Fascism, the Security Service and the Curious Careers of Maxwell Knight and James McGuirk Hughes

👤 John Hope  

The idea that the Security Service, MI5, colluded with British fascism in the inter-war years is not to be found in the existing literature on the subject. On the contrary the fascists are depicted as the victims, rather than the beneficiaries of MI5’s attentions. MI5, it is generally argued, viewed fascism as a potential danger to state and national security against which it acted once that potential became actual. This, it is stated, is what occurred in the spring and summer of 1940 when MI5 deployed its repertoire of “dirty tricks” against fascists and their supporters and sympathisers.(1) However, there is evidence that collusion did indeed take place, much of it to be found in the careers and activities of two of the more prominent MI5 officers involved in the surveillance of inter-war fascism, Charles Henry Maxwell Knight and James McGuirk Hughes.

Maxwell Knight was recruited to the Security Service by Sir Vernon Kell in April 1925 and won rapid promotion through the ranks of the agency.(2) By the 1930s Knight was in charge of B5b, which conducted the day-to-day monitoring of both left- and right-wing subversion. It was Knight and his agents who were primarily responsible for the surveillance of Britain’s fascists and other “fellow- travellers of the right”, and for engaging in whatever counter-espionage against them was deemed necessary. The climax of Knight’s encounter with domestic fascism occurred in 1940, when his section uncovered the pro- Nazi activities of Tyler Kent and Anna Wolkoff. Knight was able to link these with the circles cohering around Oswald Mosley, the British Union of Fascists (BUF), Captain A.H. Ramsay and the Right Club, thereby precipitating the government’s amendments to Defence Regulation 18B, and the internment of fascists and other right-wing suspects in 1940.(3) This earned Knight the reputation of being as staunchly anti-fascist as he was anti-communist.

There was, however, another side to Knight’s encounter with fascism. At some point in 1924 Knight became a member of Britain’s first fascist movement of any significance, the British Fascists (BF) and served as its Director of Intelligence from 1924 to 1927. Evidence confirming Knight’s involvement is available from a number of sources. There is, for example, the testimony of Neil Francis-Hawkins, recently uncovered by W.J.West.(4) Francis-Hawkins had been one of the more influential members of the BF before joining the BUF and becoming its Director-General of Organization. He was also one of the earliest BUF members to be interned in May 1940. Appearing before the Advisory Committee on 18B Detainees in 1944, Francis-Hawkins informed it that Maxwell Knight “had been Director of Intelligence at the British Fascists”.(5) This is substantiated by Foreign Office papers in which Knight’s name appears on a list of the British Fascists’ senior executives provided by two of the movement’s members in September 1926 to Special Branch and Foreign Office officials.(6) Knight’s membership and position as the BF’s Chief Intelligence officer also appears in an intelligence report on British fascism submitted to the Australian authorities in November 1924, and discovered by the historian, Dr. Andrew Moore.(7)

Knight’s involvement with the BF cannot be explained by suggesting that he enrolled in order to keep the movement under surveillance for MI5 from within. It is, of course, highly likely that he did do precisely that once he had been recruited into MI5, but Knight joined the British Fascists in 1924, prior to his recruitment by the Security Service in April 1925. As its Director of Intelligence, he was responsible for compiling intelligence dossiers on its “enemies” and rivals; for planning its counter-espionage and covert action operations; for establishing and supervising the fascist cells it set up and operated in the trade unions and factories; and for the movement’s own internal security and disciplinary problems.(8)

There is also evidence that Knight’s fascist enthusiasm continued for some time after he left the BF in 1927. In the testimony referred to earlier, Francis-Hawkins recalled that shortly after Knight left the movement he revealed his identity as an MI5 officer and offered assistance to the BF in its work for the “Clear Out the Reds Campaign” launched by Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson, Colonel John Gretton, Sir Henry Page Croft and Winston Churchill.(9) What form this assistance took, and whether or not it had the full support of senior Security Service officials, are not disclosed in Francis-Hawkins’ testimony; but it does suggest that Knight’s fascist sympathies did not disappear immediately he left the movement. Knight’s own testimony at the trial of Tyler Kent further suggests that his sympathies for fascism only began to wane in 1935 when he and his colleagues became increasingly concerned about the British Union of Fascists’ growing Italian fascist and German nazi links.(10)

