Conclusion

In Britain generally, the witch-hunt was more demoralizing than damaging. But bad enough in the worst period, from 1948 to 1956 … it was a bad time.¹

—Eric Hobsbawm

The year 1956 has long been used as a demarcation line for British history. The event most cited for this reasoning is the Suez fiasco, which signalled the end of the UK as a great power.² Yet it was also a transitional year for domestic anti-communism. It was when the consensus over the issue solidified. In 1956, the public report of the Security Conference of Privy Counsellors was delivered – officially endorsing the anti-communist governmental vetting procedures. That year also saw the production of the top-secret MI5 assessment on ‘communism in trade unions’ which reassessed the threat industrial communism posed to the nation. Both of these official documents reaffirmed the course set by previous governments in tackling communism, and recommended that the course should not alter.

Indeed, the Cold War did not introduce anti-communism to the UK; it had been an element in the political culture of the country since the Russian Revolution and the formation of the Comintern. Yet it reached its pinnacle during the immediate postwar era when collective governmental anxiety over a communist threat took hold. If taken as a whole, it is shown to be all-encompassing. The main objective of numerous organisational procedures, domestic policies and independent administrative decisions enacted by the government was to safeguard the nation from supposed infiltration or subversion. Although UK policymakers and politicians sought to differentiate their internal anti-communist initiatives from the ‘witch-hunt hysteria’ occurring in the US, they were often keen to conduct – albeit less publicly – hunts for the ‘red witch’ as well. The key components which halted the expansion of British governmental anti-communist activities were fear of a negative public reaction, the limited resources of the security services and a parliamentary system which restricted independent and autonomous committees. The individuals occupying the corridors of Whitehall and the rooms of 10 Downing Street regarded communism and its followers as an existential threat to the future not only of the nation but also the whole of Western civilisation. What they feared the most was the indistinct, hidden and insidious nature of the communist danger.

Unlike previous foes, the international facets of classical Marxism made the ‘enemy’ unclear. Harking back to the time of religious conflict over the secession of the English monarchy, the communist enemy perceivably held loyalty higher than king or country. The nature of battling an ideologically driven opponent left members of the Communist Party open to accusations of treachery just for having such an affiliation. In the early Cold War, suspicion came from association with the theory of Marx. This effectively meant that any communist employed by the government, wishing to seek entrance into the country, active in the trade unions, peacefully protesting or even elected into parliament could be a possible traitor or probable security risk. The British establishment, once they viewed communism ‘as a threat to Western civilisation’, considered that the barbarians were not just at the city gates but had infiltrated the palace halls.³ Searches and purges of communists and fellow travellers were conducted in the government, the legislative branch and even private corporations. The Cold War brought a dimension of uncertainty into the minds of those governing the UK, which translated into tangible anti-communist actions that directly focused on the citizens of the nation and which, through their planning and execution, show how sectors of the UK government considered a segment of their own population as effectively an ‘enemy within’.

The unified nature of the British state allowed for a comprehensive and controlled anti-communist response.⁴ This permitted the government to implement counterinsurgency measures clandestinely and present their overt anti-communist efforts to the public in a more positive light. This was unlike the American experience, where the decentralised US state made it less able to coordinate methods across various jurisdictions and allowed (one might say, even invited) alternative political and governmental reactions to the supposed ‘red menace’. A prominent example is the activities of the US legislative branch in which HUAC and Joseph McCarthy were constitutionally permitted to engage in aggressive and intrusive investigations which ultimately harmed the anti-communist cause.⁵ These types of public and damaging ‘witch hunts’ were not permitted in the UK because of the inability of MPs such as Waldron Smithers to independently set up such committees within the Westminster framework. Hence, unlike in the US, no backlash to these non-existent ‘star-chambers’ ever occurred. The unified governmental structure also allowed it to implement practices homogeneously over the entire country without little to no oversight. Additional restrictive measures did not take the form of new legislation, since this would result in a public Commons debate in which the government would have to justify itself. The British state wanted nothing close to transparency or public accountability. It sought to hide significant portions of its anti-communist campaign.

