This is just a good cross section of the kind of material that is on offer today, so what I propose to do is to talk about some of those that I think are releases of the most significance, some of which are already mentioned, and some of which are not. In my mind, I don’t think there’s any doubt as to which are the most controversial set of files, and those are the ones which have to do with the first major terrorist offences against the United Kingdom, and a lot of that has disappeared from the national memory, and some of it has disappeared wholly from the national memory.
So what does it consist of? It consists, immediately after the Second World War, indeed at the end of the Second World War, of Zionist extremists, two groups in particular (I’m well aware and not about to pass judgement between what is one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist) but there are two groups, there are the Irgun, headed by the future Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin, and the other are the Stern gang – the Stern gang I believe is the last terrorist group in world history actually to call itself a terrorist group, so there’s something fairly original there. Now the part of the story that is reasonably well known, but not widely known, is the fact that as Britain was being chased out of the Palestinian Mandate at the end of the Second World War, Irgun, under the leadership of Begin, blew up the British Headquarters in Jerusalem, the King David hotel, [which] killed over 19 people. That is reasonably well known.
Rather less well known is that they then headed towards the United Kingdom, and half way to the United Kingdom, approximately, they blew up the Rome Embassy. After the Irgun destruction of the headquarters of the British Mandate in Palestine in the summer of 1946, after the destruction of the British Embassy in Rome, the next target, this from the Stern gang rather than the Irgun, is Whitehall, and a huge bomb is planted. The only reason that it doesn’t cause huge death and destruction is that the timer doesn’t work, but we know, or are reasonably confident that we know the name of the person, the 21 year old Betty Knouth, who planted it.
Now there are all kinds of controversial issues that are associated with this, and over the last year or so, I think it would be fair to say that in Israel, the most controversial issue is the degree of information on what the terrorist groups were up to was passed on to HM Government in one form or another. The first clues were in some early releases to The National Archives. The individual…who has attracted, I think this is fair to say, although I don’t keep a close eye on the Israeli press, most controversial notice is Teddy Kollek, who is the longest serving mayor of Jerusalem, probably one of the longest serving mayors anywhere in the World. He was deeply opposed to Begin. In 1942 he becomes the deputy head of the Jewish Agency, that is to say the organisation which is preparing for independence, deputy head of intelligence, and in 1946 he becomes chief external liaison, with various groups, including the British government. It has been suggested that he was an agent. I don’t think that in Teddy Kollek’s file, but it’s up to you, you will find any evidence that he was an agent.
One of the things which I think leads pretty clearly to the conclusion that he wasn’t an agent, is that after the destruction of the King David Hotel, he went public and indeed he wrote a letter, amongst other letters, to the New Statesman, which said that he had informed the British of one or two previous attempts to attack the King David hotel; in particular, passed on intelligence that mortars were being trained on the King David hotel, and he sums up his role as this: ‘I was a liaison officer between the Jewish Agency, which was actively and consistently working to break the terror, and the Palestine authorities.’ By the Palestine authorities, he means the Brits. So that’s my take on it, but I am quite certain that there will be people who will see good deal more sinister implications in his relationship with the British authorities and British intelligence than I have done.
So that I think is one of the most controversial areas. It’s not the first time, in 1946, that he provides the Brits with intelligence which is intended, to quote the words he used to the New Statesman, to: ‘limit the terror’. On 10th August 1945, for example, he reveals the location of a secret Irgun training camp near Binyamina, and tells an MI5 officer that it would be, quote: ‘a great idea to raid the place’, and the raid leads to the arrest of 27 Irgun members.
Now, what follows on from that? What of course MI5 is particularly interested in knowing, particularly when the letter bombing campaign against leading British statesmen begins in 1947 (leading British statesmen I think would include Attlee, Bevin and Churchill, and Eden amongst others), is how much support there is amongst British Zionists for all this, and the answer is practically none, but nonetheless, there are a small number of individuals, and one of their files is being released today, who were prepared to give aid and comfort to what was going on. How was this discovered? Essentially through Home Office warrant; in other words authorisation for MI5 to tap the telephones, intercept the correspondence, of mainstream as well as extremist Zionist organisations, simply to discover how serious the problem was, and what was discovered from that was extremely reassuring.
