by Roland Perry
Yet the urge within him was to test his intellect, oratorical skills, debating talent, and finesse in the public arena. He planned to put an acceptable face on communism, without referring to it as such, for broad voter consumption.
Straight’s double life at Cambridge reached a peak at the beginning of his third year in the autumn of 1936. With Cornford in Spain and Klugman in Paris operating as a Soviet agent on assignment, the leadership of the communist movement at the university was his for the asking. But he avoided this important role. It entailed running the college cells, pulling in new recruits, and meeting with the U.K. party bosses in London. There was also the briefing of the sleepers or moles—former students who took jobs in their chosen professions and waited for instructions. He realized the value of all these functions and helped out where he could. Yet it anchored him too much in the mire of bureaucracy, from which it would be difficult to extricate himself should he be called upon for a secret assignment for the cause. Straight observed his good friend Burgess at close quarters when he dropped all his left-wing links in 1934 after being briefed and instructed by Bukharin in Moscow. Straight was well aware of his work in infiltrating right-wing groups such as the Anglo German Fellowship, which attracted the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VIII, and his pro-fascist circle.
The Burgess switch in allegiance was Moscow-directed and supported by Rothschild and his family. The center also wanted intelligence on Nazi plans and fascist thinking in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. Burgess was paid a £100-a-month retainer by the Rothschilds for this work under the cover of being a financial adviser, which on examination was an unlikely epithet for outrageous Guy. Straight was in regular contact with the flamboyant Apostle, who always came back to Cambridge for the society’s meetings. Straight knew of Burgess’s sudden change from rabid Marxist to keen fascist and that he was now working for Captain Jack Macnamara, a Nazi-supporting member of parliament. The deception intrigued Straight. Was he ready for a directive to carry out something as challenging? Burgess joked about his homosexual encounters with Macnamara and his Nazi friends. When drunk and high, he would hint to Straight that he had learned some useful intelligence from a Nazi diplomat. The impact of Straight’s immersion in Marxist ideals and the romantic notion of the international communist movement made him aware of Burgess’s true allegiance no matter what fascist facade he presented to anyone else.
Part of the strategy for Straight to develop a profile away from the university’s communist bureaucracy was to intensify his work with the Apostles and the Cambridge Student Union. He ran for the presidency of the union in the autumn of 1936 and became a candidate in a well-defined struggle between communists and conservatives. In a close vote, Straight beat his opponent John Churchill and was made secretary of the union. He would later be vice-president before he took over the presidency, planned for the autumn of 1937.
Straight’s infatuation with Tess Mayor did not decline, but he found someone to take his mind off her and his continuing flirtation with Barbara Rothschild. This was pretty Belinda (Bin) Crompton, the young daughter of an American, Catherine, and an English scientist. The family had recently moved to Cambridge to be near Binny’s sister, also Catherine, who had married a young Cambridge graduate, Harry Walston. He would later be made a life-peer in Harold Wilson’s government. (Catherine—the daughter—would eventually become the mistress of the writer Graham Greene, who had been a communist at Oxford and who would keep links with British and Soviet intelligence services throughout his life. Greene worked for Kim Philby at MI6 during WWII and kept in contact with him after he defected to Russia in 1963.)
The third Crompton sister was Bronte, who would soon marry a communist agent, Gustavo Duran. Duran, a general in the workers’ militia during the Spanish Civil War, was brought to Dartington Hall by Michael Young in 1937. Duran met Bronte through Straight and Young. All three sisters became involved with communists, two of whom were agents. Straight and Duran were connected to the expanding Dartington Hall network of communists.
The Crompton family would provide a safe and comfortable environment for Straight, who was enchanted by Binny, just 16 and a student at the Perse School for Girls, should he consider marrying her. While she would be unaware of his secret life, he would be free to air his political views without inviting suspicion. If a partner was unsuitable (as in the case of Barbara Rothschild), even hostile to the cause, it could be disastrous. On the other hand, a sympathetic spouse could be discreet, understanding, and important in a crisis, as Melinda Maclean, wife of the Cambridge ring’s Donald, would later prove to be.
6
GRADUATE IN THE ART OF DECEPTION
John Cornford was shot dead on a rocky ridge while fighting above the Spanish village of Lopera on the Cordoba front on December 28, 1936. News of the just-turned 21-year-old’s death took three weeks to reach communist party headquarters in England via the communist network. His close friend Straight had the difficult task of informing relatives and other companions. The Cambridge Review said his death was “a bitter loss to English thought as well as to the undergraduates and working-class of England.” The literary publication Granta spoke of his heroism and noted his demise as “the deepest experience of our lives.” A communist party member from London more prosaically referred to Cornford as “the finest type of middle-class comrade.” The combined grief and adulation created Cornford as a martyr, which was most useful to the communist cause.
Straight found work for Cornford’s wife at Dartington and a home for his son James with the Ramsdens, with whom he had worked on his first campaign a few months earlier at nearby Totnes.
