The 1930’s was an epoch during which one’s loyalties were tested to the extreme. For some in contemporary Britain it was the Class or status that bound. Yet for others it was their lover, family or even friends. In the extreme as the season of treason evidenced, it was Communism. But which one would triumph when all three collided? Which would take precedence?

For some inexplicable reason, during the 1930’s the myth of a Communistic utopia was implanted in the imagination of the West. Instead of the lower classes being infected by this contagion, it was an array of the wealthy well-to-do students who contracted the most virulent strain.

Main picture: Kim Philby with a sunny disposition but a treacherous heart

A Rash of Rogues

Four of Britain’s greatest traitors – five if Cairncross is included – were produced by this milieu. They formed the pantheon of traitors which infested British Intelligence for two decades rendering it supine and ineffectual against Soviet infiltration. Would the personal ties of camaraderie that bound these four together surpass that of the ties that bound them to the conviction that Communism was the saviour of mankind?

The genteel Cambridge was to play a pivotal role in this treachery.

The exact birthplace of this un-British activity and its epicentre was the Cambridge Apostles, also known as the Cambridge Conversazione Society, which was an intellectual secret society. It was here that the main co-conspirators learnt their ropes and were groomed in their development by a Soviet Agent.

Moreover it was here in a utopian atmosphere of an impending new world order that the Cambridge Spy Ring was conceived. The main protagonists were Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald McLean and Anthony Blunt.

Of the four, two were homosexuals – Guy Burgess and Donald Blunt – with Kim Philby having a string of affairs and multiple marriages. Guy Burgess was a flamboyant extrovert who in a milieu of prim and prudish sexual mores was openly gay and promiscuous. Within his liberal circle this might have been condoned but in the Establishment it would have been frowned upon. Prosecution under the sodomy laws of the day was always a possibility.

 

Due to their activities and membership of various left-leaning organisations, they were well-known on the Cambridge campus.

Forging the ties that bind

In view of his pro-proletarian views, Guy Burgess organised a strike of the canteen waiters. His contact within the staff was a fellow homosexual who Guy fancied. In retaliation, the right-wing students arranged a sting. They paid the Strike Organiser to make advances to Guy Burgess and have sex with him. At that moment, the University Authorities barged into his room. The pair was caught – to put it delicately – in flagrante delicto.

 

Sodomy being a criminal offence, the waiter was instantly dismissed. Instead Guy Burgess was hauled before two senior deans and not charged. In unsubtle terms, they advised him that his record would remain intact with this incident being expunged from the record. The mitigating factor for leniency was his upbringing and especially his Eton and Cambridge roots. “The ties that bind,” he was informed were more obdurate than that between the workers and the upper class. Tellingly from Burgess’s egalitarian viewpoint, he was aghast but relieved.

Needless to say, Guy and his fellow traitors and double agents had learnt an invaluable lesson. The ties that bound them to the upper class would be invaluable in the commission of their future nefarious deeds.

 

Philby then travelled to Austria to assist in left-wing causes. It was at this juncture that he met Litzi Friedmann, a Jewess. Philby the idealist had met his match in Litzi, an avowed Communist, battling the repressive Dollfuss Regime. In order to save Litzi, Kim married her. It was not a marriage of convenience on either part but rather a meeting of minds and of heart and soul too.

It is claimed that it was Litzi who recruited the receptive Philby as a Soviet mole. Whatever the truth of this speculation, Kim was ensnared in the Soviet web. As all four co-conspirators were to belatedly discover, it would perforce be a life-long commitment

Kim’s Soviet handler in the UK was Arnold Deutsch – code name Otto – to the four. Of far greater significance is the speculation that Moscow as the final arbiter for acceptance as a Soviet agent, requested that Kim perform a difficult chore in order to prove his reliability and suitability for difficult tasks. Kim was requested to spurn Litzi in spite of his being madly in love with her.

 

Would Kim succumb at his first challenging hurdle or would he fail?

Kim passed the test. With a despondent and heavy heart, he split from Litzi. Maybe it was not with flying colours but the end justified the means. The test that he had been set was to determine whether the ties that bound these young, impressionable, idealistic but callow youths, were capable of meeting the Soviet’s exacting standards.

Guy with his predilection for men instead of women and his outrageous flamboyant persona would regularly embarrass the other three but being mentally in tune with one another, they accepted it without demurring. Being a heavy drinker – probably an alcoholic – his rebellious outrageous streak was vented whenever he was drunk. As sobriety was not a trait, this was often.

The next assignment in the forging process was then presented by Otto. They had to sever all ties with their current left-wing friends and organisations and ingratiate themselves with Right Wing conservative groups. By this process, they would inveigle themselves in the heart of the “monster”, the British Establishment. This process entailed becoming the pariahs of their erstwhile Left leaning friends much to their chagrin: friends forfeited for their convictions.

