically means that this hitherto unbreakable stream of traffic now becomes at least partially breakable for some transmissions. And the US get about 20,000 examples of this and it takes them decades to to break some of it.

But they start to unpick it little bit by little bit. And what they discover is that there is a a Soviet mole who's working in the British Embassy in Washington, DC as well. That he visits his wife who's staying in New York, and that's about all they know. And over gathering more and more information, which takes them about six, seven years of gathering more information and piecing together who's at the British Embassy at what particular time.

Who's got a wife and who doesn't have a wife? When's the wife in New York City? They aim to basically narrow it down to two possible individuals. And one of them is Donald McLean. And unfortunately, or fortunately if if you're McLean, the person who's that basically the head of MI6 Counter Soviet intelligence by this point is Kim Philby. And Kim Philby,

Is spending time, you know, in in Washington, DC with all of his FBI and CIA friends who and then who then tell him basically what's going on and that they're about to work out who who this spy is. And also, quite fortunately, at the same time, Guy Burgess is also in the United States working for the Foreign Office. And basically, Philby says, You've got to get yourself back to the UK pronto.

which basically means they need to come up with an excuse for Guy Burge to either leave or be sent home. And so Philby then s hires a car and starts tearing round the US road network while drunk, apparently, and then gets pulled over by I think a state policeman or something like that and starts insulting him as some sort of colonial upstart or something like that. It's all all goes down very, very badly. Don't you know who I am, old boy? All that sort of stuff. This all gets reported back to the Foreign Office, who then report it back to the NBC.

And then Philby Buds gets sent home in disgrace. And because he's sent home in disgrace, he can then immediately tell Donald McLean you need to get out of Dodge. And so on McLean's birthday, actually on his birthday, the two basically set off in McLean's car to a to a port you know, on the in the south of England, get on a on a ferry and on a steam packet, yeah, and that's that's they're never seen in England again.

And then they turn up, this is in nineteen fifty one, then they turn up, it turns out, five years later, four years later in nineteen fifty-five, in Moscow. but MI five obviously know that they've they've absconded. They know that McLean must have been the spy. They know that Guy Burgess must have been another spy. And that means who could have possibly tipped them off? Well, they they soon work out that the most likely candidate is Kim Philby. They can't prove it was him, they can't prove he was a spy, but they basically sack him.

They basically force him out of of MI6. inside one of Guy Burgess's apartment in inside a guitar case, they find a letter which is about kind of the appeasement policy written in the 1930s by John Cairncross, which isn't proof of anything really, but it's enough to put suspicion on him. So he's basically asked to resign from the from the civil service. So he's now out. And Anthony Blunt's not.

is is also put under suspicion for for a while as well, certainly after a defector comes out with some some allegations a little bit later in the nineteen fifties, early nineteen sixties, but again, not not not really a lot to to go on. So that it that puts an end to the spiring. And it all starts to come up again in nineteen sixty three, when again, because they suspected that the these people might be spied while and John Cairncross actually gets a job

As a university lecturer in the United States in can't remember what it's called now. Western State Reserve University, sounds about right. It's in Cleveland, Ohio. So it's one of those those institutions. And he's gets a job there as a a lecturer in in romantic French literature or French romance literature, one or the other. And

That

means that he has to apply for a visa when when and then when he's traveling to the United States. And that means he gets flagged by the FBI, which means in turns he gets flagged by MI5. And as it happens, MI5 just happened to have a guy called Arthur Martin, who's in the United States on other business anyway. And so he Arthur Martin thinks we've got another chance to have a go at this guy and sort of find out what was going on. And that's that's exactly what they do.

And so Cairncross at this point, since 1951, has been living essentially an itinerant lifestyle in and around Europe, basically working occasionally as a journalist, occasionally as a translator, you know, doing odd bits, bits, and bobs, you know, constantly having sort of minor financial problems. And like he's finally got his dream job of working for university, finally got it, and then MI5 and the FBI knock on his door within a couple of months of getting this job. And I think.