That Knight’s membership of the British Fascists did not constitute any barrier to his recruitment indicates that MI5 did not view the movement in an unfriendly or hostile manner. Indeed, his involvement may even have been considered a bonus, providing MI5 not only access to valuable information, but also influence over the direction and activities of the movement. It is unlikely, however, that Knight was recruited by Sir Vernon Kell because of his membership of the BF. Bernard Porter has recently suggested that Knight had served an “intelligence apprenticeship” elsewhere, his source for this being John Baker White, Assistant Director and then Director of the Economic League between 1926 and 1939.(11) In his second autobiography White states that in 1923 he had been recruited to run “Section D” of a private intelligence agency operated by a “Sir George McGill”. According to White, McGill’s agency “investigated all forms of subversion including communism….the international traffic in drugs and the traffic in women and children….[and] the cult of evil which Aleister Crowley was the centre’.(12) White himself employed agents for Section D of the agency, one of whom was a young man named Max, “a naturalist who later entered government service”, and who (White recalled) died in 1968 — biographical details corresponding closely to those of Maxwell Knight.

If Porter is correct, Knight’s recruitment to MI5 was probably affected by McGill’s agency. According to White, Sir George McGill was “a close and personal friend of Sir Vernon Kell….. and could always see the Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet whenever he wished and at short notice’.(13) White, too, had similar connections. His step-father, Gerald Hartley Atkinson, had been involved in the creation of Special Branch, and was brought out of retirement to assist its operations against the IRA and Sinn Fein after World War One. Atkinson employed his stepson for Special Branch assignments from time to time.(14) As Assistant Director of the Economic League, White maintained his Special Branch and MI5 connections throughout the 1920s and 30s.(15) It may not have been entirely by chance, therefore, that Knight found himself attending a dinner party at which Sir Vernon Kell was among the guests — and after which Knight was “invited” to join MI5.

It may also have been through the medium of McGill’s agency that Knight was introduced to the British Fascists. In his first autobiography White recalled that in 1923 he visited BF headquarters “in a large dark house in Elm Park Gardens’.(16) White’s mother was a close friend of Nesta Webster, the intellectual doyenne of the BF, and had collaborated with her in writing The Communist Menace; and White, too, seems to have been friends with the Lintorn Ormans, the movement’s founders. White admired the BF for meeting “the Communists on their own ground and [fighting] them with their own methods…..in many bloody and sometimes considerable battles at street corners and in public halls’. Rotha Lintorn Orman, he declared, “was one of the bravest people I have ever met in my life’, whose “bravery was by no means purely physical’. Had she been “gifted with greater political judgement’, he went on to state, “with the backing of funds, and had she been able to formulate a more constructive policy, the movement might have become an important factor in the political life of Britain’. That aside, however, White was convinced that the BF had “achieved an end for which it has never been credited. It forced the Communist Party to abandon much of its militant activity…’.(17)

The evidence on Knight’s dual career indicates that McGill’s private intelligence agency served as an intermediary between the world of the Security Service and that of the fascist movement. It is clearly of some importance, therefore, to identify McGill and his agency more precisely, and examine its links with MI5 and fascism. Although White is suitably reticent on the matter, his autobiographies leave sufficient clues to enable such identification to be made. White refers to McGill’s friendship with Sir Vernon Kell, his participation and involvement with the Organization for the Maintenance of Supplies (OMS), and finally his death in 1926.(18) These are all details which correspond exactly with those of Sir George Makgill, General Secretary of the British Empire Producers’ Organization and Honourary Secretary of the British Empire Union (BEU).(19) Makgill’s membership and position in the BEU are of particular importance for the BEU established and operated its own network of “Special Agencies” which not only collected intelligence on communists, socialists and “militant” trade unionists, but also conducted counter-espionage and sabotage operations against them.(20) The British Empire Union’s network can therefore reasonably be identified as the private intelligence agency to which Knight belonged.