Uniformity among the public at large also contributed to how the red hunt in the UK played out differently to its counterpart in the US. By and large, Britons held a negative attitude to the publicised excesses in the US over the communist issue. As schoolchildren, all were taught the cautionary and villainous tale of Titus Oates – an Anglican priest who caused the death of innocents with his phoney charges of popish plots and internal dangers to the security of the realm during the seventeenth century. The similarities with McCarthy did not go unnoticed. As Lord Vansittart – as well as other politicians such as Attlee and Churchill – discovered, such highhanded and ruthless tactics were unpalatable to the public. Publicised excesses would not take wing in the UK, as conventional wisdom has stated since: the tolerance-loving people would not allow it. However, what they did accept, without opposition, was the ‘othering’ of fellow countrymen. The demonisation of communists solely for their political beliefs was commonplace by the press, trade union officials and most leading statesmen. Also, during the early Cold War period, there grew a tendency for increased governmental surveillance and restrictions on civil liberties. These went routinely unchecked and hardly warranted any public opposition. Although officially implemented as a policy to detect potential espionage agents, the purge procedures worked as a proscription of legal political beliefs and lawfully protected associations between individuals. As the collective political establishment routinely harassed British subjects and constructed the founding apparatuses of the modern security state, few batted an eye or counselled a word of warning. Most notably absent was opposition from the British left. Those on the Labour left were themselves purged from the party as ‘crypto-communists’ or, like Nye Bevan and John Strachey, supported the centre-right Labour leadership in forming an anti-communist consensus. Indeed, organised opposition did not form against increased state powers until 1956 with the formation of the Campaign for Limitation of Secret Police Powers.

Conversely, in the US, throughout the darkest days of McCarthyism, robust public and political opposition existed. Americans of the period inherited a long and cherished tradition of citizens invoking and protecting their inherent rights secured in the nation’s constitution and its bill of rights. Like their forefathers, the opponents of McCarthyism vociferously did the same.⁶ Because of the lack of a written constitution, Britons who wished to protest their government’s increased repressive measures had no document to rally behind. In fact, as British subjects (not citizens), they did not even have a national constitutional guarantee of their rights, as Americans did. While lacking a written constitution, what the UK did possess, which the US lacked, was a more reinforced sense of social cohesiveness especially of a political nature. As in the US, a politicisation of the communist issue occurred in the nation. However, despite Conservative attempts, it did not successfully transpire into a partisan issue. Thus, no major political party sought to halt the increased anti-communism of the period.

Two highly significant determinants that caused this divergence between the British and American red scares were the differing demographics and class structures of the nations. Indeed, any analysis of British politics of the period would be woefully incomplete without tackling the issue of class in society. Not surprisingly, it played a crucial role regarding how anti-communism manifested contrarily between the US and UK. As all the evidence indicates, the real communist threat to the Atlantic world came not from the unwashed masses in the streets but the well-manicured hands in, or close to, the corridors of power. For advantageous motives, a segment of American society readily suspected this to be the truth. In the UK, because of a different societal make-up, the opposite reaction occurred. The discovery of numerous esteemed scientists (Alan Nunn May, Klaus Fuchs and Bruno Pontecorvo) as atomic spies, and the eventual disappearance of two highly placed diplomats (Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean), did little to alter the situation. While all this transpired, Attlee lamented the threat posed by communist waiters, the Conservative Central Office investigated employees of Blackwell Booksellers and MI5 spent its time and public funds on determining whether individuals were members of a legal political party (CPGB). No doubt simultaneously, such trivial investigations were conducted in the US. But a shifting demographic political make-up and a growing disdain for elitism in the US created a conducive atmosphere for hunting traitors in the ruling class as well. Status anxiety and the drive by second- and third-generation immigrants striving for proof of their Americanism contributed to the popularity of seeking out a certain type of traitor in ruling circles.⁷ Indeed, certain academics have pushed this supposition as far as to state it functioned as the central catalyst of the American red scare. Historian Peter Viereck called McCarthyism ‘the revenge of noses that for twenty years of fancy parties were pressed against the outside window pane’.⁸

In the US, the waning social-economic dominance of WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) combined with the rising political power of more recently arrived ethnic minorities (Irish, Italians, German and other European nationalities) caused societal upheaval. By the late 1940s, with the zeitgeist of the nation firmly rooted in a Cold War mentality, to differentiate themselves, these status-conscious groups found it necessary to radicalise their anti-communist standpoints in order to make the case that they were as American as the WASP elite, or even more so.⁹ For this reason, Joseph McCarthy – an Irish Catholic and son of immigrants – came to prominence as the champion of these interest groups, and this is also why his less than gentle style did not instinctually bother these now newly minted patriots.¹⁰ Naturally wary of the WASP establishment, the McCarthyites were delighted to be handed by circumstance a cudgel to beat their enemies. Their leader and figurehead said it best:

It has not been the less fortunate or members of minority groups who have been selling this nation out, but rather those who have had all the benefits that the wealthiest nation on earth has had to offer – the finest homes, the finest college education, and the finest jobs in government we can give … the bright young men who are born with silver spoons in their mouths are the ones who have been the worst.¹¹