That they correct they correctly perceived that he would he might tell them something. Because I think at this point he just thinks, I'm never gonna get a away from this. I'm never I'm never going to leave my history and my past behind me. Sod it. I'm just gonna tell them. And he and he does it. He confesses in in this is 1963, 1964, basically just decides to tell them the truth. And it turns out that he'd been much more serious than they ever suspected, even in 1951. They thought he might have been a spy, but they they

in nineteen fifties that that they're considering to be pretty low level stuff, not particularly important. Whereas what Cairncross tells them in a series of interviews in nineteen sixty-four, then onwards throughout the rest of his life, he's constantly being interrogated by MI5 over and over and over again, is he's much more significant than they'd they'd imagined. And it confirms to them what they'd already kind of learned that there's a a a ring of five. So a defector called Anatolin Golitsyn, I think it was

basically defects to the to the west and says, by the way, did you know that there was a a ring of five assets working at the top of the British establishments in the 1930s throughout the 1940s? And yeah, he was that they were all educated at Cambridge at the same time, which he was actually wrong about. They weren't all educated at the same time. but they certainly then sort of flagged Cairncross as a possible

Example of this in 1950 in the throughout the 1950s. But then they kind of realize, yeah, he probably was by the time we get into the 1960s. This is this is our guy. And at the same sort of time as well, basically something very similar happens to Anthony Blunt. And he also takes a stiff drink of whiskey and basically confesses to what he'd been up to. And they realize, I think, pretty rapidly that they're you know, before they get interrogated, that there's nothing's going to happen to them.

If they tell the truth. Because what can happen to them? So under UK law, if you want to t prosecute somebody, you need to extract some sort of evidence. Well, the United States are not going to allow you to have their top secret project, which is still ongoing in the nineteen sixties and seventies, intelligence project, they're not gonna admit it exists and then have you know that evidence come out in a British criminal court case.

That's not gonna happen. How what's the chain of evidence which led you in your investigation to get to this answer? You can't put that in front of a jury. You know, that's not gonna you're not gonna prosecute them for that. And it's all quite flimsy anyway. And so that means you need to have an actual confession. But you can't just have MI5's word and transcript of the confession because that's not eligible in court. But just as in the United States we have Miranda rights in the United Kingdom, you've got to take a a a

A statement under caution. The the person that you're with has the right to a s to an attorney, for example. And they know that they're not gonna get that. They're not gonna get him to admit under caution to what that these guys have done. They're just gonna say no or no comment, you know, or if it was in the US, you know, plead the fifth. They're gonna they're not gonna do that. So they've basically got no evidence, and everybody involved probably knows it. And it

Basically what the the deal MI five offer is if you give us everything you you know, every single contact, every single person, we'll ensure that you're never prosecuted. And so because they know full well they're not being able to actually get an actual prosecution, which is going to successfully get over the line. And that's in the that appears in the files. They even consider it at one point. And then basically they're they're written to by their lawyers and told you haven't got you have no hope of prosecuting this successfully.

And so rather than trying to drag it unsuccessfully through the courts, wasting huge amounts of public money and being hugely embarrassing, what they decide to do is to basically squeeze these guys to information over and over and over again so they can catch more Soviet spies or you know Soviet illegals, whatever. So it's not as so much a as a cover-up, it's a case of you can't prosecute them, so there's not else not a lot you can do. I suppose what you could potentially do is

Say in public that John Cairncross or Anthony Blunt is a spy. You could you could say that in public. But if you do that, then you're liable to be sued for libel or or slander. If it appears in the newspapers, the newspapers wouldn't publish it because they'd be done for libel, but you could be done for slander if you say it verbally. And there's only one exception to this, really, and that's if it's said in court or in the Houses of Parliament, in the Houses of Commons, where you have something called qualified immunity.

