Politicians passed secrets on to Czech agents during the Cold War
Intelligence files reveal contacts with MPS, but archive director says they may not have been spies
SENIOR Labour politicians including a Cabinet minister passed information to communist spies during the Cold War, a Daily Telegraph investigation has found.
Stan Orme, who went on to serve as a minister under James Callaghan, met with agents on a monthly basis and passed on information about foreign policy decisions, reports from Czechoslovak agents to their bosses in Prague claim.
Mr Orme – code-named Manchester – was listed as a “confidential contact” by agents who targeted Labour MPS by wining and dining them.
Intelligence files seen by this newspaper reveal that his handler František Hrůza, who was code-named Hilner, also had contact with Alf Lomas, who went on to be Labour’s leader in the European parliament.
Mr Hrůza also met with Raymond Mawby, who was a Tory Cabinet minister and paid informant, and Barnett Stross, the Labour MP code-named Gustav, who was exposed by a Czech defector to the CIA in 1969.
Under the guise of being a diplomat Mr Hrůza came to London in 1968 to take over from his predecessor Pavlasek, whose real name was Stanislav Patejdl.
Receipts show that he wined and dined his contacts with dinners at hotels in central London and Kensington.
In his reports, sent back to bosses in Prague and now held in the archives of the Státní Bezpečnost (STB), the former Czechoslovakian secret police, he detailed his handover and how he was getting on with Mr Orme, who had been a “personal contact” of Mr Patejdl.
Mr Orme was a member of the party’s Tribune Group and knew a lot about the situation in Germany, and would give them information on the foreign policy decisions of Great Britain, according to briefing notes.
As the spies plied him with gifts of brandy and cigars he handed over “very important materials” on the Western European Union, the international military alliance.
However, by the end of September 1969 he had “expressed his disagreement with the politics of the Czech communist party” and said he was not interested in meeting any more. Mr Orme’s contact with, and subsequent disengagement from, the Czech regime coincided with the Prague Spring. Many Western supporters of communism became disillusioned with the Kremlin in the wake of the crackdown. However, it is not known what Mr Orme made of it.
The Salford MP was made minister of state for social security in 1976 and held various shadow cabinet positions before taking over as leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party in the late Eighties. He died in 2005.
He was listed in the files, which run to hundreds of pages and have been seen by The Telegraph, as “DS”, a confidential contact and one of the highest levels of collaborator, alongside Mr Mawby, Mr Stross and Robert Edwards MP. The records claim Mr Mawby, whose links to the foreign service were exposed in 2012, handed over confidential information from the Treasury committee and some plans of rooms in parliament.
Mr Edwards, the trade unionist and an Independent Labour Party and Labour Co-operative politician, is said to have also passed confidential minutes and information on the workings of parliament to spies and provided “valuable” information on Europe.
Code-named Zabar, his motivation was ideological but he was also given cognac and cigars, the files reveal.
Other contacts named include Dennis Hobden, the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown and a former officer in the Union of Post Office Workers, and James Dickens, the Labour MP who led the Tribune Group in 1968.
But Mr Hobden was said to have been “compromised” by his “extremely Left-wing opinions” and his penchant for alcohol.
The party’s Brixton MP Marcus Lipton was used as a “cover contact”. Meetings with Sir Edward Brown, Tory MP for Bath, and Geraint Morgan, the Welsh Conservative MP, were also reported back to Prague.
One contact Mr Hrůza focused on was Mr Lomas, who he first met in June 1968. In one document marked “top secret” Mr Hrůza details how he went for a drink with Mr Lomas for the “progression of contact” at a cost of £1.04. Other entries detail he received information from the then political secretary of the London Co-operative Society about the world peace movement. Mr Hrůza told his handlers Lomas was useful because he could discuss with him “all political questions” and dig dirt on other Labour MPS they were interested in.
When Mr Hrůza was recalled to Prague and his employment terminated in 1969 he wrote that his contact with Mr Lomas was “reaching a high level of trust” and said that it would not be long “to reach that level of cooperation where we can think about having him as a DS”.
However, Svĕtlana Ptáčníková, the director of the STB archive, said that she did not believe Mr Orme, Mr Edwards or Mr Lomas were agents of the secret police despite their meetings.
She said that they could have been listed as “DS” in order for the agent on the ground to exaggerate how well they were doing in London.
The file categorisation suggests they were not agents, she added. Ms Ptáčníková told The Telegraph: “These people may not have had the slightest idea that they were in fact meeting an intelligence officer.