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CAMBRIDGE SPIES AND DRAMATIC LIES

© Viola Ashford

CAMBRIDGE SPIES AND DRAMATIC LIES

The penalty for treason used to be death. Now, it seems, it is to be treated as a hero by the BBC. Its series 'Cambridge Spies' about the famous spies, Philby, Burgess, Blunt and Maclean, is an unduly sympathetic portrayal of these bright and aristocratic young men who betrayed their country. At the end of the series Anthony Blunt () walking around his old University stamping ground, Trinity College, is asked whether he and his friends went on to do 'great things'. He agrees that they did.

This series takes a similar line to the movie 'Another Country' which also empathized with the spies. The idea appears to be to impress audiences with the good looks, brilliance, and questionable idealism of these men. Their story is certainly fascinating but they shouldn't be admired.

Many undergraduates, especially at Cambridge University, flirted with Communism, upset by the rise of Fascism and the British government's failure to deal with it. Stalin's intelligence services took advantage of this and began a policy of recruiting able undergraduates as double agents.

These spies were probably the most dangerous in British history, in the highest positions of power. Philby became the chief of Section IX of British Secret Service, which studied the Soviet Union and Communism. He sent many British spies to their deaths by informing on them to his Russian boss. Burgess, a flamboyant homosexual, was employed as an agent of MI6 from 1939-41 and attained the post of Second Secretary of the British Embassy in Washington.

Maclean's career was also in the Foreign Office. He became the First Secretary of the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. He was also the secretary of the combined Policy Committee on Atomic Development. This enabled him to supply the Soviet Union with information about the development of the atomic bomb and the formation of NATO. Anthony Blunt, homosexual like Burgess, served in MI5 and supplied secret information to the Soviets. He arranged for the eventual defection to Russia of Burgess and McAllen when it was believed that investigators were closing in on McAllen.

The BBC series begins with the recruitment of these spies at Cambridge and ends with the defection of Burgess and Maclean who were joined later by Philby. One of the aspects of the series that has created a furore is its tendency to play with the truth. The British upper class, for example, is uniformly portrayed as stupid, crass and extremely anti-Semitic with Fascist leanings. This is true of some, but it is a one-sided picture. Philby's Jewish girlfriend is an imaginary addition. In one scene Philby organizes a waiter's strike moved into action by their mistreatment. This never occurred.

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