Life went on at Cambridge. Straight still had his duties. He was secretary of the Apostles, whose active membership had shrunk. Apart from Straight, the only other undergraduate member was Alan Hodgkin, a non-Marxist scientist, who was later awarded a Nobel prize for biophysics. Keynes called Straight for an urgent meeting. New undergraduates were needed. As the youngest Apostle, it was his duty to make recommendations. Straight used the chance to stack the society with communists. He put up John H. Humphrey, John Waterlow, and Gerald Croadsell, who would later be president of the student union. Keynes was aware that their politics were hardly going to diversify the society’s discussion papers or create stimulating ideas. But he approved of their nomination. He thought they were all “amateur communists” who would grow out of their undergraduate rapture in revolution and, with guidance, become more mature thinkers, while not abandoning the communist ideal. Their proposed election to the Apostles on March 6, 1937, would now be a formality. A tougher case, however, would be Leo Long. (He was to be recruited by Blunt as a KGB agent at the beginning of WWII.) Blunt and Straight canvassed hard for him. Keynes saw him only as an active Trinity communist and did not object to a proposed election at a meeting on May 15. Straight’s fifth success was later to be with Peter Astbury on June 5.
In his final year at Cambridge Straight had engineered an unprecedented hard-line communist control and influence over the university’s most important intellectual society (a record of which Straight remained proud). In turn these five members influenced any new election of undergraduates. In the short term, Blunt had a new band of potential KGB agents from which to choose. Even if they rejected him, their experience in the Apostles and their oath of secrecy would mean that they would never betray him. Such maneuvering by Straight and Blunt ensured that until the beginning of WWII, Marxist thought was supreme at one of the two most influential educational institutions in the United Kingdom. The plans of the Comintern and the KGB could not have been more successful in laying a foundation for effective propaganda and influence for decades to come.
In early 1934 Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, and Donald Maclean had been recruited by a key KGB controller, Hungarian ex-priest Theodore Maly. Later that year Burgess recruited Blunt. Now it was time to step up the snaring of new agents. Straight, after the 1935 trip to Russia, was the prime target at Cambridge.
The KGB opened a file on Straight in January 1937 with a memorandum from Maly recommending his recruitment. It proposed that he be used either in England or the United States. Maly wanted more time to make up his mind on the important question of the location for work Straight would carry out.
Maly gave Burgess the mission of further assessing Straight. Burgess’s assessment was another January 1937 entry in the Moscow KGB file:
Michael, whom I have known for several years . . . is one of the leaders of the party at Cambridge. He is the party’s spokesman and also a first-class economist. He is an extremely devoted member of the party. . . . Taking into account his family connections, future fortune and capabilities, one must suppose he had a great future, not in the field of politics but in the industrial and trading world. . . . One may reckon he could work on secret work. He is sufficiently devoted for it, though it will be extremely difficult for him to part with his friends and his current activities. . . . 1
Straight had been so open in his support for communism in England—at the university and with the British party—making a clean break was perceived as difficult. Should, for instance, he be advised to stop giving the Daily Worker £1500 a year? Maly approached the party’s leader, Harry Pollitt, for approval of the move from open to covert communist work. Pollitt agreed but didn’t see why Straight couldn’t continue to subsidize the newspaper. (He did continue the subsidy, increasing it to £2000 a year in quarterly installments of £500 clandestinely through KGB agents. His support for conspicuous communism, instead of being “open,” would now be secret.)
Burgess’s note for Maly added that Straight’s “status in the party and his social connections are very significant. The question was whether to begin to act, when and how.”
Burgess assigned Straight the code name “Nigel” (later he was called “Nomad”). Maly instructed Burgess to act. He in turn asked Blunt to lure Straight into the espionage net.
In early February 1937 Straight was summoned to Blunt’s rooms. He expected him to bring up the continuing matter of the unhappy Barbara Rothschild, who was not satisfied by Straight’s flirtations with her. Instead, Blunt rested his long frame languidly in an easy chair and without eyeballing the visitor asked what he planned to do after finishing at Cambridge.2
Straight wondered what was coming. Was this it? A proposal for the cause? He was aware of Burgess’s fascist group infiltration and of Klugman’s assignment in Paris. Cornford had just paid the ultimate sacrifice in Spain. Kim Philby (unbeknownst to Straight) was there now posing as a conservative journalist for The Times with Franco’s forces and was just beginning to bombard the paper with unsolicited articles, all from the fascist side. Would Blunt and the Moscow Center have a mission for him?
Straight meandered over the possibilities, which were not pressing since he would never have to earn a living. Politics loomed large. He could become British. He spoke of running for parliament for the Plymouth Labour Party, although that constituency was a conservative stronghold. Straight thought he might wait for something more propitious. Blunt remained silent. His visitor stumbled on. He added that he could stay on at Cambridge and write a book about Thomas Malthus, the Cambridge mathematician who influenced Charles Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” concept, or David Ricardo, an English economist on whom Marx had drawn.
Straight claimed he had been forced to join the underground network by depression, fascism, and the Spanish Civil War. But he made out he was adrift and vulnerable to being drawn further into the KGB web because he didn’t need to work and had not given any deep thought to what he should do.
