The Greatest Traitor (38 page)

Within these constraints, he started to appreciate the lighter regime of D wing. Let out at 7 a.m., the prisoners here were not locked up again until 8 p.m. In the hours between, there was ‘free association’ in the hall, television, a film show once a week and an urn of continually boiling water for tea or coffee, bought with earnings from working in the canteen.

Because of the trust placed in a large number of the inmates, and this freedom of movement, Wormwood Scrubs had won a reputation in some sections of the prison community for being something of a soft
touch. ‘An open prison with a wall round it’ was the oft-used description. One hardened criminal who found himself imprisoned there in Blake’s time was scathing: ‘I was in Parkhurst and Wandsworth. I can tell the difference – this place is easier. The Scrubs is world-famous as a rest camp. There aren’t any real criminals here. The ones here have just killed people in temper, or done a bit of thieving.’

Nevertheless, Blake knew that only through strict mental and physical discipline would he survive the all-round rigours of jail. Only by retaining his strength and faculties would he be in a position to take advantage of any opportunities to escape. He began to practise yoga every day in his cell, and being able to stand on his head for fifteen minutes, morning and evening, amused his fellow inmates and bolstered his reputation. As time went by, he would also work on his fitness and body strength by using dumbbells and chest expanders borrowed from younger inmates.

In the autumn of 1961, he began an A-level in Arabic by correspondence, and, the following year, took O-levels in the British Constitution and Russian. He later took an honours degree in Arabic, too. Wormwood Scrubs had an enlightened and enthusiastic ‘Tutor Organiser’, Pat Sloan, and Blake signed up for several of his classes, including Music and English Literature.

As far as prison labour was concerned, he worked in the canvas shop for the bulk of his time, only transferring to the canteen in February 1966.

The air of serenity that Prisoner 455 carried around with him astonished everyone in Wormwood Scrubs. Invariably polite, unruffled and attentive towards others, he displayed the contemplative calm of a monk.

Blake’s standing among the younger prisoners was especially high. On most days, anyone passing cell No. 8 on the ground floor of D wing would hear a gaggle of cockney voices holding spirited conversations in French, or discussing subjects from Parisian newspapers and magazines. The older man’s patience and persistence in these classes bore
fruit, with a number of his ‘pupils’ reaching O-level standard. He also helped draft petitions to the Home Office for the semi-literates who wanted their cases reviewed.

As time progressed, Blake’s cell took on all the appearance and function of a Cambridge don’s tutorial room: book-lined, with an expensive Bokhara rug on the floor, and a medieval print of St Paul on the wall. Visitors would knock on the door to find the ‘Professor’ at work. ‘I may find him alone, standing as he sometimes does, and reading the Koran, which rests on a lectern made for him by one of his pupils,’ recalled Gerald Lamarque, serving life for murder. ‘Or he may be seated at his table making notes, or again he may be lying on his low bed reading a tale in Arabic from
The Thousand and One Nights.
Whatever he may be doing, if he is alone I am greeted with a charming smile of welcome, an offer to seat myself, and if the time is right, an invitation to take a mug of tea.’

Blake had expected, as a spy and a traitor, to encounter a certain amount of ill feeling ‘inside’. Instead, what he had done, combined with his selfless attitude, raised him to a rather exalted status: ‘I found myself, because of the length of my sentence and the nature of my crime, belonging to the prison aristocracy. Many people looked upon me as a political prisoner, in spite of the British government’s position that no such category exists in Britain.’

Political prisoner he may have been in the eyes of some, but to SIS and MI5 he was a betrayer of government secrets who might yet have more to reveal about his work for the KGB. For the first six months, representatives from the two intelligence agencies made regular visits to the prison. By the time they had finished, SIS had questioned Blake on forty-two separate occasions. MI5, keen to find out as much as they could about the modus operandi of the officers and agents of Soviet intelligence in Britain, were not far behind.

