His friends, all examples of class privilege, were Donald Maclean (1913–1983), Kim Philby (1912–1988) & Anthony Blunt (1907–1983). The 4 men were recruited by Soviet intelligence operatives to become secret agents; Burgess began supplying information from his posts as a BBC correspondent 1936-8, member of the MI6 intelligence agency from 1938-41, and a member of the British Foreign Office from 1944. But it was the older Blunt who became the recruiter.
In 1951 Burgess was recalled from his post as 2nd secretary of Washington DC’s British embassy, due to his drunkedness. Back in Southampton he learned that a counterintelligence investigation by British and US agencies was closing in on his Cambridge mate Maclean. He immediately told Blunt!
To avoid prosecution, Burgess and Maclean left the UK and fled to France. Their location remained unknown until 1956, when they announced they were living in Moscow. A shaky Whitehall establishment mounted a desperate damage limitation exercise, downplaying the significance of the Cambridge spies.
Was there a sixth?
photo: Irish Examiner
Philby was forced to leave MI6, but even then his charm fooled those at the top. He was strongly defended by Sir Stewart Menzies, wartime head of MI6, who believed Philby was a patriotic officer and victim of an MI5 witch hunt.
It was disclosed in 1979 that the Fourth Man in this spy ring was former Cambridge colleague Anthony Blunt, a respected art historian and member of the queen’s household, and that he had contacted Soviet agents to arrange for Burgess and Maclean’s flight.
But John Cairncross (1913–1995), British literary scholar and civil servant, was not identified until the 1990s as the Fifth Man in the Cambridge Spy Ring. He worked initially in the Foreign Office, then Treasury and then Cabinet Office. In 1942-33 he worked in Bletchley Park and joined MI6 in 1944. When he was at Bletchley Park, Cairncross passed secret documents to the Soviet Union. In Sept 1951, he was questioned about his connexion with Maclean. Cairncross did not admit to spying until MI5 found papers in Burgess' flat with a note from him, after Burgess escaped to Moscow.
Is there anything significant left to say about the Cambridge spy ring, Moscow Centre’s Magnificent Five? Yes! People assumed that Guy Burgess did little harm. But in Stalin’s Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess (2020), Andrew Lownie discussed the culture of a British elite in the 1930s, during the war and after. Lownie’s latest revelations argued that, far from being a minor, alcoholic irritant, Burgess for years passed on thousands of classified documents to Moscow. Many of the documents contained very useful information, including the west’s position on key issues when the cold war started. Burgess helped to get Philby a post in MI6, and persuaded the Russians to recruit Blunt and Cairncross. Burgess held the group together.
Burgess not only spied for Moscow, but on behalf of competing factions within the British government. He spied on Neville Chamberlain for MI6 and the Foreign Office. At one stage, he found himself in MI5 as one of its agents! MI6 suggested he should penetrate the Russians by arranging to get a Communist party post in Moscow, so he was simultaneously running agents for both British and Soviet intelligence. Moscow Centre thought MI6’s suggestion was too risky for the animated Burgess and a distraction from the main goal of penetrating British intelligence.
Lownie discovered a memoir in Oxford’s Bodleian library by Sir Patrick Reilly, in which the ex-chairman of Whitehall’s Joint Intelligence Committee described Wilfrid Mann, an atomic scientist who worked for MI6 in Washington, as a Soviet spy. Lownie claimed Mann confessed and in return agreed to spy for the CIA.
Burgess was indiscreet, gay when it was illegal, promiscuous, drunk and a man who drove badly, so he survived brilliantly in the bohemian circles of the British establishment (eg Harold Nicolson, Victor Rothschild). But how did he thrive among senior MI5 and MI6 officers and diplomats at the centre of Whitehall, with its powerful decision-making.
But John Cairncross (1913–1995), British literary scholar and civil servant, was not identified until the 1990s as the Fifth Man in the Cambridge Spy Ring. He worked initially in the Foreign Office, then Treasury and then Cabinet Office. In 1942-33 he worked in Bletchley Park and joined MI6 in 1944. When he was at Bletchley Park, Cairncross passed secret documents to the Soviet Union. In Sept 1951, he was questioned about his connexion with Maclean. Cairncross did not admit to spying until MI5 found papers in Burgess' flat with a note from him, after Burgess escaped to Moscow.
Is there anything significant left to say about the Cambridge spy ring, Moscow Centre’s Magnificent Five? Yes! People assumed that Guy Burgess did little harm. But in Stalin’s Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess (2020), Andrew Lownie discussed the culture of a British elite in the 1930s, during the war and after. Lownie’s latest revelations argued that, far from being a minor, alcoholic irritant, Burgess for years passed on thousands of classified documents to Moscow. Many of the documents contained very useful information, including the west’s position on key issues when the cold war started. Burgess helped to get Philby a post in MI6, and persuaded the Russians to recruit Blunt and Cairncross. Burgess held the group together.
Burgess not only spied for Moscow, but on behalf of competing factions within the British government. He spied on Neville Chamberlain for MI6 and the Foreign Office. At one stage, he found himself in MI5 as one of its agents! MI6 suggested he should penetrate the Russians by arranging to get a Communist party post in Moscow, so he was simultaneously running agents for both British and Soviet intelligence. Moscow Centre thought MI6’s suggestion was too risky for the animated Burgess and a distraction from the main goal of penetrating British intelligence.