The involvement of the Security Service in the intelligence activities of the BEU began during the First World War. Like other right-wing groups such as the Navy League and the Anti-Socialist Union, the BEU helped Special Branch and MI5 by attempting to locate German agents, spies and saboteurs. This assistance continued when surveillance was extended to include pacifists, the anti-war movements, socialists and those engaged in war-time strikes — all suspected of being sponsored or instigated by German agents.(21) These informal arrangements carried over into the post-war years when the Security Service became alarmed at the dramatic upsurge of industrial unrest and political militancy that followed war’s end. Militant trade unionists, radical socialists, and communists were now seen as the new enemy, attempting to instigate a Bolshevik-style revolution in Britain and its Empire.(22) To combat the Bolshevik danger the Security Service collaborated with those right-wing groups actively engaged in fighting the “anti-Christ of Communism”. The British Empire Union’s private intelligence network, for example, worked with Lieutenant J.F.C. Carter, Assistant Commissioner at Special Branch, who supplied it with funds and Special Branch officers from time to time.(23) (Sir George Makgill, of course, liaised directly with Sir Vernon Kell.) Nor was the BEU unique in this respect. The Anti-Socialist Union and the various groups established by the Duke of Northumberland were supplied with confidential intelligence material and agents by Sir Basil Thomson, Director of Intelligence at Special Branch, and Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff.(24)

These relationships were stimulated by the participation of such groups as the BEU and the National Citizens’ Union (NCU) in the government’s Supply and Transport Organization (STO), established in 1919 to maintain essential supplies and services in the event of major industrial disturbances, or a national, general or “revolutionary” strike.(25) When the Supply and Transport Organisation was brought into action in 1919, 1921 and 1926, it was largely from the BEU, the NCU, the Anti-Socialist Union and similar groups that volunteers and Special Constables were recruited.(26) Indeed, it was precisely to resolve the problems of recruiting such people for the Supply and Transport Organisation that the British Empire Union — and in particular, Sir George Makgill — the National Citizens’ Union, the Economic League and other bodies helped establish the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies in early 1925.(27)

The links established with the Supply and Transport Organisation, however, acquired something of an official sanction when, in October 1919, Lloyd George called upon the services of Admiral Sir Reginald Hall and his organisation, National Propaganda, to assist the government to defeat the Railway Strike.(28) National Propaganda was employed by the Publicity Sub-committee of the STO to produce unofficial propaganda for the government and its strike-breaking organisation; and although Admiral Hall and his assistant, Captain Kelly, attended only the first meeting, permanent liaison between National Propaganda and the STO was instituted. Its role, however was not confined to propaganda, as the Ministry of Labour employed it to recruit, supply and supervise volunteers to undertake “those dangerous duties’ others had declined. To execute these duties National Propaganda was granted direct, official access to Special Branch, MI5, the Admiralty and the War Office.(29)

In practice this also meant providing access to the BEU, NCU and other right-wing groups for the simple reason that since its establishment in 1919, National Propaganda had functioned as a central co-ordinating body for these organizations. The need for such a body had been recognised in late 1918 by the General Secretary of the British Commonwealth Union, and it was largely at his instigation that National Propaganda was launched at a conference convened for the purpose at 4 Dean’s Yard, Westminster.(30) Initially, NP administered the Central Council of the Economic Leagues, comprised of representatives of employers and employers’ organizations, and delegates from the BEU, NCU and other right- wing groups. Between 1921 and 1924 however, the Central Council was itself elevated to the status of the main co-ordinating committee, with NP, the BEU and the NCU given permanent posts on the Council.(31) This structure allowed each constituent body to retain a relative degree of autonomy, whilst enabling maximum co-ordination of activities. At the same time, Admiral Hall sought to amalgamate the intelligence and counter-espionage networks operated by the BEU, NCU and other affiliated groups to bring them under the central and direct control of the Economic League (as the Central Council was finally called), a task in which he appears to have been successful.(32)

The “private intelligence agency” to which John Baker White and Maxwell Knight were recruited in 1923, then, was not simply a private agency as is commonly understood. Rather, it was part of a more extensive and sophisticated network that had been established by the conservative right. Furthermore, this network operated in conjunction with the intelligence and security apparatus of the state with which it appears to have been interwoven. This arrangement was formalised by the government itself in the crisis years of 1919 to 1921 when National Propaganda and its affiliates were more or less integrated into the structure of the Supply and Transport Organisation. In short, the line separating the private intelligence agencies of the right from the state Security Services was distinctly blurred. There was a continuum, a network of inter-locking individuals and organizations linking the “private” and the “public” intelligence and security agencies. White’s guarded revelations, therefore, are validated by the documentary evidence which survives, and it is easy to see how Maxwell Knight moved so easily from one to the other.

