◆ SpookStack

of the Beitish ruling class for reluctant betrayal and polite self-preservation. Effortlessly be played the parts which the Establishment could recognise - for was be pot born and trained into the Establishment? Effortlessly he copied its attitudes, caught its diffident ‘tammuper, its hesitant arrogance; effort- lesaly he took bis place in its nameless, hegemony. So well indeed did he per- ceive its nature that years later, when the security services sod the Press came to suspect him for what be was, Philby was able to rally the Establish- ment to his side and manocuvre it into protecting him as its own. It is, I am sure, part of the ambi- valence of Philby's position that be pever altogether took leave of the world be foreswore. He enjoyed the Establishment; be enjoyed its camsre- desic, its inside track, its institutional warmth, its comforting distaste for inzellectual pyrotechnics; to the very end he remained dependent on the people he deceived. Hence, perhaps, his extraordinary reluctance wo defect w Russia; bence his conicssion abroad; hence his loug and perilous hesitation in Beirut, Kim was homesick Even mow in Moscow, his obsession is aot with Russia, but with England. Kim loved the absent parent best; ‘and even though be had marked down the parent authority of Eogland as his Tifelong enemy, Kim Philby never quite absolved it from its parenta) duty to protect. And I think there was even mnoment - if is part of cracking up — when Philby wanted to be discovered and punished for what be had done; and that moment also came in the last days in Beirut here is little to be lear of Philry's nother. We may assume that a man of his father's were at bore, there wes not much doubt where women stood. Later Philby’s own attitude to women recalls the ambivalence of those days: the mother-goddest of Kipling mingled unhappily with the mindless, cunained amenity of Areb life. “I must have women,” said John Gay, “nothing Women were also his secret audi- ence. He used them as be used society; he performed, danced, phantasised with them, begged their approbation, used them as a response for his histri- onic talents, a8 a consolation for manhood haunted by his father’s ghost. When they came too close, he punished them or sent them away, cither as unsatisfactory mother-figures or the spent instruments of his expres- sion. Sometimes they were the actual currency in which be paid old scores renee ee ox satished his treacherous. impulse. ‘But whatever they were, they were second to thar one elected mother who held his heart: Russia. ‘As the authors repeatedly demon- strate, Philby was not a political animal. We do not find him plunged into an agony of doubt during the Stalin purges, the Doctors’ Plot, the Hungarian revolution. I cannot relate the crises in his personal life to crises within the Communist world: this was pot the nature of his commicment ‘Mother Russia was the boy's absolute. We can only speculate about his motive, and we can only guess st the scope of his deceit. Did Philby initiate the operations be betrayed? Did be propose the Albanian infitracions in which he sent agents to their deaths? ‘We knew barely the tiniest part of the havoc he caused; the codes, the men, the strategies, the techniques, the policies be betrayed. We shall get litle help from either side in working oat thet bill. Some Intelligence secrets, as T said elsewhere, are known in any capital of Europe, but they are still too hot for the taxpayer. For those who enjoy tortuous speculation, there is one intriguing coincidence. Sikorsky, whooe assas- sination Rolf Hochbuth notoriously off from Gibraltar on July 4, 1943. Ac that time Kim Philby was in charge of S.LS. counter-Iatelligence operations im the Iberian peninsula. If Sikorsky twas assassinated, is it conceivable that Philby planved the operation on behalf fof pis Russian mustergignd that, the ‘pssassin whom he bir Gelicved be was working for the Batish? Deceit was Philby's life's work; deceit, ws [understand it, bis nature. “] have come home,” be said in Moe cow, Philby has no bome, no woman, to faith. Bebind the political label, behind the inbred upper-class arro- gance, the taste for adventure, lies the vell-hate of a vain misfi for whom nothing will ever be worthy of his loyalty. In the Jast instance, Philby is riven by the incurable drug of deceit itself, It comes 15 0 surprise that, safely arrived in the land of his dreams, the old deceiver stretches out his fingers once more and steals the oaly thing left to steal: the wife of Dooald Maclean. Wf Philby’s relationship wo the Esublishment was ambivalent and paradoxical, the relationship of the Esublishment to Philby affords an ven sicher study in English sttinades. It ia a considerable and original virtue of this book that it treats the British Secret Services for what they surely are: microcosms of the British cun- dition, of our wocial artitudes