When he stopped considering the possibilities, Blunt informed him that some of their mutual connections had specific plans for him.3 Straight was curious to know what. Blunt, at his most solicitous, worried about his chances of becoming naturalized. They discussed the warning by the home secretary Sir John Simon to Keynes that Straight would have to “curtail his political activities if he wished to become British.” Simon meant business. In 1934 he had deported another American, Frank Meyer, for his disruptive communist politics at the London School of Economics. Straight in his electioneering at Totnes had already dwelt on the chance that MI5’s file on him could be a problem.
It gave him pause. Blunt wondered if the United Kingdom was the best place for him. He painted a bleak picture of England as a declining nation, which had been a refrain of his and of Burgess’s ever since they had first discussed international politics. Blunt suggested Straight’s talent for politics, oratory, and public speaking as well as his economic training would be better put to use for the cause in the United States, which was destined to play a far larger role in world affairs.
At 20, Straight was too young for politics. However, Blunt was aware that the Moscow Center, and Stalin, considered Straight a possible long-term prospect as a politician in the United States. According to Yuri Modin, the most successful KGB control for the Cambridge ring, Straight was viewed as a potential top politico—a long-term “sleeper” candidate.4 Stalin and the KGB would always be prepared to support and guide someone for however long it took to get an agent into high office, even the White House. In many ways, Straight was the near-perfect candidate. He was a dedicated communist, now moving into KGB agency, with all the right credentials for high office. Straight had the family background in Washington politics, not to mention Wall Street. He had independent wealth, a near-essential prerequisite, and his skills were outstanding. His height—6'3"—and good looks would win votes too, especially in the United States where Hollywood images were beginning to impinge on the political arena. The politics he espoused would have to be packaged to make them digestible to a majority vote. Yet he could always slip in under the guise of a liberal democrat, who had matured away from his wayward youth in faraway Cambridge, England.
Maly, the Comintern, and the Moscow planners were shrewd. Before Straight could even contemplate a political career, they had decided he should use his economics and family connections to establish something substantial while he was still too young for the hurly-burly of Washington and backroom wheeling and dealing. Why not in his father’s old Wall Street firm, J. P. Morgan? Why not, Blunt suggested, become a banker?
This was not what Straight had expected. Blunt was urging him, or directing him, to go into international banking like Willard Straight. But the young Straight had no interest at all in such a profession. When he expressed this, Blunt became adamant. The mutual connections, which Straight was led to believe was the Comintern, and above it, Stalin himself, were giving him an order.5
Blunt implied that Moscow had decreed his assignment was to provide them with inside information about Wall Street’s plans to dominate the global economy. Blunt had been ordered to help Straight prepare for this mission by breaking his political ties with communists. It was what Burgess, Philby, and others in the movement had done. Now it was his turn.
The pretext or excuse for such a sharp departure, Blunt explained, was his grief at Cornford’s death, a plan devised by Burgess as verified in the KGB file on Straight. A note from Burgess to Maly said: “I would not have instructed A.B. (Anthony Blunt) to set to work without consulting you beforehand, if only [Straight’s] departure from open work had not been so complicated and we had not had to use immediately a helpful circumstance, the death of John Cornford.”
Straight saw the brilliance of this strategy but hated the timing. He was enjoying his life at Cambridge. To break off now would mean he would have to give up the presidency of the union that his recent appointment as secretary guaranteed. He would have to abandon his friends, family, and Dartington. Straight later claimed he felt violated by this directive, partly because it was emotional blackmail after the demise of Cornford. But he supposed the approach to him touched another nerve. He needed to show he could make a significant sacrifice for what he saw as a great cause—communism. He also believed he was strong enough to cope with whatever his recruitment meant, unlike his friend Leslie Humphrey, wh
o fell unconscious with shock when Blunt approached him.
Yet the feeling of being used and abused was unlikely at the time and certainly not immediate. He was compliant, even helpful with a strategy. Straight suggested that to make such a break convincing—especially from open work as a committed, zealous communist—he would have to stage a nervous breakdown, some crisis of belief.
Blunt agreed. Straight thought he could carry off this grand deception, which would go beyond anything he had attempted before. This did not bother him. But he was troubled by the sacrifices required.
Blunt appeared compassionate and understanding. He pointed out that everyone had to give some things for the cause. Cornford was the classic example. He had died for it.
This argument swayed Straight, who remained uncertain about the immediate sacrifices. By the end of the meeting he had agreed to the plan. Overnight and during the next day he thought about the proposition and returned to Blunt’s rooms the next evening to ask him to reconsider. He reiterated that he did not want to become a banker and suggested that it would look phony to anyone who knew him.
Blunt, as ever, was sympathetic and promised to speak to their mutual friend, who was giving the instructions. Straight guessed that this mystery acquaintance was Burgess, who had the cunning to hatch such a bizarre but potentially effective scheme to go into international banking. Straight, though, wasn’t stimulated by economics and finance, despite his exam results.
Straight’s mentor and hero Keynes may have been obsessed with the machinations of capitalism, yet the student was less concerned. His lack of appreciation of the workings of free markets was due to his certitude, and that of those around him, that capitalism’s days were numbered.