That fascism intruded into this arrangement stemmed in part from the fact that, as White suggests in his autobiography, the right-wing participants possessed rather close associations with the fascist movement, deriving in part from the ideological similarities between the two, and in part from the fact that many right-wing groups displayed distinctly quasi-fascist characteristics.(33) The BEU is a case in point. During the First World War it formed “a perfectly well-known gang of bullies’, comprised of soldiers, sailors and military reservists, organised on military lines, to conduct violent assaults on Germans, Jews and pacifists — tactics adopted by Mussolini at the same time! — and continued to deploy them against strikers and socialists after the war.(34)

Some of the earliest members of the British Fascists were drawn from the organizations of the conservative right: Patrick Hannon and Major Pilcher from the British Commonwealth Union; Basil Peto and Reverend Gough from the National Party; Colonel Sir Charles Burn, Sir J.R. Pretyman Newman and Sir Burton Chadwick from the National Citizens’ Union; and Lord and Lady Sydenham of Combe from a variety of right-wing causes, are only a few of the more obvious examples.(35) Other “fellow travellers’ who “flirted” with the BF, or accorded it respectability by speaking on its platforms or by employing its specially trained “Q” divisions for their own meetings and campaigns, included Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson, Sir Robert Horne and Sir Philip Sassoon.(36) In addition, the plethora of titled aristocrats and senior military personnel who graced the movement’s Grand Council and Executive, linked it with those circles cohering around the Conservative right.(37)

There is some evidence, too, that the conservative right was more deeply involved in facilitating the growth and development of the BF than most studies indicate. Much of this appears to have stemmed from the Duke of Northumberland, through whose paper, The Patriot, the initial recruiting for the BF was conducted.(38) For a time the BF used The Patriot to inform its members of its activities, and shared the same premises until the paper moved when Northumberland purchased the controlling shares of The Morning Post.(39) Besides this, some of the more important and active members of the BF — such as Nesta Webster, the Lintorn Ormans and Lord and Lady Sydenham — were close friends and associates of the Duke.(40)

Northumberland’s fascist associations are important, for although often portrayed as one of the more eccentric Diehard Tories, he enjoyed considerable popularity amongst back-bench Conservative MPs, and commanded a certain degree of respect from Conservative Cabinet Ministers (however much they may have considered him a disruptive influence). Northumberland played a major role — along with Colonel John Gretton, Admiral Hall and Lord Salisbury — in the Conservative revolt against the Lloyd George coalition in 1922.(41) More importantly, Northumberland was deeply involved in a variety of right-wing groups formed to defeat the Bolshevik menace, including the National Federation of Propagandist Societies (later absorbed into the Economic League) and, more significant still, the British Empire Union.(42)

Although these fascist connections remain obscure, it is clear that they have been consistently underestimated in existing studies of the subject. Certainly they were institutional as well as personal, and sufficiently close to lead to several meetings to discuss merging their respective organizations or more formal co-operation and collaboration.(43) The organizations of the right, it seems reasonable to suggest, encouraged and fostered the early versions of fascism; and, given that their fascist links continued well into the 1930s, were implicated in virtually every stage of its development.(44) This meant that the BF became a beneficiary of the links that the conservative right had with the security apparatus of the state, in particular with MI5. To the Security Service, the British Fascists would have appeared merely as a more militant and aggressive version of those organizations with which it was already colluding — the more so as fascism appeared to emerge from the same bodies.

If Sir George Makgill was responsible for introducing Maxwell Knight to Sir Vernon Kell, then Knight’s fascist credentials would not have been considered to be any more detrimental than the position he held in Makgill’s organisation. Rather, it would have simply ensured that, through Knight, MI5 would be in a better position to direct and control the movement’s activities; and this, it would seem, is precisely what Knight was doing for MI5 when he offered assistance to Neil Francis-Hawkins and the British Fascists after he had formally left the movement.

