Richard Davenport-Hines - Enemies Within

Admiral Sinclair, the head of both SIS and GC&CS, deplored this heedless political irresponsibility. ‘The publication of these telegrams automatically stops their source of supply,’ he wrote. ‘It was authorized only as a measure of desperation to bolster up a cause vital to Government, which had the facts been fully known at the time, needed no such costly support.’ Both SIS and MI5 had been watching and learning from ARCOS, which had been a promising source of intelligence for the British secret services. Sinclair characterized the ARCOS raid as an ‘irretrievable loss of an unprecedented opportunity’. 32

After the raid, Ewer sent James Marston, Hayes’s predecessor as general secretary of NUPPO, to visit the former ARCOS employee Edward Langston, who was rightly suspected of being the source of the leak and had just started a new life as a publican at the Dolphin in Uxbridge. When Marston began hanging around the Dolphin, disguised as a tramp, Langston sent a panicky telegram to Harker, addressed to the chambers in the Temple of Harker’s brother-in-law Sidney Russell Cooke, asking to be sent a revolver for self-defence. Rose Edwardes had meanwhile ceased deliveries of material from the FPA to Chesham House. Instead, secrets were written in invisible ink in a book which she or Walter Dale took as couriers to Paris. From thence it went underground to Warsaw and thence to Moscow. The expulsion of the Soviet delegation after the raid left Ewer’s network short of funds. The CPGB secretary Albert Inkpin began travelling to Berlin to collect dollars, which he then took to Paris. There Slocombe arranged for Rose Cohen, or other women couriers, to smuggle the dollars to London, where Holmes laundered their conversion into sterling. But this procedure was too complex, and despite obtaining £100 from Slocombe in Paris, the network had shrivelled by October 1927 for lack of funds.

Lakey, who with his taste for disguise was by now established in the new identity of Albert Allen, was left in financial straits after the FPA’s diminuendo. Ewer provided £20 to finance his move to Bournemouth, where he managed Dean’s Restaurant at 261a Wimborne Road, Winton. Jane Sissmore suggested a Home Office warrant to monitor Allen’s decline into debt, and a carefully timed approach to debrief him when he needed financial extrication but would not be too expensive to rescue. After an approach by Kell to Sir William Tyrrell, PUS of the Foreign Office, MI5 was granted £250 for this purpose.

The first approach to Allen was made by John Ottaway, the chief of MI5’s observation section B6. Ottaway had been born in 1870 in a Midland Railway cottage at Hitchin in Hertfordshire, the son of a pointsman and signalman. In 1891 he became a constable in the City of London Police, lodging in a police boarding-house in Bishopsgate hugger-mugger with other young constables. He rose fast in the force, for ten years later he was already a police inspector, living in Leyton with a Scottish wife by whom he had at least five daughters. While City of London constables managed the formidable traffic congestion of the financial district, officers like Ottaway tracked forgers, swindlers and embezzlers. City of London detectives tended to be well-groomed men, suggesting the managing clerk of a solicitor’s office, rather than burly, heavy-footed plodders. In 1909 Ottaway was appointed detective superintendent – effective head – of the City of London Police, and his family were allotted apartments in Cloak Lane police station. In 1911 he participated in the search for the murderous anarchist Peter the Painter. During 1916 he joined a Freemasons lodge and received the freedom of the City of London. He was recruited to Kell’s department in 1920, and died in retirement at Bournemouth in 1954 leaving the notable sum of £12,000. 33

In 1942 Ottaway’s successor Harry Hunter described Section B6’s surveillance techniques to Anthony Blunt, who was then working for MI5. ‘His methods are very unscientific and depend above all on the experience and patience of his men,’ Blunt informed Moscow. ‘Recruiting is usually through a personal recommendation from some contact of Hunter’s, or by recommendation of Special Branch.’ The training for watchers was ‘primitive’. Hunter inducted new recruits with a few lectures, but relied on practice making perfect: ‘new men are sent out almost immediately on minor jobs accompanied by more experienced watchers, from whom they learn the methods in the actual process [of] following’. 34

Ottaway approached Allen in June 1928 offering to pay £75 for each interview that they had. In July Ottaway took Harker to meet Allen. As Harker reported to Kell, he and Ottaway motored to the Bournemouth suburb where Allen lived. He sat in his car in a small side-road, surrounded by half-built houses and wasteland, while Ottaway, who was masquerading as Mr Stewart of the Anti-Socialist Union, fetched Allen to the car. Harker then explained that he represented Kell, whose position in MI5 Allen knew. He decided that it might inhibit Allen, who talked for over an hour and a half, if he tried to take notes. He knew how often confession is a kind of pride. Interrogators can seem therapeutic: they encourage their subjects to talk about themselves and how they relate to other people; they discourage introspection; they do not lead the conversation by questioning or responses; they try to maintain an appreciative impassivity, never looking too keen, as their targets reminisce, boast, grumble, explain, retell rumours and produce telling anecdotes about other people. ‘I very quickly found’, Harker reported, ‘that we were on quite good terms, and, by treating him rather as my opposite number, found that he was quite ready to talk up to a point. He is, I think, a man who is extraordinarily pleased with himself, and considers that the work which he did for some eight years for the Underground Organisation known as the F.P.A. was admirably carried out, and has not received quite the recognition from its paymasters that Allen considers it deserves.’ Harker recognized Allen’s relief at talking ‘openly about his past life to someone who is not only a sympathetic listener, but also appreciates the technical side, and can thus see what an admirable Intelligence Officer Allen has been’. Harker was careful not to prompt or steer Allen, because ‘entirely spontaneous remarks’ were more useful than answers to questions. ‘Before we got down to talking generally, I explained to Allen that I understood from Mr Stewart that there were names that he did not wish to give away, and that this naturally would considerably impair the value of his information, if it was to be made with reservations.’ Allen reflected for a moment before replying, ‘I do not want to give away my late boss, because personally, I was very fond of him.’ Harker responded, ‘Perhaps I could tell you the name of your late boss, in which case you would not be placed in such an awkward position,’ then wrote the initials ‘W.N.E.’ on a piece of paper, and showed them to Allen asking, ‘That was your late boss, wasn’t he?’ Allen said: ‘Yes, Trilby. Trilby is a good fellow and damned smart!’ 35

After further corroborative investigation Dale, Jane and Ginhoven were arrested on 11 April 1929; but Scotland Yard was determined to obscure as far as possible the infiltration of its Special Branch. After the three men’s detention Harker went straight to Bournemouth, where he asked Allen to tell all that he knew about the leakages from Scotland Yard, and the names of those responsible. ‘I explained to him that this information was of interest to me if given at once, but that if not given at once I was not prepared to pursue the matter further. I also stated that if ALLEN told the story in a manner which appeared to me to be correct, I would hand over to him the sum of £50, and that if the story which he told me was found to be of use to the authorities, I would consider giving him a further £50, but that, in any case, until I had heard his story, I was prepared to give him nothing.’ Allen accepted Harker’s terms. Before Allen began to tell his story, Harker asked him to note the time (5.10 p.m.) and that he was writing on a blank piece of paper. Harker then wrote, out of Allen’s sight, the names of Ginhoven and Jane together with the time. As Harker reported, ‘I then asked ALLEN to tell me his story straight away without any questions on my part and to preface it by giving me the names of the individuals in Scotland Yard who were known to have been passing on information to the F.P.A. organisation in the past. ALLEN at once gave me the names of GINHOVEN and JANE, whereupon I handed him the paper on which I had written these same names. ALLEN expressed considerable surprise and then continued with his story.’