On 20 September 1961, MI5 told the Prison Commissioners their ‘intensive interrogation’ of Blake would be over by the end of November, and asked if it would be possible to move him to Birmingham Prison.
This move was suggested not on grounds of safe custody, but because they were aware that Peter Kroger (aka Morris Cohen) of the Portland Spy Ring was being moved to Wormwood Scrubs, and MI5 wanted to prevent the two spies being together in the same establishment. The Prison Commissioners argued that Blake should stay in London, pointing out that it would be a considerable hardship for Gillian to have to travel north to visit him. They also told MI5 Blake had ‘influential friends who might easily use the move to embarrass the Home Secretary’. In the event, he stayed at Wormwood Scrubs while Kroger was sent to Manchester. It was the first of four occasions when serious thought was given to moving Blake out of London. It never happened, with ultimately fateful consequences.

The whole business of keeping the Soviet spies – Houghton, Lonsdale, the Krogers, John Vassall and Blake – away from one another, in a prison system with a limited number of demonstrably safe, high security jails, taxed the Home Office throughout the early 1960s. A serious breach of security was the association between Blake and Gordon Lonsdale in May 1961 when both were on ‘Special Watch’ in Wormwood Scrubs. That the two most destructive spies in recent British history should ever have been allowed near each other was unthinkable, but because of a bureaucratic mix-up they found themselves shuffling round the courtyard with just six others during their half-hour’s daily exercise.

It led to questions in the House of Commons but the authorities put it around that the allegations about Blake and Lonsdale had come from two unreliable sources – one prisoner who was a psychiatric case, and another who had based his statement entirely on hearsay. Nevertheless, Home Secretary Henry Brooke was forced on the defensive, and his reply to the Government’s critics was one of a politician’s customary equivocation at difficult moments: ‘The recollection of those concerned suggests they were kept apart, but I cannot, at the end of three years, prove conclusively one way or another. I certainly can say that even if Blake had any chance to communicate information
to Lonsdale in those few weeks when they were in Wormwood Scrubs together, it is highly doubtful whether it would have been of any interest or assistance to the Russians.’

In their brief conversation, we now know that Lonsdale assured Blake they would meet up again in Red Square in October 1967, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. It must, then, have sounded a fantastical proposition.

The final member of the group of early 1960s KGB agents was William John Christopher Vassall. The son of a clergyman, Vassall was blackmailed by the Russians while working as clerk to the Naval Attaché in Moscow in 1954 because of his homosexuality. He was photographed in various compromising positions at a drunken party, set up specifically to entrap him. Back in England by 1956, Vassall continued to spy for the Russians while holding various sensitive positions in the Navy. When MI5 raided his flat six years later, they found 176 classified Admiralty and NATO documents in the secret drawer of an antique bureau bookcase.

Vassall was sentenced to eighteen years imprisonment in November 1962, and sent to Wormwood Scrubs, where he spent the first nine months on ‘Special Watch’. After that he moved to D wing where, at first, he was reluctant to join Blake’s circle of friends. However, the two spies met at a classical music class and discovered they had much in common. ‘I liked him,’ said Vassall. ‘He was cultured, with impeccable manners and an open heart, and I admired him for his resignation and the brave face he showed to the world, refusing to be beaten by the system.’ The two men also shared a mutual interest in religion, especially liturgical matters. Vassall lent Blake a large volume of the lives of the Catholic saints down the ages; the latter’s favourite was St John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic and poet of the sixteenth century.

Blake’s fellow spies may have sought his company, but other prisoners continued to trade on his notoriety and make some money. Throughout his time in prison, the Home Office and the Prison Commission were continually fighting off a whole host of stories about Blake in the
newspapers. Blake himself grew weary of the coverage. In April 1963, he wrote to Gillian, furious about a story from a former prisoner called Anthony Foley suggesting he was trying to indoctrinate Communism into his fellow inmates: ‘You may have heard the rubbish which appeared about me in the
Sketch.
It is of course complete and utter nonsense, and those whose concern it is are treating it as such. Although it is a matter of some indifference to me what the papers write, I must admit that I am not happy at the idea that I am depicted to those who know me as going about the prison like a latter-day John the Baptist.’

While Blake had charmed the vast bulk of the prison officers into the belief that he was knuckling down, reconciled to his fate, not everyone was convinced. In a report from October 1963, one officer described him as a ‘dangerous lone wolf’. Then, in November 1965, the Deputy Governor made his views abundantly clear. ‘This man must
always
be under the closest supervision. He is a security risk in every sense of the word, caution
always
.’ In January 1966, when the new Governor, Leslie Newcombe, was asked for the names of security risks who would be safer elsewhere, he offered the Prison Department three names. Blake’s was among them.