The case of James McGuirk Hughes confirms the impression of collusion between MI5 and fascism. Under the pseudonym of P.G.Taylor, Hughes served as the British Union of Fascists’ Chief of Intelligence in Department Z of the movement, from its formation in 1932 until it was banned in 1940.(45) One former member of the movement stated that Hughes had disclosed his employment by MI5 to Mosley when he applied for the position, commenting that Mosley accepted because Hughes’ dual membership of MI5 and the BUF “need not have clashed…..He [Hughes] was “on our side”, which seemed good enough’.(46)

Like Knight, McGuirk Hughes had first served an apprenticeship with the British Empire Union’s private intelligence and counter-espionage network, which he combined with his position as secretary of the BEU’s Liverpool branch. Substantial documentation of his activities for the BEU was first unearthed in 1977 by the labour historian Ron Bean, amongst the Cunard papers deposited with Liverpool University.(47) These show that Hughes was responsible for approaching local employers to solicit financial and other aid for the BEU and for directing and supervising the branch’s propaganda drives and its street corner anti-communist meetings and demonstrations.

The documents clearly illustrate that the sole purpose of this section was to infiltrate and sabotage trade unions and left-wing groups. For five years Hughes and his agents broke into premises, stole and forged documents, and behaved as agents provocateur.(48) For Liverpool employers Hughes provided the names of the most active trade unionists in the area, along with their plans and preparations for strike activity.(49) In one of his reports Hughes wrote “that we have the complete confidence and help of Scotland Yard, and in fact have received payment from them. The Assistant Commissioner (Col. Carter) considers that we are the only efficient organization…….our relations with the provincial police continue to be good….We had placed under us a number of the plain cloths (sic) men of the Glasgow police…’.(50) Even if allowances are made for exaggeration, it would seem that Hughes and his section collaborated with Special Branch, as did the Economic League, of which Hughes’ unit was — at least up to 1923 — a part.

It is also possible that Hughes and his agents had some form of association with the BF in these early years. One of the “Special Activities” in which Hughes was involved in 1924 was the “Removal of documents from H.Q. of the Red International of Labour Unions and the Minority Movement in London’, an action which he claimed “resulted in important information being obtained and was a severe blow to the Reds’.(51) As Ron Bean has pointed out, The Times carried an article in August 1924, reporting that “the police had been called in after the offices of the Red International of Labour Unions had been broken into and ransacked. Papers relating to the National Minority Movement — minutes of meetings, correspondence and membership lists — were stolen”.(52) At the time it was assumed that the BF had carried out the raid, as two or three of its members were identified the day before, apparently reconnoitring the premises. The BF denied the allegation, but, given Hughes’ later activities with fascists, it is possible that some of its members collaborated with Hughes, and conducted the operation on his behalf. It is interesting to note, too, that the liaison officer between Hughes and Special Branch, Lieutenant J.F.C. Carter, acted as the intermediary between the British Fascists and the Foreign Office in September 1926.(53)

By 1923, however, Hughes’ relations with the BEU both in Liverpool and at national headquarters became strained when he refused to divulge all of his activities and sources of financial support. He therefore took his “Special Propaganda Section’ and ran it as an independent organization financed by, and working solely for, a number of shipping companies, of which the Cunard Line was one. Between 1923 and 1925 the agency expanded its activities to include Glasgow, Sheffield and Barrow. As far as the BEU was concerned this was simply not acceptable, presumably because of the re-organization of its intelligence and counter-espionage network following its gradual absorption into the Economic League. Sir Reginald Wilson, General Secretary of the BEU and one of the two Directors of the Economic League, approached Hughes’ main financial sponsor, requesting him to withdraw support for Hughes. This was duly done, and in July 1925 Hughes’ organization was closed down, his contract terminated.(54)