Lownie discovered a memoir in Oxford’s Bodleian library by Sir Patrick Reilly, in which the ex-chairman of Whitehall’s Joint Intelligence Committee described Wilfrid Mann, an atomic scientist who worked for MI6 in Washington, as a Soviet spy. Lownie claimed Mann confessed and in return agreed to spy for the CIA.
Burgess was indiscreet, gay when it was illegal, promiscuous, drunk and a man who drove badly, so he survived brilliantly in the bohemian circles of the British establishment (eg Harold Nicolson, Victor Rothschild). But how did he thrive among senior MI5 and MI6 officers and diplomats at the centre of Whitehall, with its powerful decision-making.
Lownie said Burgess was very open about his communism and homosexuality but people didn’t necessarily believe most things Guy said. He was a very amusing talker and a natural liar… a natural cover for a spy. He seemed to charm anyone he sought, had a close personal relationship with Churchill and attracted an array of contacts as he flitted between MI5, MI6, BBC and the Foreign Office. His open defiance of security procedures was indulged because the Foreign Office trusted their family.
Given the sheer quantity of information the Cambridge spy ring members passed on to their Russian handlers, it was not surprising that paranoid Stalin suspected them of being agents provocateurs planted by British intelligence. Basing his claims on a wide range of sources, Lownie believed Burgess revealed to Moscow important secrets:
1.prewar arguments over appeasement,
2.details of the planned Sicily landings (1943)
3.decision to postpone an invasion of France (1944),
4.British and American position on Berlin’s postwar status,
5.early negotiations re setting up Nato, and
6.advance notice of US military plans in the Korean war.
In 1963 the British ex-pats were joined in Russia by their old colleague Philby. Alas Burgess died of a heart attack that year! Blunt and Cairncross were offered immunity from prosecution before being outed many years later.
From the day he emigrated, Burgess attracted biographers. But Lownie wrote the first biography that captured the decadent, drunkard sex bandit, and was the first book to reveal the full extent of Burgess's treason. Even so, Lownie showed that the story of the Cambridge spy ring continues to shock. A million Foreign Office files are still being kept secret, and many more books are yet to be written.
12 comments:
Anthony Blunt was a great academic, linguist and royal art historian. I forgive him his politics.
Hello Hels, I cannot forgive people for betraying their country or any principles of decency. Young people such as those at Cambridge are easily led into entering movements that are ultimately harmful, but they should first examine the sponsors of those movements. We have had the same argument in your blog many times whether talent forgives baseness--e.g. Dickens, Wagner and so forth. I wonder if those who look forgivingly on Burgess and his cronies would change their opinion as they watched the treasures of the British National Gallery loaded on a train headed out of England.
--Jim
Student
True. Blunt was a cousin of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the Queen Mother, and top art historian and curator of Queen Elizabeth's art collection.
As a well connected, well educated Cambridge don, Blunt visited the Soviet Union in 1933, and was recruited. He joined the British Army in 1939 and when the Wehrmacht drove British forces back to Dunkirk in May 1940, he was recruited to MI5. Blunt passed the results of Ultra intelligence from decrypted Enigma intercepts of Wehrmacht radio traffic from the Russian front. And he passed details of German spy rings operating in the Soviet Union, eventually helping the Allies to win the Battle of the Atlantic.
So some of Blunt's best WW2 spying was simply anti-German as it should have been, but alas some was solely for Russia's benefit.
Parnassus
When the young men met each other in Cambridge in the 1930s, they were the brightest and most ideologically motivated students in the uni. And as the brightest men in every generation had joined the Cambridge Apostles, so did our Cambridge Spy Ring members. Additionally, once the attacks started, gays and communists badly needed mutual support.
The real problem began when passionate undergraduates joined professional positions of national importance.. like MI5, MI6 and the Foreign Office. Once spies and double agents were revealed, the trust within these agencies was fatally damaged.
In retrospect it looks like their greatest crime was not treason to their own country, but the aid and loyalty
they gave to a dictator who murdered and enslaved countless millions of his own countrymen.
I am delighted to have found this blog. Espionage is all over industry and the "other means" of politics, yet in current reality dismissed as conspiracy theorizing. Only years from now are today's counterproductive or hostile activities likely to come to light. Here's hoping our own governments can earn more loyalty.
Dr F
I was so disturbed about Stalin's name in the book title that I almost refused to read the book. Stalin was a brutal dictator and the Cambridge spies were ideologically driven young men. Even Blunt said that true socialism could never come out of Russia while Stalin was alive.
Hank
I agree that espionage was always successful, whether it was by hiding men and women in enemy territory, using secret cameras, decoding the enemies' internal messages or anything else that bright scientists could devise. But sadly I have to agree that conspiracies are political nonsense to boost politicians' base support, and to confuse the public and social media.
Hi Hels - thanks for this ... I've come across most of the story ... which is pretty incredible - but those were the times. I've got a book here to read by Wilfrid, his elder brother, on Linnaeus - who was also an exceptional artist. Interesting subject and notes on the intricacies of Anthony Blunt's life ... all the best Hilary
The full extent of the espionage may never be known. Too embarassing for the British secret service.
Hilary
those two brothers were pretty brilliant, yes indeed. The British Museum described Wilfrid as an art historian and collector, poet, curator of Watts Gallery in Surrey, and master flower painter.
Fun60
Andrew Lownie agreed with you totally. He noted that a million Foreign Office files are still being kept secret in Britain, and will not be released for a long time, or for ever. Even after the evidence was rock solid, the senior figures in the British secret service could not believe the Cambridge Spies were working against British interests. Utter humiliation.
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