People of little interest: MI5’s view of left-wing intellectuals

If MI5 had a Cold War file on you – paper in those happy days – it didn’t mean they thought you were a spy. Nor even that you were especially interesting. Files were a means of storing and retrieving information. They could be general subject files or personal files (PFs) relating to individuals. Some PF holders were secretly investigated, but many were merely monitored – i.e. information about them was collated until it was clear there was no need for further investigation.

Following their seizure of power in Russia in 1917, the avowed mission of the Soviet government was to foment worldwide revolution in order to impose communism. MI5 was tasked with investigating, monitoring and – within the law – preventing subversion. This was defined as ‘activities designed to undermine or overthrow parliamentary democracy by political, violent or industrial means’. By the 1990s, when the Cold War was rashly assumed to have ended, many on the left were convinced that MI5 had abused its powers by investigating and persecuting patriotic trades unionists, honest journalists, truth-seeking academics, democratic freedom fighters and honourable members of parliament.

In Red List, David Caute – scholar, author, journalist and renowned man of the left (but no communist) – trawls MI5 files released to the National Archive, citing references to such diverse figures as the two Amises, Kingsley and Martin, Harriet Harman, Benjamin Britten, Jacob Bronowski, Paul Robeson, Doris Lessing, Michael Foot and many others.