Hughes’ career after his dismissal by his sponsors in July 1925 and his reappearance in the British Union of Fascists in 1932 remains unknown, but by the time he joined Mosley’s movement he was an established MI5 agent and identified himself as such on many occasions. Hughes’ enthusiasm for and commitment to the BUF appears to have been quite genuine, and, besides being head of its notorious “Z” department he held a number of other positions. He appears, for example, on its Research Directory, on the Propaganda Directory which replaced it in July 1935, on its Industrial Section, and as Vice-President of the Blackshirt Automobile Club.(55) In February 1935 he was also put in charge of the Fascist Union of British Workers.(56) Some of the duties he performed were identical to those conducted in the 1920-25 period and to those which Knight carried out for the British Fascists: compiling intelligence dossiers on the BUF’s rivals and enemies, supervising counter-espionage and sabotage operations, and conducting the various “Court Martials” and “Courts of Enquiry” which the movement launched to punish its more wayward or recalcitrant members and branches and to sort out personal squabbles and feuds between members.(57) He was also responsible for investigating and reporting on those organisations Mosley had targetted with a view to their incorporation into the BUF.(58) This was not all, however. To Hughes fell the more subversive task of establishing the BUF’s secret cells, modelled on those of the German Nazi party and the Italian Fascisti. An ambitious scheme to establish such cells in the Civil Service, the Armed Forces, key manufacturing and commercial enterprises, and the trade union movement, was launched at the beginning of 1933.(59) Of particular importance was the setting up of secret cells in the trade unions and in factories, considered vital if the BUF was to rival and successfully combat the Communist Party on its own ground.(60)

The role of James McGuirk Hughes, therefore, was of central importance to the organization and development of the BUF as a fascist movement, and, his own individual contribution was at least as important as that of other influential members such as Francis-Hawkins, Raven Thomson or W.B.D. Donovan. Indeed, during the crisis which engulfed the BUF following its dismal performance in the local elections of 1937, it was to Hughes that Mosley first turned to salvage the disaster, rather than to his second-in-command, Neil Francis-Hawkins — a fact which many in the movement noted with some surprise.(61) The importance of Hughes to Mosley personally appears to have increased towards the end of the 1930s. When Mosley decided to initiate closer contact and collaboration with Captain Archibald Maule Ramsay and the Right Club in 1939 he chose Hughes to conduct the negotiations and to be his personal liaison with Ramsay.(62) Interestingly enough, Hughes was to throw himself wholeheartedly into the intrigues in which Ramsay engaged in 1940, ensuring that both the Nordic League and the Right Club survived on an underground basis.(63) Given how close these intrigues came to treason the role of Hughes appears distinctly dubious.

This is not to suggest that Hughes neglected the duties he was supposed to be performing for MI5: far from it. But these did not entail, as one might expect, any attempt to undermine or sabotage the BUF and its subversive operations. On the contrary, in fact, it actually involved utilizing the BUF as a cover for MI5’s own covert operations aainst the left. The most notorious example of this occurred in 1937 when Hughes employed 4 members of the BUF — Ford, Dawson, Mann and J.C.Preen — to raid the home of Major Vernon, a Technical Officer at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. Vernon was a socialist, and had set up an informal Study Group and Self-Help Clubs for the unemployed.(64) The fascists burgled his home but were caught by the police as they attempted to make their getaway in a car displaying the BUF flag. At the subsequent trial, Ford and Preen claimed they had burgled Vernon’s cottage to secure evidence for MI5 that Vernon was a dangerous subversive spreading communist propaganda and sedition amongst the troops in the Aldershot district. While the four were found guilty of larceny and bound over for twelve months, Vernon was not so fortunate. Among the papers stolen from his cottage were documents from the RAF — papers, notebooks and drawings related to aeroplane construction — which he had taken to work on at home. These were deemed to be “sensitive” and Vernon was charged under the Official Secrets Act for the illegal possession of classified documents and dismissed from his job.

That the man behind the burglary was Hughes there can be no doubt. The fascists told the police that they had been instructed to commit the offence by a senior intelligence officer, and to bring whatever documents they found to the Intelligence Department at Scotland House.(65) The 18B Detainee file on J.C.Preen, now available in the Home Office papers at the Public Record Office, identifies the senior officer concerned as James McGuirk Hughes. At his hearing before the Advisory Committee on 18B Detainees, Preen explained that P.G.Taylor (that is J.M.Hughes), having disclosed his MI5 credentials, told him that Major Vernon had stolen secret plans which he intended to pass on to the Soviet Union. Taylor then asked Preen and his associates to raid Vernon’s home, retrieve the documents and so bring the Major to justice.(66) After the hearing, MI5 sent a note to the Advisory Committee stating that Preen should be released — a payoff, perhaps, for services rendered.