But

they can't do that. So it'd have to be an actual MP to say this. So basically that's what they decide to do is that they're not c they can't prosecute it, so why why broadcast it? Because if you broadcast it then you get sued for libel. Would be it would be a big part of that.

Jonathan Thomas (1:04:43)
So then how does he finally get exposed publicly? what hap what what are the conditions that happen there? Is it the fall of the Soviet Union and it doesn't matter anymore?

Chris Smith (1:04:52)
well again it goes back to sort of Blunt again. So Blunt does get revealed as a spy in nineteen seventy-nine, and the way that comes about is actually of his own making. So a a journalist had basically got this out of somebody who was working presumably for MI5 or some other part of the British apparatus of state, that Anthony Blunt was the the fourth man of the Cambridge spy ring. So

Investigative journalists have working on this for years. They've been working on this like well over 15 years at this point. And have worked it out. A guy called Andrew Boyle. But he doesn't call him out by name. He doesn't say Sir Anthony Blunt is the fourth man. He calls him under a pseudonym Maurice, who'd attended Cambridge at a particular period, was gay and had a knighthood. And was noted in art circles, that kind of innuendo, where you're not actually saying it's him.

But people start to put two and two together. And there's a famous satirical magazine called Private Eye, who note that there is speculation that Anthony Blunt is Maurice, or something words to that kind of effect. And Blunt gets wind that this is going to be published in s in in Private Eye, and so they then try he tries to then take out a case against Private Eye for publishing it, but but in the act of actually bringing a case to

to court or threatening to bring a case to court, you have to go public. So why would Anthony B. Blunt be suing Private Eye over Andrew Boyle's book? So he basically revealed himself as a spy. And everybody then kind of in the journalistic world knew it, which then meant that Margaret Thatcher then had to make a statement in the House of Commons. To to sort of talk about about what what is almost certainly going to come out at some point. Someone's peop people are kind of working this out already. So she has to make a statement.

And so she does it in the House of Commons, which gives her qualified immunity to make the case, and then denounces him as a traitor. And then his reputation is ruined, or as you might well imagine, and he then dies a few years later, having drunk himself to death. but one of the other things that happens with with all of this is that they are they start to look now very carefully for who the fifth man might be.

And because all of this is in the news, there's a civil servant, famous civil servant called Jock Colville, who revealed to the Sunday Times that a note had appeared in Burgess's flat in C and Cross's handwriting. And so then it's revealed for the first time that John Cairncross was at least some sort of spy. And then in 1990.

well actually 1985, another defector, Soviet defector called Oleg Gordievsky, escaped to the United Kingdom, which in itself is a really cool story, which I think they made a film about a few years ago. but he starts working with the historian Christopher Andrew on a book about his time in the in the the KGB. And he'd basically been one of the KGB's chief archivists. And

In doing so, he revealed to to to Andrew that that Kos was indeed the fifth man. And so that all then comes out in in nineteen ninety-five. And yeah, that's that's what they what they say. And King Kos does think about trying to take go to the courts w for a libel suit, but but doesn't end up doing it. So that's how it all all comes out.

Jonathan Thomas (1:08:05)
so he's exposed. What happens then? I mean does he does he admit to it all? Does does is he prosecuted? What happens?

Chris Smith (1:08:14)
so he admits to having been a spy. I I don't think there's much much way he's gonna be able to sort of refute most of that. But he certainly denies being an atomic spy, and he basically makes the argument he he goes on to make in his book that he'd basically been what he calls an agent for the duration of the of the Second World War, that he was a patriot, that he'd done, you know, nothing morally wrong. Legally, perhaps, but morally he he'd nothing.