MI5 agreed with that assessment and, though they completed their interrogations in November 1961, continually fretted about what Blake might be up to, and the messages he was sending to his associates in the world beyond the walls of the Scrubs. As a result, a former Indian police officer, a man who had been MI5’s ears and eyes in Britain’s rebellious colonies during the 1950s, was Blake’s ‘watcher’ for most of his period in prison.

Now in middle age, A.M. (‘Alec’) MacDonald had been an adviser for the Security Service in Kenya when the Mau-Mau rebellion was gathering strength. In 1961, however, he was back in Curzon Street working for D Branch, the section responsible for counter-intelligence. From MI5’s familiar address – Box No. 500, Parliament Street – he sent out a stream of instructions to the governors at Wormwood Scrubs and the Prison Commissioners.

MacDonald was wary of Blake’s desire to pursue his Arabic studies, wishing to scrutinise all the material passing between tutor and pupil. Of greater concern, however, were the letters Blake received from family and friends. In January 1963, MacDonald wrote to the Prison Commission:

In a recent letter from Mrs BLAKE to her husband she says that she is redecorating the house, and at their next meeting will bring samples of paint and carpet to show him.

She then adds, ‘I shall not try to describe other colours as it is boring on paper, but at least we can hold hands when we talk’. These last few words seem strangely out of context and we are wondering whether this is not an attempt to pass a message. From our point of view clandestine communication between the BLAKES might well be very damaging indeed. They are both very intelligent and resourceful people.

I am quite sure that BLAKE’s interviews with his wife are indeed closely supervised, but I think it might be helpful if the prison authorities could be particularly asked to keep an eye open for stratagems of this kind.

In May 1964 MI5 officers were called upon to investigate the most extraordinary of all the stories about a Blake escape plot. This one came from a former prisoner in the Scrubs, Old Etonian Sacheverell Stanley Walton (‘Sasha’) de Houghton, who went to the Governor, Tom Hayes, with a bizarre tale.

Houghton claimed he had been approached by a Russian named Pierre Basinkoff, who told him that the KGB believed Blake was still useful to them. The striking details of the plot could have come from the pages of an Alistair MacLean novel. An ex-prisoner, well versed in the layout of the jail, wearing prison clothing and a ‘trusty’s’ blue armband, would scale the prison wall and drop down into the
courtyard. He would then head for the mailbag shop, where Blake would be ready and waiting. A minute or so later, a helicopter would drop into the yard behind the shop, pick up Blake and the ex-prisoner, and fly them to East Germany. No immediate panic would ensue among the prison staff, because the helicopter would have the word ‘POLICE’ on its sides. The crew in the helicopter would also wear police uniforms.

Despite its fanciful nature, the story was rigorously investigated by MI5, and the Director-General, Roger Hollis, was kept fully briefed. When, on 21 May, he wrote to Sir Charles Cunningham, Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office, his findings were unsurprising: ‘Our conclusion is that Houghton, who has a history of mental instability, is incapable of dissociating fact from fiction . . . he is very much the black sheep of a good family and is a thoroughly mischievous character who, by the Governor’s account, would not hesitate to cause any embarrassment to the Government if the opportunity offered itself.’

The reality was that Blake, as yet, had made no serious attempt to escape, though the genesis of his eventual flight can be traced as far back as 1962, when two peace campaigners, Michael Randle and Pat Pottle, were sent to Wormwood Scrubs.

On Saturday, 9 December 1961, the United States Air Force base at Wethersfield in Essex was the scene of what was believed to be the biggest display of force by a Government in peacetime since the General Strike of 1926. The event was the latest demonstration organised by the Committee of 100, a group determined to bring a greater edge to the campaign of non-violent civil disobedience over the issue of nuclear weapons. The climate of protest was a febrile one, and this particular gathering had caused such jitters that it was discussed at Cabinet two days beforehand, when elaborate security measures were agreed. On the day, six and a half miles of barbed wire was stretched around the base and several thousand troops and police officers protected it. It
turned out to be something of a damp squib, with the 600 protestors well short of the minimum of 1,500 the organisers reckoned was needed for an effective blockade.