Conclusion

This brief re-examination of the careers and activities of Maxwell Knight and McGuirk Hughes shows that existing accounts of the relationship between the Security Service and fascism in inter-war Britain are far from satisfactory. Both men held important positions within the British Fascists and the British Union of Fascists, providing them with a degree of competence and sophistication they would have otherwise lacked. It is, therefore, inadequate to suggest that Knight and Hughes joined these organizations merely as a means of keeping them under surveillance. In the case of Knight this is incorrect: he enrolled in the BF before he was recruited to MI5. As for Hughes, his service to the fascist cause appears to outweigh the information he relayed back to the Security Service. Besides this there is simply no evidence at all to show that either Knight or Hughes made any attempt to undermine or sabotage the movements to which they belonged — at least before the start of World War Two. More importantly, it is quite clear that Knight and Hughes colluded with fascism, using it as a source of positive intelligence and as a cover for plausibly deniable counter-espionage and covert action operations against those on the political left.

Furthermore such collusion was not simply an aberration on the part of these two MI5 officers. The Security Service had embarked on the path of collusion when it first began to collaborate extensively with the immediate forerunners of fascism, the organizations of the conservative right such as the British Empire Union, National Citizens’ Union, National Propaganda and the Economic League. Indeed, the private intelligence counter-espionage network established by these groups was closely interwoven with the Security Service from a very early stage. For MI5 to collude with fascism was merely a continuation and extension of existing practice.