Done nothing wrong that the Nazis needed to be defeated, and in his view, that was the most effective way of doing it. So the the argument we've already kind of considered. And he gives a number of interviews to to the TV cap crews and so on and so forth. At this point, he's living in France, and he's obviously an an elderly man by this point, you know, long since retired. his

Previous marriage had had fallen through, and by this point he's living with with a a younger woman who who'd been an opera singer and was living basically a a pretty good life, I think, at that particular point. And then obviously this saga comes up yet again in in obviously in 1990. And he then basically dedicates the rest of his life to trying to write his memoirs, and as he sees it, get the records.

straight to to sort of tell his side of the story, as opposed to these kind of you know really unflattering historians and and former Soviet de defectors. he does eventually move back to Britain very, very late on in life but he's very ill by this point. He's had a number of strokes and then he he dies in in 1995 and then his his widow

then continues over the next two years to edit the the memoirs and they come out in in nineteen ninety seven posthumously. But yeah, that's so all of this this comes out i from nineteen ninety onwards it's basically the twilight of of Ken Cross's life.

Jonathan Thomas (1:10:03)
So

after all this time, why does the story of the Cambridge Five still grip us like it does? What is it about this story that maybe Britain can't let go of? Is it because of the class? Is it because of the treachery? Is it because of the the cover ups? I mean, what is it about it?

Chris Smith (1:10:20)
Well, again, I I would take issue with cover up. I I think failure to prosecute is not necessarily the same as a as a as a cover up per se. I mean yeah, just failure to to talk about it, I guess, would be my my view on that. but I think that it's just a great story, isn't it? It's it's literally just a great story. like s novels like Tinker Tailor the Soldier Spy are literally written kind of about Kim Philby.

Because John le Carré had been an MI6 officer in the 1960s and knew full well all of what had happened. And basically the I'm not going to reveal who the bad guy is, but the bad guy is essentially modelled on Kim Philby. So it's it's not only it's it's not only better than fiction, but it's also inspired the best fiction, which is, you know, which has come out of that entire genre. It's and I think it is the class thing, it is about kind of the establishment being untrustworthy, you know.

So and so's, it's about in the case of John Cairncross, it's about someone who's acting against these the the kind of an establishment he doesn't feel sort of cherished by, so it's got jealousy in there. Yeah, it's it's just a great story. I think I think that's why people keep on coming back for it. And it's so embarrassing for the establishment as well at the time. It literally brings down governments this stuff. Spy scandals help to bring down the Macmillan government.

And it arguably helps bring down the his his successor. So it's and it dogs them for decades. Every time there's like a new generation of politicians, this story comes back again, you know?

Jonathan Thomas (1:11:51)
it makes me think of one of my favorite episodes of Yes, Yes Prime Minister, one of us.

Chris Smith (1:11:55)
Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Well again it's it's and it's it it appears in all the satirical stuff in the nineteen fifties, of course obviously this comes out at first in nineteen fifty one, then it's in the pages of Private Eye in the nineteen sixties, and then obviously it's then satirized in Yes Prime Minister in the nineteen eighties. It's it's the the gift that keeps on giving.

Jonathan Thomas (1:12:16)
Well, Chris, as always, it's a pleasure. You've turned what most of us think is a story about ideology into a fascinating story about British class snobbery and a clever, clever Scottish boy who was never quite let into the fold. Thank you for coming back on to the Anglotopia podcast. Chris's book on Cairncross is The Last Cambridge Spy, and we'll put links to that and all his work in the show notes, along with Yuri Modin's memoir, and which Chris promises is better than any spy novel, if not entirely true.

Chris Smith (1:12:44)
Right,

main mainly untrue.

Jonathan Thomas (1:12:46)
if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, like, or comment, and tell us which corner of Britain's secret history you'd like us to explore next over on YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook. And if you love the Anglotopia podcast, please consider joining the Friends of Anglotopia Club, where you can get early access to new episodes and connect with other Britain enthusiasts. So join us next time as we continue exploring the people, places, and stories that make Britain's history and culture so endlessly fascinating to discover. Thank you, Chris.

Chris Smith (1:13:12)
Chase

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