THE
SECRET WAR AGAINST THE ARTS : HOW MI5 TARGETED LEFT-WING WRITERS &
ARTISTS 1936-1956
By Richard Knott
Pen & Sword Books. 226 pages. £25. ISBN 978-1-52677—031-8
Reviewed by Jim Burns.
We live in a democracy. There may be various interpretations of what
that word means, but we generally agree that the rule of law should
apply fairly and freely to all, and that we are on the whole at
liberty to read what we want,
and express our opinions about most things without falling
foul of the institutions of the state. We assume that our homes will
be respected and not raided, that the police will leave us alone if
we don’t commit crimes, that we can move around without hindrance,
and that we can communicate openly with other people and not be
pilloried for doing so.
Well, that’s what should happen, and often does for most people.
There are always exceptions to any law or matter of understanding,
and we’d no doubt accept many of them on the grounds that the
general good requires us to make concessions. Only an extreme
libertarian would argue that terrorist material should be easily
available, that certain kinds of pornography ought not to be
censored, or that everyone has the right to own guns and ammunition.
It’s also necessary to point
out that recent events have shown how quickly some of our “rights”
can be tinkered with when governments think it necessary.
A difficulty often arises in relation to political aims and ideas.
Provided you don’t conspire to overthrow the state by force of arms
it might be thought that we ought to be able to read and write
anything we please. But the state will most likely claim that it
needs to keep an eye on what we are doing in case words turn into
actions. And this argument was particularly pronounced during the
period covered by Richard Knott’s book when communism was the bogey
word. Writers and artists, few of who were active in a direct sense,
were closely watched and reported on. It was a situation which led
to moments of some amusement when people found themselves subject to
surveillance, but also times of stress when authors and painters
were blacklisted and unable to obtain work.
Clive Branson and Paul Hogarth both came under suspicion because of
their links to the Communist Party. Branson was born into
comfortable surroundings – Knott refers to his parents as
“conventional upper middle class” – and had a good education.
When he left Bedford School he worked in an insurance office, but
nursed ambitions to become an artist. His parents eventually agreed
to provide him with a small allowance while he became a student at
the Slade. He didn’t settle at the Slade, finding the teaching
uninspiring, and left to follow what I suppose would be called a
bohemian lifestyle while pursuing a lone path with his artistic
aspirations. An inheritance gave him freedom from financial worries,
but his eyes had been opened to the poverty and distress evident
around him, and he became radicalised.
He had met Noreen Browne, who came from a family with
aristocratic connections, but was. like Branson, growing more aware
of the social and political problems of the period. A short stay in
the Independent Labour Party (ILP) led them to the Communist Party.
Paul Hogarth was also destined to become a Party member, but his
background was a world away from that of Branson. Born in Kendal,
and brought up in Manchester, his father was a small shopkeeper who
frowned on his son’s interest in books and art. Hogarth attended the
Manchester School of Art but left home when he was seventeen, and
took an interest in politics. When the Civil War broke out in Spain
in 1936 Hogarth was an early volunteer, along with Clive Branson. It
was a decision that heightened the interest taken in them by both
local police and MI5.
That interest, with files kept on their involvements and movements,
lasted for years in Hogarth’s case. With regard to Branson, his
death in action in Burma in 1944, while serving in the British Army,
brought matters to an end, though Noreen Branson’s continued
membership in the Party meant that she was always likely to be
watched. Likewise with Hogarth, and he was discharged from the army
after a few months even though he was keen to carry on serving in
its ranks. His “premature anti-fascism” was held against him. He
resigned from the Party in 1957, but was still denied entry to the
USA in 1991 because of his one-time Communist Party membership,
which the Americans probably knew about thanks to MI5. It might be
seen that it was “quixotically British” when he was awarded an OBE
in 1989, and was elected to full membership of the Royal Academy.
Branson and Hogarth are just two of the artists Knott deals with.
Others include the now, I would guess, largely forgotten Ralph
Bates, a novelist and short-story writer with involvements in Spain,
who “was deemed to be a potential Red following the discovery of a
copy of Stendhal’s The Red
and the Black in his luggage”. When Bates made an appeal for aid
for the Spanish Republic at a meeting in Conway Hall it was reported
that “the audience appeared to be made up of Jewish and intellectual
types of communists”.
Throughout his book Knott points out how “personal idiosyncrasies”
were often noted in reports about supposed communists. It was said
of the painter Julian Trevelyan that “he sometimes wears sandals”
George Orwell’s inclination to “dress like a bohemian” was
registered.. A red bow-tie, or owning a pair of red silk-stockings
was enough to arouse suspicion, as was merely being seen in the
presence of a known radical. It does occur to me to wonder if simply
being interested in the arts was considered a questionable activity
in the eyes of many policemen, and therefore worthy of attention?
Contact tracing was in operation long before Covid19 arrived on the
scene.
George Orwell, despite his background at public school and in the
Colonial police, was looked on as potentially dangerous by the
security services. The fact that he was firmly anti-communist may
have been recognised, but it didn’t stop Special Branch and MI5
keeping files on him. He’d fought in Spain, but with a non-communist
Marxist organisation, though that difference probably didn’t count
for much with the authorities. The nuances of left-wing thought
confused many people. And his attitude towards the police was
suspicious, especially when he said of a campaign to have the
Scotland Yard surveillance files destroyed if it looked like the
Germans might invade: “Some hope. The police are the very people who
would go over to Hitler once they were certain he had won”.