Notes

  1. See Cohen and Thurlow pp. 173-95.
  2. Masters p. 12.
  3. Ibid. pp. 76-106 and 135-167; Thurlow pp. 194-5; and Henri.
  4. West pp. 233-5.
  5. PRO HO 283/40/22
  6. PRO FO 371/11384/180-182.
  7. Australian Archives, CRS A 981/1, item “Fascism 3”. I am grateful to Dr. Moore for bringing this document to my attention and providing me with a copy.
  8. British Guardian, October 1924; PRO HO 144/19069/29.
  9. PRO HO 283/40/22
  10. Typescript of the Tyler Kent case pp. 94-5, in Tyler Kent Papers, Princeton University.
  11. Porter p. 165.
  12. White (1971) p. 129.
  13. Ibid.
  14. Ibid. p. 122.
  15. Cullen pp. 150-4; McIvor; Hollingsworth and Tremayne; Mike Hughes, unpublished manuscript on the Economic League. For permitting me access to his unpublished manuscript I am most grateful to Mr. Hughes.
  16. White (1941) p. 122.
  17. Ibid pp. 122-3.
  18. White (1971) p. 129.
  19. A brief overview of Makgill’s career can be found in Who’s Who 1927. On his early association with Kell, see Pananyi pp. 113-128. On his involvement in the OMS see PRO HO 45/12336 and the Drage Papers, Box 6, Part 3 (OMS).
  20. The formation of this section was announced in the British Empire Union Annual for 1920 and 1921, and referred to repeatedly in subsequent issues. The information it collected was made available on a restricted basis in a confidential newsletter, Weekly Circular. For details of its sabotage operations see Bean. The papers Bean refers to are the Cunard Papers, D. 42/C2/108.
  21. Panayi; Hiley (1986 a and b).
  22. Porter pp. 151-174.
  23. J.M. Hughes, Secret Report, Cunard Papers D. 42/C2. 108.
  24. Blumenfield Papers, Thoms 1-4; Hannon Papers, Box 13, File 4; Croft Papers, 1/2, 1/17, 1/20; J. St Loe Strachey Papers., S/11/5/125-17.
  25. Jeffery and Hennessy, chapters 1-3; Morgan pp. 75-110; Wrigley pp. 252-5.
  26. Middlemas pp. 99-101; PRO CAB 27/59-61; PRO CAB 27/82-84. The Chief Civil Commissioner for the STO from 1925 was Sir Wiliam Mitchell- Thomson, an executive member of the ASU.
  27. Drage Papers, Box 6, Part 3 (OMS): British Empire Union Annual, 1925 and 26; PRO HO 45/12336.
  28. PRO CAB 27/84/1-24 and CAB 28/83/1-38.
  29. PRO HO 45/11075: correspondence from Caillard, Hall and Kelly to the Home Office.
  30. Hannon Papers, Box 11, Folder 13 and Box 13, Folders 4 and 5; McIvor op. cit.; Holingsworth and Tremayne op cit; Mike Hughes, op. cit.
  31. PRO FO 371/11775/30-33. As a Special Branch report written by Captain Guy Liddell put it in February 1926: “The Central Council of Economic Leagues represents, amongst other bodies, National Propaganda, British Empire Union and National Citizens’ Union.’
  32. Hall’s success is indicated not only in Liddell’s notes to the Foreign Office, but in White’s first autobiography, where he states that he attended the first meeting of the International Entente Against the Third International as a representative of Makgill’s agency. According to Liddell, the only British representative attending that and subsequent conferences was the delegate sent by the Central Council of Economic Leagues.
  33. Benewick pp. 39-42; Farr pp. 53-56.
  34. Panayi op. cit.; Weller pp. 30-1, 56-7, 87-90; Bush p. 180.
  35. Benewick pp. 39-42; Farr pp. 56-7; Cross pp. 58-9.
  36. Cross Ibid.: see also Winterbotham p. 34.
  37. Ibid.
  38. Blume p. 100. Shortly before the British Fascists was launched, Northumberland had written in the paper: “All those brutal attacks on Christianity, individual liberty, patriotism and loyalty to the throne, under which — but for the coming of Fascism — Italian civilisation had perished, are to be reproduced here early in 1923.’ Farr, p. 59.
  39. Blume, pp. 85-98; Gilman pp. 42-44.
  40. Ibid. So close were the links that the Daily Herald continued to refer to Northumberland as the head of the BF as late as October 1923, some six months after the movement had been launched. Blume, p. 101.
  41. Cowling parts 1 and 2; Weber pp. 18-25.
  42. Cowling, pp. 80-87.
  43. Farr pp 59-60; PRO HO 144/19069/22; The Patriot, 1 April 1926.
  44. Miles pp 10-11; Empire Record, June 1940; Griffiths pp. 49-55.
  45. Letter from former BUF member who wishes to remain anonymous.
  46. Information in possession of Richard Thurlow: see also Thurlow pp. 203-4.
  47. Bean and Cunard papers D. 42/C2/108
  48. >Ibid.
  49. Ibid.: those using the service did so to supplement similar services provided by National Propaganda and the Central Council of Economic Leagues.
  50. Ibid.
  51. Ibid.
  52. Ibid.
  53. PRO FO 371/11384/180-182
  54. Bean
  55. PRO HO 144/20142; HO 144/20144 and 20145 contain the Special Branch reports listing his involvement in these sections of the BUF.
  56. PRO HO 144/20144/143-4.
  57. PRO HO 144/20142/314; HO 144/20144/103, 208 and 237-8; HO 144/20145/222-5 and 235.
  58. PRO HO 144/20144/103; HO 144/20145/235
  59. Mosky versus Marchbank Papers, statements made by Mr C.M. Dolan at conference at Unity House on 2 November 1934, MSS 127/NW/GS/3/5A; PRO HO 144/20144/126; HO 45/25385/28.
  60. PRO HO 144/143-144.
  61. PRO HO 144/21247/10.
  62. James Hughes’ name is listed in Ramsay’s Right Club notebook. (I am grateful to Dr. Richard Griffiths for allowing me to view Captain Ramsay’s notorious notebook listing the membership of the Right Club. It is the notebook used in the trials of Tyler Kent and Anna Wolkoff.) See also PRO H0 144/22454/112-3.
  63. PRO HO 144/22454/100-115
  64. NCCL (1938). See also the account given in Bunyan pp. 18-20.
  65. Ibid.
  66. PRO HO 283/54/23-4 and 31

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