They Were So Certain

once Germany breached Belgian neutrality. David Owen does not dissent. British policy had failed to prevent a European war; Britain had no alternative but to join it. I’m not convinced. What would have happened had Britain stood aside? Probably a German-dominated Europe. Europe would have had a different history, but Owen acknowledges rightly that Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany was not Hitler’s. He thinks the decision for war in 1914 ‘vindicated Cabinet government’. It also led to ‘four years of carnage’. Some vindication! Lord Skidelsky is a crossbench peer and Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick A Spy Among Friends – Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre Bloomsbury, £20 hey were so certain that no-one from that background – educated at Westminster School and Trinity College Cambridge, and son of the Tgreat St John Philby, a member of the Indian Civil Service and later a civil servant in Mesopotamia and advisor to King Ibn Sa’ud I am also sceptical about his thesis to look for the smoking gun, which he of Saudi Arabia – could possibly behave like that open political discussion will tend to locates in the private exchanges between that. It was laughable to suggest that Harold produce better policy outcomes than secret top British diplomats in London and the Adrian Russell Philby (known as ‘Kim’ diplomacy. To give just one example: the main European capitals. It would be ‘too because his father was a fan of Rudyard decision to give military backing to the crude’, he writes, to say that there was ‘a Kipling) could be a double agent, despite a American invasion of Iraq in 2003 was small group of highly motivated diplomats youthful dalliance with communism when taken by the Cabinet and supported by in the Foreign Office, who were intent on a student. Parliament. Perhaps Blair had privately manipulating the new foreign secretary’, yet Yet following the defection to Moscow promised Bush more than he could or that is what his account strongly suggests. of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean in should have done. But there was no sense As a former medical doctor and politician, 1951, the suggestion that Philby might in the political world that Britain had an Owen is also alert to the health, character, have tipped them off would not go away. He ‘honourable undertaking’ to support the and personal relations of political actors, was interviewed at length by MI5, whose United States, as the Cabinet may have felt and how these affect their decisions. His officers were far less grand than those in in 1914. account of Lloyd George’s motives in the MI6, many of them retired police officers An important strength of Owen’s book run-up to August 1914 is excellent. experienced in extracting confessions from is its ‘insider’ perspective. As a former The official view (if one might call it that) criminals, and was forced to resign from the foreign secretary, he knows exactly where is that Britain could not have stood aside Secret Intelligence Service. 44 | THE HOUSE MAGAZINE | 9 MAY 2014 WWW.POLITICSHOME.COM Gossip that he was the ‘third man’ Kensington, for the purpose of challenging absence the headmaster addressed all of us continued, and even though MI5’s Lipton to repeat his allegation outside at assembly, saying how appalling it had interrogation of Philby ceased in 1952, the Parliament or to withdraw it. On 10 been that “some Socialist MP” had made service was convinced he was a Soviet spy, November, Lipton made a short and these terrible allegations against the father but could not find conclusive evidence. humiliating personal statement to the of two boys in the school. “Quite rightly the Equally, the more gentlemanly and grander Commons to “withdraw unreservedly Foreign Secretary had said there was not a MI6 could not prove he was definitely the charge implied in my supplementary shred of evidence against Mr Philby, and innocent. question and in my remarks during the anyway, the allegation that he was a traitor Three years passed, but on 23 October debate last Monday, and…say how deeply I could not possibly be true, for otherwise he 1955 the New York Sunday News, briefed regret that the charge was made”. would not have sent his boys to this school”. by FBI director J Edgar Hoover, who Whilst all this was going on I was nine The head’s assertion that Philby just was convinced Philby was guilty and years old, and at a school at a place called wasn’t the sort of chap who could do such exasperated at the British authorities’ Heronsgate, halfway between Chorleywood terrible things chimed closely with MI6’s refusal to arrest him, ran a story saying he and Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire. The view of him, unwaveringly considering was the “tipster” who had helped