The Greatest Traitor (37 page)

Exactly which agents Blake betrayed and what happened to them as a result of his actions remains secret to this day. A full picture of
the damage he caused would be almost impossible to piece together. Certainly no numbers were offered up during his trial, in public or
in camera.

‘I would never put it past Manningham-Buller having a quiet word with Parker before the trial, slipping the words “forty-two” into the conversation. I’ve no evidence of that, of course, but I would never put it past the activities of the Establishment at that time,’ said Hutchinson.

Manningham-Buller is said to have wanted to hit Blake ‘with the biggest hammer possible’. But, in truth, he sought the heavy sentence not for his own satisfaction, but because the Prime Minister and his Government willed it. And they, in turn, sanctioned it in large part to mollify the Americans. Blake always felt SIS itself never really wanted to prosecute him: admitting the existence of a mole would cause huge damage to the reputation of the Service, but ‘once it had been decided to do so, fourteen years would never be enough. It would not satisfy the Americans, who were raising hell and crying for my blood.’

Macmillan had met the new President for the first time six weeks earlier at the American Naval Base at Key West in Florida. Despite the vast gulf in age and background, the two men struck up an immediate rapport. It might be overstating matters to say that the seasoned Macmillan felt the need to impress Kennedy, but he sensed the raised eyebrows in both the White House and Langley at yet another British spy scandal, and he was determined to show he was rooting out the moles. The young President must have been somewhat baffled when the Prime Minister used the language of the grouse moor to break the news about Blake: ‘C’s nabbed a wrong ’un,’ Macmillan is reported to have told him.

In particular, the CIA was angered by the disclosure that the Berlin tunnel had been compromised – worse, that the KGB knew about it even before digging began. The operation had seemed one of the Agency’s greatest triumphs of the Cold War, and medals had been awarded to those most closely connected with its success. ‘We
in Washington were unhappy about it . . . of course it created extra tension,’ recalled Richard Helms, later to become CIA chief. Helms was working for the agency in Berlin during the same period Blake was there.

Many weeks later, when the dust had settled, Dick White travelled to Langley to brief the incoming Director of the CIA on the damage Blake had caused. By then the sentence had been imposed and the stresses in the relationship smoothed out. The CIA trio were impressed with White’s account of how Blake had been forensically investigated and interrogated, and the matter was laid to rest.

The day after the trial Macmillan had, in his own words, ‘a rather rough passage’ in the House of Commons. In his statement, he maintained Blake had been subject to ‘a very thorough security vetting’ on his return from Korea. ‘I would again emphasise that his action was not the result of brainwashing or intimidation while a prisoner,’ he told the House. In response, Hugh Gaitskell, the Labour Leader, asked him for an assurance that Blake had been ‘positively vetted’ before being allowed to join the Government Service. Macmillan’s reply drew the sting of criticism and provoked laughter from the House: ‘The regulations on employment are complicated on the nationality question. In the old days one had to have two British parents to be a member of the Foreign Service. That would have ruled out both myself and Sir Winston Churchill, had we wished to enter it!’

Meanwhile, Prisoner 455 quickly gave notice that he intended to lodge an appeal against his sentence. In a letter to Bill Cox three days after his trial, Blake told the solicitor he was retaining him as his representative, but that he would not be requesting legal aid. He asked Cox to get in touch with Gillian to discuss ways and means of raising the required money: ‘This should be possible, and if necessary, my uncle in Holland could be approached.’

Surprised by the harshness of the sentence, colleagues and friends rallied round. Lady Pethwick-Lawrence of Peaslake, a notable
campaigner for peace and women’s rights, wrote to Claude Hornby & Cox on 9 May: ‘The Blake family are very dear friends of mine and I rate George just about the finest character I know. Deeply religious, he lives by his Calvinist conscience and once he became converted to Communism in Korea, he is the type that would feel impelled to act . . . to me, this appalling sentence appears purely vindictive. I hope you will forgive this letter from an ignorant old woman, but I venture it, because the case is pure heartbreak for me.’