Knott does refer to what some commentators see as a blot on Orwell’s
record of opposition to authority, his list of communists and
fellow-travellers that he handed to MI5 in 1949. Excuses can be made
for his action. He was in poor health, he was possibly influenced by
the attentions of a female MI5 agent, and he was genuinely concerned
about what communists were planning in terms of infiltrating various
organisations. It’s difficult to now understand what the atmosphere
was like in the late-1940s and early-1950s. There was a general
hostility to communism, especially because of the Cold War and the
Russian activities in Eastern Europe. Naming names is not
necessarily a practice to be approved of, particularly when some of
the names might belong to people who are not in any way dangerous,
but we may want to allow for special circumstances at times.
It would be difficult to ascertain just how many lives were affected
by the presence in them of the operatives from MI5 and the police.
Knott inevitably focuses on some of the better-known names in the
arts. But I suspect
that others were also caught up in the dragnet, with Special Branch
officers from local police forces, and informants, feeding details
to MI5. It’s highly likely that some of the details had more to do
with the social prejudices of the observers rather than any actual
activities on the part of the observed. Dressing a little
differently, being interested in things most people ignored, and not
openly participating in what might be called normal day-to-day
involvements, were all possible grounds for comment.
Shopkeepers, postmen, and neighbours, would know which newspapers
and magazines were read, where mail came from, and how many
curious-looking visitors arrived. The authorities tapped telephone
and opened letters to obtain information. It’s no secret that
Communist Party headquarters in London were bugged and burgled. But
what about the provinces where the unusual might be more noticeable
than in London? Which painter or poet in Birmingham or Manchester
had his ideas and opinions scrutinised? The answers might be in the
archives, if they still exist, of local Special Branch units, but
accessing them might not be easy. And though Knott can come up with
evidence of blacklists which prevented some people from working for
the BBC and other organisations, I began to wonder how many others
were denied employment with local authorities and private companies
because the police or MI5 had advised against them being hired?
Such questions are outside the scope of Knott’s book, and his focus
is on someone like the poet Randall Swingler. There has been a
revival of interest in his life and work in recent years, thanks to
the efforts of Andy Croft who has written extensively about him.
Swingler had served with some distinction in the British Army in the
Second World War, but his continued commitment to communism meant
that he found it difficult to obtain suitable employment in the
post-war years, and so scuffled to earn a living. He had personal
problems, which could have been partly caused by the predicament in
which he found himself, and collapsed and died in a Soho street when
leaving a pub.
Swingler is a valuable case to study when it comes to how easily a
writer can disappear from sight. His writing, and his literary
involvements in the 1930s and 1940s, seem impressive, but the onset
of the Cold War caused him to be almost “airbrushed” out of history.
His radicalism counted against him. It’s also true that his poems
would probably not have found favour with the Movement poets of the
1950s, nor with the so-called “underground” poets of the 1960s. The
majority of poets are fated to be forgotten, but Swingler probably
suffered from neglect more than most.
There is a dark humour to be gained from the fact that, while MI5
were harassing writers and artists, most of who were never likely to
engage in espionage or other illegal activities, more than a few
real spies were escaping its attention. The stories of Blunt,
Philby, Burgess, Maclean, and more, are too well-known to need
noticing here. While Auden, Spender, the artist James Boswell, the
composer Alan Bush, the novelist Doris Lessing, and the theatre
activist Joan Littlewood, were all regularly investigated,
information of value to the Russians was flowing freely from
highly-placed sources.
The Secret War Against the Arts
can’t possibly tell the whole story of how MI5 and Special Branch
harassed writers and artists and what the effects were on their
work. Did publishers fight shy of poetry by left-wingers and
galleries turn down paintings by artists known to be political
radicals? Knott says that the Leicester Galleries, his regular
outlet, refused to display Paul Hogarth’s drawings from a 1956 trip
to Africa, “because of their challenging content”. It isn’t
specified what was “challenging” about the drawings, but it’s not
unreasonable to assume that what they showed was not In accord with
official policy about the colonies. MI5 had informed the police in
South Africa and Southern Rhodesia that Hogarth and Lessing were on
their way. Knott says that both had their luggage searched before
they left England. The authorities presumably knew that funds for
the trip, which was in connection with a book Lessing was writing
and Hogarth illustrating, had been provided by the Soviet News
Agency, TASS.
Richard Knott has written a lively and thought-provoking book. It
won’t be the last word on the subject. He notes that researchers
continue to be denied access to some files, and that those that are
made available are often heavily-redacted. “National security” is
the usual excuse for limits imposed on allowing access to files or
redacting them.. The names of informants are blacked out.
The state doesn’t want us to
know too much about how and why we’ve been watched. Which makes one
think about who is being observed now besides suspected terrorists?
Police in recent years have infiltrated a variety of protest groups,
And the growth of surveillance equipment means that we’re all
watched a lot of the time. Technology enables investigators to
follow our movements, find out what we buy and who we meet. It’s no
longer a case of a local policeman sending in a report to say that
someone has the appearance of a “bohemian” or sports a red tie. MI5
will now already know much more than that.
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