But one of the individuals who was prepared to give various forms of aid and comfort to the terrorist campaign, and I’m quoting Kollek in describing the campaign as one of terror, is Samuel Landman, not a person in himself of enormous significance, but the file is, I think, pretty interesting. This was an individual who had been regarded as deeply untrustworthy, for a number of reasons, during the Second World War. As a solicitor, in 1938, he’d been suspended for three years by the disciplinary committee of the Law Society for misappropriation of clients’ funds, and you’ll find the detail of that in his file. During the Second World War Landman is regarded by MI5 and Scotland Yard as, quote: ‘a rogue who has been preying upon ignorant clients and upon anyone else who offers a chance of making easy money’.
Now for the most colourful of the Irgun, or Stern gang, in this case Irgun related files… and this is the most flamboyant fraudster to prey on post-war British public life. Well, most people have forgotten his name, but I think that in the few years after the Second World War, anybody in the media who had been asked who was the most flamboyant fraudster to prey on post-war British life, would have given the name Sidney Stanley, a Polish Jew who was connected with Landman, and kept telling him that he could penetrate the Attlee cabinet and bring all kinds of secrets and so on out of it. Most of this was extraordinary exaggeration. It’s a case that I’ve looked at in ‘Defence of the Realm’ and I don’t think I’ve got anything to change from that, except that you will find in the file a lot of exotic detail that I did not have time to use.
Now, the image that we have of the early years of the Attlee Government is of, I suppose, even though I’m not concerned to argue the case, one of the ablest prime ministers in British history, presiding over a country in which absolutely everything was monochrome. Indeed there was very little sign of flamboyance at all. So the tribunal, the so-called Lynskey tribunal, because it was presided by Mr Justice Lynesky, which begins meeting in Church House, Westminster in 1948, to investigate allegations of corruption amongst members of the government – pretty low level members of the government, and Whitehall officials – became known at the time as ‘the Breakfast Cereal’, and it was about the only really exotic material, the media being somewhat more restrained as to the level of exoticism and celebrity affairs that they produced in those days, that people had to read. So the idea that Sidney Stanley was the most interesting person that people had to read about for about a couple of months at the end of 1948, tells us something which I don’t think that I can adequately summarise!
When he was caught up, he used a technique which I’m not sure that anyone at a public tribunal has used since. He was essentially toilessly [sic] open about it; he simply said ‘Oh, well you’ve got the better of me!’ So here is one example of it, and his extraordinary file provides others: so for somebody who was getting worsted by the interrogation, remaining genial as well as flamboyant, and this was as striking as the unreliability of his evidence, so under questioning by the Attorney General Sir Hartley Shawcross, not a flamboyant individual, Stanley replies at one point: ‘Do not try to trap me with the truth!’ After Shawcross’s final address to the tribunal, Stanley tells him: ‘That was a fine speech! Thank you, Sir Hartley! I have been a fool, I admit it!’ ‘If you say so, Mr Stanley,’ replied the Attorney General, ‘I’m sure it must be true.’
Now, nothing in the Chilcot inquiry is going to come close to that sort of evidence, that’s a prediction, and it may, like many of my predictions, turn out to be wrong, but I’m perfectly happy to stand by it in the meantime.
Now as you will see from the little summary that you’ve been given, he was essentially expelled from the UK in the following year. He was supposed to go back to his native Poland, but he actually turned up in Israel. One of the reasons, apart from the fact that he was naturally cheerful and flamboyant, that made him so cheerful, is that the biggest secret did not come out in the course of the tribunal, that is to say, that he was a member of the Irgun and he was involved in gun running, so it’s altogether a pretty extraordinary story.
So, my judgement is that the files in this area are probably the most controversial, but they’re very diverse, because they go from Teddy Kollek, who I suppose most people, from whatever starting point they choose, would regard as one of the most impressive and straightforward Israeli politicians of the last half century and more, to Sidney Stanley, who reached levels of flamboyant misbehaviour that almost nobody at a public enquiry in Britain has achieved since, and sinister little individuals like Samuel Landman.