As recanting Marxists with upper class roots, they were readily accepted within the establishment circles.

The ties that bound the four as friends were a profound danger to themselves and their Soviet handlers. They acknowledged that when one domino fell, the others would fall in quick succession, the smoking gun being their frienship.

This would be their ultimate undoing.

The forseen downfall occurred when Donald McLean, Guy Burgess and Kim Philby were working for MI6 – counter intelligence – in Washington. Klaus Fuchs, an engineer & Soviet spy on the Manhattan bomb project, was in contact with McLean. Through a Russian KGB officer who was defecting to the USA, MI6 learnt of the existence of a mole operating within MI6.

Of course, aspersions were cast not on the high ranking officers but rather the cleaners and other menial workers. In order to deflect attention from McLean, Kim Philby used the class connection to maintain the focus “downstairs” as they euphemistically referred to the workers.

Being mindful of the need to protect Philby being the more senior Soviet spy, his Russian handler instructed Kim to betray McLean.

 

Contemporaneously with this development, Guy Burgess in his inimitable way had embarrassed himself when he explicitly described how he had attempted to pick up another man at the local public “lavatory” as Guy loved to call the Gents. Aside from this verbal indiscretion in front of American colleagues, he also exposed himself physically.

Most notably, Kim Philby notified both McLean and Burgess to bolt for Moscow which they duly did. Aspersions were immediately cast upon Philby as the person providing the warning to McLean & Burgess. At MI6’s behest and without definite proof but unconfirmed suspicions, Philby was posted back to the UK.

With the pressure still on and ultimate discovery imminent, Philby resigned from MI6 and settled in Lebanon as a correspondent for various British publications. With the British public baying for his blood, he too had to be smuggled to the Soviet Union in some haste.

 

The climate of treason had ceased to exist and with it the vile rotten core at the very heart of British intelligence. Never again would the ties that bind prevent a proper investigation of the upper classes on recruitment as well. No perfunctory checks or “classist” assumptions would prevail in future. In any case, the Britain of sixties and seventies was casting off the suffocating mantle of a class-based society. Meritocracy rather than station in life would count for more in assessing people, their worthiness & their abilities.

The class divide was well and truly past its sell-by date and with it Marxist and its errant children, betrayal and treachery.

While in Russia, Melinda, McLean’s wife, did break her ties with Donald and she moved in with Kim Philby but the affair proved to be short lived. After a few years, the youthful attraction that she once had for Kim who had once proposed having an affair with her by asking her whether a person could love two people simultaneously, replied in the negative. Ultimately Melinda’s ties to Donald were too strong and she forsook him for Donald once again.

 

The Denouement

Of the four, Philby was the most unrepentant. According to insiders, even Kim, the most avid believer of the bunch realised that 60 years of Marxism did not herald the age of the New Jerusalem. Far from it. Apparently he complained about the lack of press freedom and the treatment of old age pensioners in Soviet Russia little making the connection – or most probably in denial – that this was the reality of what he had given his life for.

Instead it was pale shadow of the nirvana and utopia that they had fought so assiduously for.

It was Guy Burgess who with his sexually immodest behaviour & his immoderate & exasperating yet engaging manner who died first. As was to be expected, it was the copious quantities of drink that was his nemesis. The quartet became a trio. To the end, the remnants of the Cambridge foursome were non-judgmental of his outlandish behaviour.

 

If their zeitgeist had been an admixture of betrayal, treachery and utopianism, their leitmotiv had been Marxism. This was the malady which was the nexus between four otherwise very ordinary British youths albeit with upper class backgrounds.

The ties that bound them to Communism were of far greater strength than the ties that bound them to fair England and their fellow British citizens. Even the ties that bound them were subordinate to that of Communism. This arose when Anthony Blunt revealed to his KGB handler that Donald McLean had informed his wife that he was spying for the Soviets.

Ultimately it was their ties to Communism which were the most durable. Over their lifetime, they had betrayed the identity of dozens of British moles who paid the ultimate price: death. They even forfeited their friendships and marriages on the altar of their Communistic convictions.

For all the misery inflicted not only on themselves but also to countless others, the end result had been a perversion of their cherished human bonds & humanity that beckoned from Communism. It required a sang froid and bloody-minded demeanour to betray colleagues and even friends to the untender hands of the KGB. 

 

Most of them never witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and with it Communism.

Would they have wept tears of joy or bitterness at Communism’s demise?

Regret maybe but joy certainly not.

A lifetime’s bond to Marxism was far too resilient and enduring to break.