and vanities. In this sense, the book i a milestone in the Englishman's educa- tion of himself. We can never again attributes to Winston Churchill, rook . ~- suppose that Intelligence is & world populated by people we have not met or known. The spy world revealed here is not a Nibelungenland shrouded ip the covering mist of Gothic can- spiracy and high national affsirs; it és peopled by men snd women ss sus ceptible as the rest of us to self- delusion. Its borders spill over imo almosi every area of our public life; its Uke every business, parliament, schoo! of profession, carries its fair share of the world’s idiots. There has never been any reason to suppose that the Secret Service should be absolved from this responsibility. Indeed, it is probably the one point on which ex- Intelligence officers, of whatever nationality, are agreed: we had our Clowns. But the presence of such people in S.LS. should not blind ws into thinking Philby survived by making fools af people who were fools aiready. evertbeless, there are plenty of ex- ‘ermal reasons why S.LS. apd the Security Service were, in the im- mediate post-war years when Philby did his greates: damage, in a pretty poor way. The five years berween 1944 and 1949 saw the greatest historical failure and the greatest historical rever- Myf all time. Soldiers who had fought at Bastogne were now required to fight im Korea Airmen who had defended ‘London were pow required w defend Berlin, In Germaay imelf there were those who were taking away sod thoee who were handing beck, there were ‘those who spoke of the allies and no longer meant the Russians, those who spoke of the enemy and no longer meant the Germans. Simultaneously, the is which had kept us afloat for six years was suficring » healthy recession. The dons, artists and inteliectuals who had swollen the ranks of S.LS. and engin- tered its greatest triumphs, returved with the rest of us to cultivate their old professions und enjoy the fruits of the peact they had won. As a society, we had resolutely lived without ideo- logical doubt for six years; we were constipated with slogans, archaisms and compromise. Everything pointed to a gentle, pragmatic form of inter- national Socialism. Instead, we were called upon to march in a new crusade. Inevitably, S.LS. was to recruit against the trend, If the prevailing political sentiment of the nation was vaguely Leftist, the posture and tradi- tion of S.LS. ~ as well as its present role — were frankly snti-Bolshevist. it 34 was in the world of capital that SLS. bad its traditional beart, in the preser- vation of trade routes, in the defence of foreign investment and colonial wealth; in the protection of ‘ordered sociery’. In re-discovering this rradi- tog, and bringing to it the new tecb- niques and brutalities it aad learned in the war, S.LS. was hardly likely to win the bearts of the iniellectuals whose wit had oace saved it from disband- ment. The Attlee administration was content to leave ‘the lesderthip as ir mood. The cloch-cap social democrat, fax more than the capitalist, is the sworn enemy of Communism. There is no sign, im the account given here, that Artice tried to put « Socialist spin on our intelligence efor. Let SiS. expand, be seems to have ssid; in the Right are united. o apparent it became that ‘we were neither emotionally por ecootinically capable of taking sides in the “Cold War and retaining our former world position, s0 we placed ever greater trast in the magic formulae end hocus- pocus of the spy world. When the King is dying, the charlatans cash in. oot think that S.LS. can be blamed for euploying Philby in the fire place; it is nothing short of incredible thar chey kept him on after 1944. By 1945 at the latest the recruizmem policy of S.LS. had pur loyaige dbgve intaiti- The fact of tinued employment aftet this date is that SS. qlité cleatiy identified olees with loyalty. Yer this too illustrates seother point that must be made sbout the collective mentality of professional Intelligence men: they think they know the score. Wholly taken up with the modalities of national self-advance- ment, they are naturally incapeble of comprehending ideology, however it was born, as a serious motivating force in people of their own class. This absence of ideological fum is called common sense, and is the first “quali- fication of recruitment. ‘The belief went further: SPS. would not merely defend Me tradi- tonal decencies of our society; it would embody them. Within its own walls, its clubs and country Houses, in whispered luncheons with it secular contacts, it would enshrine the mysti- cal catity of a vanishing England. Here at feast, whatever went on in the big world outside, England's flower would be cherished. “The Empire may be crumbling; but within our secret Mite, the cleantimbed tradition of English power would survive, We believe in nothing but ourselves.” was the kind of music Rim 3}->