Perhaps even more intriguing was correspondence from two intelligence officers – a married couple who shall be referred to as ‘Mr and Mrs B’ – who had both worked alongside Blake at SIS. Mr B’s letter to Jeremy Hutchinson on 7 May set out criticisms of a practical kind, about the haste with which the authorities had pushed through the case, and how the legal system had trampled over his friend. ‘I am greatly disturbed by features of the case that have emerged from the press,’ he wrote. ‘Little opportunity seems to have been afforded to any who might have been prepared to assist a defence or a plea in mitigation. It was not until April 25 that pictures in the press confirmed for me that the George Blake in question was the George Blake I knew.’

Mr B said he had written to Bill Cox on 29 April offering to give testimony on Blake’s behalf but had heard nothing in response. He wondered if Blake’s voluntary confession had been made in a ‘proud spirit of devotion to Communism, or against some promise or threat from his employers’. He added that two of the five charges related to matters of which he had some knowledge: ‘I believe there are strong grounds for denying that these efforts [of the country’s intelligence agencies] were rendered useless by Mr Blake’s activities.’

When his wife, Mrs B, wrote three weeks later, it was to advance a broader, more philosophical argument about the nature of Cold War espionage. Her experience of intelligence departments, she said, was considerably wider than that of her husband.

I would like to make a point that should be obvious to those in possession of the facts, but who are unfortunately muzzled by the Official Secrets Act.

This is that although Blake has broken the law, morally he has done no worse than those employed by the department for which he worked – many of them nationals of the countries against which they spy.

In short, it seems a monstrous piece of hypocrisy for Blake’s department to instigate proceedings against him, when a very large part of their work consists in running George Blakes – albeit probably less successful ones – in hostile countries.

Governments have always taken an ambiguous view of spies. On the one hand, they are criminals, deserving of the harshest penalties; on the other, they are pawns to be traded in a great game where there are fewer moral boundaries. Mrs B was essentially arguing that Blake was now a prisoner of war. ‘I realise that this point does not affect Blake’s
technical
guilt,’ she suggested. ‘But surely the extent to which he is
morally
guilty should have some effect on his sentence?’

The Court of Criminal Appeal sat to hear the case on Monday, 19 June, with Mr Justice Hilbery presiding. Hilbery was 77 years old, and a judge in the grand, Victorian manner. Tall and lean with a long, expressionless face, he walked to court each day in his silk hat and morning coat. His book,
Duty and Art in Advocacy
(1946), was presented to every student of Gray’s Inn on their call to the Bar. Like Goddard and Parker, however, he now seemed out of touch with a changing world. He regularly advocated more flogging, and objected to the use of new-fangled words such as ‘bus’. ‘I deprecate the use of these ordinary, perhaps slang phrases,’ he said in 1952.

Small wonder, then, that Hutchinson’s hopes were not high that day: ‘When I knew Hilbery was in charge I felt we had no real chance
of getting the sentence reduced. He was an awful man – an acidulated judge, who wasn’t going to allow an appeal against the Lord Chief Justice.’ But Hutchinson was determined to fight hard on a point of real principle, and of constitutional importance: judges should not be able to ignore a maximum sentence by giving out consecutive jail terms. He told the appeal court that Blake’s sentence was ‘inordinate, unprecedented and manifestly excessive’. When he asked Hilbery if he could refer to a number of mitigating circumstances in open court, so that press speculation might be halted – and justice be seen to be done – he received a withering reply.

‘What difference does it make to him whether it is in public or private?’ Hilbery asked. ‘We are not concerned with press conjecture. We are solely concerned to administer the Law. We are not here to scotch some rumour; we are here to consider whether this sentence was wrong in principle or “manifestly excessive”. What matters is between the Accused and this court.’

