SPIES IN HIGH PLACES
With the Cold War back in the news we look at some cordial relations between the UK Establishment and Soviet sympathisers
TOM DRIBERG, LABOUR MP (1905-1976) JACK JONES, UNION LEADER (1913-2009) At the height of trade union misrule in the 1970s, Jones was once considered the most powerful man in the country – above the then-PM James Callaghan. He was credited with laying the ground for the Winter of Discontent of widespread strikes that brought the country to the edge of economic chaos. As a young man he had fought alongside Communists during the Spanish Civil War as part of the leftist International Brigade.
Joining the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), he rose to become their General Secretary in 1968 and from then on was a very influential figure in the trade union movement. But all the time, maintains Russian KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky, Jones was paid to pass on Labour Party Later dubbed “Pink” Floyd for his vehement support of the Soviet Union, his student communism did not apparently bar him from working at three British embassies during the Cold War.
Even though in 1951, the then Labour foreign secretary, Herbert Morrison, wondered “Why must we employ such doubtfuls?”
The answer of course is that British universities have been full of Lefty students from the 1920s onwards, with many equally socialist academics teaching them.
Floyd finally confessed to passing military secrets to the Russians in the 1940s when he worked at the British Embassy in Moscow, but the Foreign Office covered up the scandal.
He then landed a plum job at the Daily Telegraph reporting on – you guessed it – Soviet spies!