Now there’s a sad story which derives from all this; the conclusion to all this, so far as MI5 is concerned [is that there is] good news and bad news; the good news is that MI5 got to the bottom, pretty much, of what was going on, which was potentially extremely serious. Secondly, however, they decided that Jews could not be admitted as members of the Security Service. Now I don’t think there’s anything in the files that you will look at, or anything in the files that I have seen which justifies that conclusion.
What does it actually show? It shows that the vast majority of British Zionists are not going to give any kind of aid and comfort to…bombing campaigns in the United Kingdom, but you will find in ‘Defence of the Realm’ some rather grisly detail about the refusal to admit Jews to MI5, except in very exceptional cases, for about 30 years. So this is an experience which scars MI5. It’s rather odd, in that MI5 has from time to time been accused, not on the basis of any information known to me, of being prejudiced against Muslims. No, I mean the one ethnic group that MI5 was unquestionably prejudiced against for 30 years was actually British Jews. So that’s the most controversial part, and now for what I think it would be fair to describe as the fun part.
One of the most enjoyable things about MI5 files and the part that I’ve not had nearly enough time to enjoy while I was writing the book, is that if because somebody has serious Communist connections, you start checking his or her contacts and tapping telephones with Home Office warrants and intercepting correspondence, more often than not, at the end of the day, nothing of security significance turns up; but what quite often turns up is what biographers would regard as absolute gold-dust! I mean, think of yourselves – of course none of you have got a Home Office warrant against you at the present time – but suppose that there was?
You know, the material that your future biographers would get from your text messages, emails and so on would be absolutely unique! So there are quite a number of people in the latest releases, whose files contain, I think, some astonishingly vivid material of not very much security significance, but it’s entirely up to you as to whether you think it’s as vivid as I do.
But I don’t think there’s any contest for the most colourful character whose file is released today; the alcoholic Irish writer, Brendan Behan, who once famously described himself as ‘a drinker with a writing problem’. There’s one, I can’t remember if it’s in the file or not, but there was one extraordinary occasion, when he was, I think he was the first writer to be allowed to get nearly incoherently drunk in a BBC television studio, and somebody from the other side of the Atlantic was also involved in the discussion. So at one point Brendan said to him ‘Can you hear me?’ (I’m not attempting the accent as you see!) To which, the reply from the other side of the Atlantic, ‘Sure, you’re coming across 100 degrees proof!’, and I don’t think anybody has equalled the levels of entertaining alcoholic excess in any British television studios since Brendan Behan, but there was another side to him. For some years he was a member of the IRA; he was involved in plots to blow up the Liverpool Docks (didn’t work), and kill Dublin policemen (didn’t work), but it’s that which brings him to the attention of MI5, so you will find some mildly exotic detail in his file. Nonetheless, when he died from drink in his early 40s, he nonetheless qualified for an IRA funeral.
Now other individuals, who are of no significance to the history of British intelligence, but whose files, nonetheless, I think add a certain amount of exotic detail (well, that’s up to you) include Sidney Bernstein – Baron Bernstein, who founded Granada TV in 1956, and an awful lot more. Well, MI5 initially began monitoring him because of secret, as well as overt, contact with the British Communist Party, and that, incidentally, reveals some material which you may find of interest (well, I did.) Stephen Spender is another example, and it’s like W.H Auden and others who were temporarily under surveillance by MI5; what the consequence of the [release of the] files has been, is to fill in gaps in their biographies, and I think that the Spender file adds a little bit more.
Then to end with something entirely daft, which I don’t think we need now regard as having been at the time a serious threat to national security; the Hitler Youth, during the mid and late 1930s, liked cycling through England, and of course they took a great interest in the places that they were passing through, and some people, not particularly MI5, but some people saw this as some kind of (it makes some comparisons to the period before the First World War!) some kind of preparation for some kind of invasion of Britain. So they became known…as ‘the Spyclists’.
So, in other words, my own view (but I’m prejudiced) is that the selection of documents released today is a) pretty interesting and secondly, pretty interesting over an astonishingly wide period, ranging from the truly historically significant, to the truly historically absurd, and ‘Spyclists’ I think would come into that one, and of course entirely up to you which you concentrate on, or whether you have time for both the significant and the absurd. That’s all I have to say.