In the UK, the situation was starkly different. Unlike in the US where large demographic changes and populism were ever present in its history, in the UK these factors were absent. Although Labour’s victory in the 1945 General Election did cause a transformation of the economic policies of the country, the political and cultural norms stayed relatively unaffected. In the UK there was not a burgeoning immigrant base seeking to integrate into the status quo or disrupt the class system. Thus critics, such as Marc Silverston, were completely correct in stating that, unlike in the US, there was an ‘absence of a comparable British grassroots anti-communist lobby’ due to a lack of ‘a more populist and participatory ethos’ in British politics, ‘as well as to the structural elements of the respective political systems’. In addition, he was accurate in stating that ‘in the end, McCarthyism simply could not take root in British soil’.¹² Indeed, what transpired in the UK was a different form of anti-communist political repression. From a purely utilitarian standpoint, it was perhaps less effective, since it did not seek to disrupt or thoroughly investigate the upper class.

The times saw a British government at war with a specific political ideology and willing to use a variety of measures to either disrupt or eradicate its influence inside the nation. When looking for the instigators of this witch hunt, one is likely first to consider the loudest voices that thundered against communism. As Chapter 1 illustrates, the likes of Lord Vansittart and Waldron Smithers could be labelled the prime suspects. They were the quintessential red-baiters. Like frightened children pointing to monsters in the dark, they saw communists everywhere. Their language was McCarthyite. Yet their demagoguery failed to garner them the public support McCarthy was able to achieve. Nor did this type of outlandish anti-communism gain much traction; Vansittartism did not take hold. The unitary form of government halted rogue politicians such as Vansittart and Smithers from setting up formal hearings such as were conducted by HUAC and McCarthy’s senatorial committee. Although they were the brashest and most extreme, they were not alone. When mainstream leaders of the British establishment deemed it politically expedient to smear an opponent as a communist, then they routinely made such a charge.

As Paul Addison and a number of other historians have attested, the end of the Second World War brought a postwar consensus in British politics.¹³ A key pillar of this new era of cooperation was the acceptance and spread of the ideology of anti-communism throughout the nation’s institutions. While conventional wisdom has judged the emergence of this postwar consensus as a positive development, the restrictive and punitive measures to combat communism enacted by Labour under Clement Attlee and continued by the successive Conservative governments of Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden call into question the universal approval of this cooperation. Collaboration against domestic communism gestated outwards from the core belief asserted by Ernest Bevin, in which he categorised the spread of communism as an existential threat not only to the UK but also to the whole of Western civilisation. The consensus functioned by seeking to minimise and eliminate communism inside the nation. As this study demonstrates, a myriad of methods were employed. One recurring theme which needs emphasising is that the legal status of the CPGB and the civil liberties of individual communists did not factor significantly in the implementation of anti-communist measures. The ways and means used to achieve this goal were often hidden and concealed from the public. Moreover, this was for a good reason, since oftentimes they mirrored the conspiratorial techniques which the opponents of communists claimed their foe employed.

As the British red hunt played out, an ever-present spectre influenced its direction: pressures originating across the ocean from the US. US impact on UK domestic anti-communism came in conflicting components. First was the US government, which sought to pull the UK towards a more anti-communist stance. Here, security matters, especially dealing with atomic secrets, were the fundamental concern of the US. Attlee’s decision in implementing the civil service purge and introducing stringent vetting procedures can be directly linked to a bid seeking to satisfy Washington, DC. In the larger arena of British politics, the US played a key role as well. Through clandestine efforts involving pressure groups such as Common Cause and the MRA, and through exerting influence inside British trade unions, the US promoted a harsher anti-communist agenda on the whole of British society.

A significant factor affecting the formation of the government’s counterinsurgency strategies and methods used by political institutions in combating communism in the UK was the acceptance of these measures by the general public. Coverage of the American anti-communist response played a key role. The British populace took a dim view of the situation across the Atlantic as McCarthyism took hold in the US. The fear that the witch hunts of the new world would arise in the old permeated throughout the political discourse in the British Isles. During the period, certain politicians and segments of the popular press routinely labelled government ministers, MPs and even prime ministers as acting in McCarthyite fashion or attempting to institute McCarthyism inside the borders of the UK. Cognisance of this criticism led policymakers in Whitehall and non-state actors to push a more clandestine anti-communist agenda. A direct result of this state of affairs was a secretive and less overt form of anti-communism when it involved repressive and interventionist methods. Hence, grand and sweeping laws introduced of an anti-communistic nature were not needed. However, the absence of new statutes should not be misconstrued as a sign of tolerance towards communism. The governmental make-up of the UK allowed the prime minister and his cabinet to enact policies with little oversight from the legislative and especially the judicial branches of government.¹⁴ In contrast to the US, where the battles over governmental anti-communist measures were publicly fought in the courts and the chambers of congress, the political process of the UK permitted the nation’s domestic anti-communist activities to remain in the shadows.