Burgess community had a fascinating history, as him to be one of their own. Indeed – and Maclean to flee. Heronsgate had been established by the astonishingly – once the row over his being Two days later the story broke in the Chartists in the mid-1850s on the basis of named as the ‘third man’ had died down and UK when the Labour MP for Brixton, common ownership and self-sufficiency, he had been given a job in Beirut in 1956 Marcus Lipton, suggested in the House of and was originally named O’Connorville as a Middle East correspondent for The Commons that Philby had tipped them off after the inspirational Chartist leader, Observer and The Economist, MI6 hired four years earlier, enabling them to defect Feargus O’Connor. Following Philby’s him again as their agent in the Middle East. to Moscow before they were arrested and resignation from MI6, the family had MI6’s treatment of Philby demonstrates charged with being Soviet spies. He asked moved there, and two of their sons – John perfectly how they used to recruit and the Prime Minister “whether he had made and Tommy – became my contemporaries at operate from the 1930s. Provided you up his mind to cover up…the dubious third the school. were from the right background and man activities of Mr. Harold Philby”. They were both taken out of school were educated at the right sort of school A few days later (on 7 November) whilst the ‘third man’ allegations were and university, your loyalty was never the Commons debated the Burgess and raging in Parliament and the press. In their questioned. This explains how Philby Maclean affair, and Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan could not have been clearer in his defence of Philby: “It is now known that Mr. Philby had Communist associates during and after his university days. In view of the circumstances, he was asked, in July 1951, to resign from the Foreign Service. Since that date, his case has been the subject of close investigation. No evidence has been found to show that he was responsible for warning Burgess or Maclean. While in government service he carried out his duties ably and conscientiously. I have no reason to conclude that Mr. Philby has at any time betrayed the interests of this country, or to identify him with the so-called ‘third man’, if, indeed, there was one.” Following Macmillan’s exoneration Kim Philby at a school sports day in the mid-1950s (third of him, Philby called a chaotic press from left, smoking) conference at his mother’s flat in South WWW.POLITICSHOME.COM 9 MAY 2014 | THE HOUSE MAGAZINE | 45 survived the most devastating accusations Konstantin Volkov, deputy chief of Soviet 1983, after years of defending him and of treachery – privately from the former intelligence in Turkey who in 1944 was denying to all and sundry that he was police officers in MI5, and publicly in the about to defect and reveal the details of the capable of betraying his country, is riveting House of Commons - and avoided being USSR’s spies in the UK. Philby alerted and tragic. charged for treason despite overwhelming Moscow Centre, and Volkov and his wife I read Macintyre’s book in one sitting, circumstantial evidence against him. were taken to the Lubyanka where they and found it impossible to put down. I We now know were tortured and doubt whether there has been a better that Philby was executed. description of the sordid and vicious world not the only I doubt whether there Too many of us of Cold War espionage, and the destructive Cambridge- has been a better description have been brought effects that it had on the lives of everyone it educated spy to of the sordid and vicious up believing Ian touched. have been recruited world of Cold War espionage, Fleming’s fiction by Moscow – in and the destructive effects about James Bond Lord Faulkner of Worcester is a Labour peer addition to Burgess that it had on the lives of and envying his and Maclean, lifestyle, but there there were also everyone it touched was nothing heroic An Unexpected MP: the Surveyor of or glamorous in Confessions of a Political the Queen’s Pictures, Anthony Blunt, and passing information to Moscow’s handlers Gossip John Cairncross - but Philby was probably in London, and then waiting for them to be By Jerry Hayes responsible for the deaths of more anti- picked up and killed. Biteback, £18.99 Soviet activists than all the others put Macintyre’s book is one of many written together. He may not have pulled the trigger in recent years about Kim Philby, but it he only way I can review this himself, but as Ben Macintyre describes in is alone in describing in great detail the chatterbox of a book is to say his brilliant new book, all Philby needed to lifelong friendship between him and another that it’s exaggerated, over every do was to give the Russians the information MI6 spy, Nicholas Elliott.

Load more