The unlikely SPYMASTER
A riveting new book looks at the life of Sir Maurice Oldfield, a farmer’s son who rose to become head of MI6 and the model for two of fiction’s greatest spies
IT WAS the first time any of his family had seen him in tears. As Margaret Thatcher left Maurice Oldfield’s bedside, the former head of MI6 was distraught. “Mrs Thatcher asked if I was homosexual. I had to tell her,” he wept as they gathered around his bed.
Just days before he died of stomach cancer in 1981, it was the first time he had spoken about his sexuality. Since then Oldfield’s name has been smeared by uncorroborated and unlikely allegations of impropriety. But a new book written by his nephew highlights the remarkable career Sir Maurice had inside the secret services and the influence he wielded for 40 years.
Oldfield was by any standards an unlikely candidate to rise to the top of MI6 in 1973 and become its most decorated Cold War spy. The Secret Intelligence Service, as MI6 was originally known, was a closed shop, dominated by the plummy voices and connections of public schools and Oxbridge.
But Oldfield, the eldest of 11 children of a tenant farmer in the remote Derbyshire village of Over Haddon, was bright and had a natural way with people. After gaining a scholarship to a local grammar school he went on to get a first in medieval history and win a fellowship at Manchester University.
A life in academia could have followed, but when Oldfield was recruited to join the Intelligence Corps during the Second World War and served with distinction at its Cairo headquarters he had found his vocation.
After becoming deputy head of counter-intelligence in 1947, he was posted to Singapore and became head of station. Oldfield was already making a name for himself but it was through starkly different methods to most other members of the secret service.
While the brash, overconfident, public school-educated elite of MI6 – dubbed the Robber Barons – had become known for a series of bold but ultimately disastrous operations, Oldfield believed more in forensic investigation, thorough intelligence gathering and the subtle exerting of influence.
His research led him to become the first to suspect double agent Kim Philby. He became an expert in handling defectors and his “Oldfield law” that they were like grapes – the first pressings are the best – became a key rule in assessing the secrets they passed on.
Most importantly, Oldfield was a master at garnering contacts wherever he went. It included a web of secret service colleagues across the world but his links went much deeper. Businessmen who traded abroad, scientists, embassy officials and politicians all became part of his network of “friends”.
ANYONE who could get access to a country without suspicion was included. number worked as airline staff, including at British Airways. He even had contacts in the International Olympic Committee.
An excellent source of “friends” was journalists. One was Letter From America correspondent Alistair Cooke while another was former Daily Express foreign correspondent Sefton Delmer, who provided excellent intelligence with the full approval of Express Newspapers’ then director Lord Beaverbrook.
A devout Christian, Oldfield even developed links with priests in the belief that discovering the mood of a country was every bit as important as what its leaders might be planning. The scheming would pay dividends repeatedly.
During his time based in the US after 1959, the gregarious Oldfield was tasked with mending relations with the CIA and US colleagues. They had been completely shaken by the infiltration of the British secret service by Philby and the Cambridge spy ring.
His work helped to restore trust but it was the Cuban missile crisis where he made a true difference. President Kennedy’s advisers were pushing for a full military invasion of Cuba following Fidel Castro’s decision to allow the Russians to site nuclear missiles on the island. However, Kennedy was more reticent and it was a private phone call to Oldfield that persuaded him to instead blockade Cuba and force the removal of the missiles.
Oldfield’s guidance was important to politicians and a string of prime ministers and foreign secretaries grew to rely on his wisdom.
In 1964 Harold Wilson was being urged by US President Lyndon Johnson to send British troops to fight in the Vietnam War. But it was Oldfield who convinced Wilson that the Vietnamese fighters were not being manipulated by Beijing or Moscow and that Britain had nothing to gain from going in.
In the late-1970s Oldfield’s contacts proved their worth again. Argentina’s military junta had landed a unit on the uninhabited British island of Southern Thule. Oldfield understood the threat to the nearby Falkland Islands as well as the strategic importance of the area. Diplomatic moves had made little progress so James Callaghan sent a nuclear-powered submarine to the region.
It was Oldfield, through his contacts in South America, who warned the Argentines of the task force with some exaggeration of its size. The danger was averted at least for the time being.
The spymaster, rumoured to be the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s “M” and John Le Carré’s George Smiley, worked behind the scenes around the world.
Often long-term relationships were the key. The Shah of Iran remained a close ally for decades as Oldfield encouraged the country to westernise. The spy also became a firm friend of Lee Kuan Yew before he went on to become Singapore’s chief minister – and even after independence the link meant the country remained friendly to Britain.
Sometimes there was a darker side to Oldfield’s manoeuvrings. His hand was clearly behind the decision of the Queen’s representative in Australia, Governor-General Sir John Kerr, to sack the democratically elected Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975. One of the main concerns was that Whitlam might close the vital CIA-run satellite-tracking base near Alice Springs from which surveillance of Russia, China and the Middle East was controlled.
OLDFIELD was known to be fair to his operatives and encouraging, even if he was at times too interfering. But hard decisions could be taken. When one British agent was caught in Russia, Oldfield sanctioned the smuggling in of a cyanide capsule so he could commit suicide rather than reveal his secrets.
The work was stressful and pressurised and at times dangerous. In 1975 a huge bomb was found hanging from a railing beneath his London flat. Two years later while in church, a note in his hymn book read: “The IRA will get you.”
But even in the midst of international conflict, spying scandals and dealings with powerful politicians, Oldfield could always find solace at home. Weekends working on the family farm, boozy lunches at the local pub, the Lathkill, and visiting friends and family around Derbyshire were a welcome release.
He retired as chief of MI6 in 1978 but within a year had been appointed co-ordinator of security intelligence in volatile Northern Ireland at the personal request of Mrs Thatcher. Then in 1980 he had his vetting certificate withdrawn after it emerged he had lied about his homosexuality.
Lurid allegations were later made of propositioning a man in a Belfast pub, of inappropriate behaviour with young men who had visited his home, even of using rent boys. None appear to be backed by proof but were made as part of a smear campaign.
As Oldfield’s contemporary at Manchester University, Professor Ronald Reed, noted: “He never faltered in trying to maintain the former glory of his country as a world power. No wonder the spy Philby and other would-be destroyers of this country found him a formidable adversary.”