Hutchinson reminded the judges of Fuchs’s term of just fourteen years. He said Lord Goddard, who had passed sentence on him, was either unaware of the power to pass consecutive sentences, or ‘he knew it was wrong in principle to pass such sentences’. Hutchinson went on: ‘It was clear he knew what Parliament had ordained, and if he had been able to, he would have passed a longer sentence, but was limited to the sentence imposed by the Act.’ In the most resounding passage of his submission, Hutchinson told the court that Blake’s sentence was ‘so inhumane that it was alien to all the principles on which a civilised country would treat its subjects. No man could survive a sentence of more than twenty years.’

But as he attempted to explain why Blake had chosen to work for Communism by undermining British intelligence from within, Hilbery’s interruption must have made clear the futility of his efforts: ‘He has not been condemned for having a particular political ideology; he has been condemned for remaining in the service of this country and in a way which is particularly odious, surreptitiously attempting to
do this country as much harm as is in his power. He did not go into the open in Hyde Park and preach about it.’

Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, appearing late in the proceedings to refute Hutchinson’s arguments, said no principle had been established that it was wrong to sentence a man to imprisonment for longer than he would serve if he was given a life sentence.

The appeal lasted for three hours, with thirty-seven minutes of it held
in camera.
At the end, just thirteen words put paid to Blake’s flickering hopes: ‘The application is refused. The court will give reasons at a later date.’

When Hilbery’s judgement was published in full a few weeks later, it finished with this stinging justification: ‘It is of the highest importance, perhaps particularly at the present time, that such conduct should not only stand condemned, should not only be held in utter abhorrence by all ordinary men and women, but should receive, when brought to justice, the severest possible punishment. This sentence had a threefold purpose. It was intended to be punitive, it was designed and calculated to deter others, and it was meant to be a safeguard to this country.’

It was surely the end of the road. Blake’s full and frank confession meant that his value to the Russians in any possible prisoner swap – a feature of the Cold War – was perilously diminished. He was simply not capable, however, of resigning himself to a lifetime behind bars.

17

Prison

I
n early June, Gillian brought her newly born son to Wormwood Scrubs to see his father for the first time. It was, at first, a joyful, emotional moment for the prisoner. ‘George was delighted with Patrick, though he yelled all the time we saw him,’ Gillian recalled. ‘We were both very pleased it was a boy. We’d had to write to each other about a name, eliminating those we didn’t like. We never agreed on names – I rejected all the Biblical ones George suggested. So Patrick was about the only one we were both satisfied with.’

But for Blake, the pleasure in seeing the new baby quickly turned to despair at the prospect of playing no part whatsoever in his life: ‘We agreed it would be better if she did not bring the children to visit me . . . these visits, although I would not have wanted to do without them, were a considerable psychological strain on all of us and always left a feeling of great sadness at the thought of the happiness that had been destroyed.’

Blake was at first put in the hospital wing – it was normal practice to monitor prisoners given long sentences for signs of shock. Then, on 27 June, he was designated a ‘Star’ prisoner, placed on the escape list and moved into C wing.

Inmates on the escape list endured a particularly grim time. For a start, they were marked out by having to wear patches of cloth in different colours on each item of their outer clothing. These clothes, except for a shirt and slippers, had to be placed outside their cell at night, and inside a light burned constantly. They were kept out of cells thought particularly vulnerable, such as those with a ventilating shaft under the floor, and, without notice, they would be moved from cell to cell at irregular intervals.

Undeterred, Blake harboured notions of escape from day one. Indeed, he was almost expected to make the attempt, and the prospect became a running joke with one prison officer, who would ask, ‘When’s the date, then?’ whenever they crossed paths. Blake resolved to lull both the officers and his fellow inmates into the belief that he had no intention of breaking out. If he was seen to be making the best of prison life, they would relax, and, in time, his conditions would be eased.

The ruse worked: to his relief, following monthly reviews by the Governor Tom Hayes, in consultation with the Prison Commissioners, he was removed from the escape list at the beginning of October and placed in a cell of his own in D wing, the block that held serious long-term offenders. He remained, however, a unique prisoner, not to be trusted, and accompanied at all times by a prison officer when out of his cell. A special book was even kept to record his location at any time of the day.