MI6 ‘SET TO EXPOSE FOOT’S SOVIET LINK’
BRITAIN’S spy chiefs were so worried Labour leader Michael Foot was a KGB informant they threatened to tell the Queen.
The sensational allegation is contained in a new book by spy writer Ben Macintyre.
He says the Left-winger was paid £37,000 in today’s money by the Soviet Union’s KGB agency.
Mr Macintyre claims the cash was for spreading Soviet propaganda. British spymasters at MI6 were told in 1982 by Soviet double agent Oleg Gordievsky that the KGB were so interested in Mr Foot they had opened a file on him and codenamed him Agent Boot.
Gordievsky claimed the Labour leader never passed secrets about Britain but acted unwittingly as an agent of influence for Moscow.
MI6 planned to take the unprecedented constitutional move of telling the Queen if it looked like Mr Foot would be Prime Minister.
That never happened because Tory PM Margaret Thatcher was riding high following victory in the Falklands War and she easily won the 1983 election.
When claims of Mr Foot’s Soviet connections were first published 23 years ago he successfully sued.
He said then the claims were a “big lie”. But now they can be published because Mr Foot died in 2000 aged 96. Last night top Labour figures rubbished the claims.
Current leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted: “Smearing a dead man, who successfully defended himself when he was alive, is about as low as you can go.”
Neil Kinnock, who succeeded Mr Foot as Labour leader, said he had been a continual critic of the Soviet Union.