Chapter 4

Pressure groups: agents of influence

The ‘battle’ of Albert Hall

Unlike the extreme right during the interwar era, opposition to communism throughout the postwar period was more political than a violent affair. A battle of Cable Street-like event never marked the robust rise of private anti-communist efforts. The closest that one can find is an odd confrontation which took place in and around Albert Hall during the summer of 1947. In June, the BHL elected to hold a rally to demand action from the Labour government. Founded three years prior by Irene Lovelock, ‘a simple housewife’, as she loved to profess, the league objectives were ‘to free the housewife from the controls which hamper her efficiency in running the home’. The BHL stressed ‘the women in the home, the nation’s real chancellors of the exchequer and ministers of ways and means, should have a voice’.⁷ The BHL began as a protest against continued food rationing but quickly turned into a right-wing pressure group, which at its height could boast a membership of 100,000. A decidedly free-market and pro-capitalist enterprise, the BHL fought for less governmental regulation and against future nationalisation.

Although it claimed to be a non-party organisation, it is safe to classify the BHL as an anti-socialist body. While its ranks of supporters did include Labour Party members, the group’s leadership was decidedly pro-Conservative. In 1948, Dorothy Crisp, the group’s newly appointed chairwoman, covertly lobbied the head of the Conservative Party, Lord Woolton, to provide funding for the league. She even bizarrely offered to resign her chairwomanship of the league and afterwards send messages to each member asking them to join the Conservative Party. It appeared Crisp saw the BHL as her own personal vehicle, which she sought to use for entry into Conservative circles and eventually the House of Commons.⁸ Wisely, Woolton refused both of Crisp’s requests, reminding her they ‘would be a repudiation of the fact that you and I have both stated publicly that there never has been any connection between the British Housewives’ League and the Conservative Party’.⁹ Woolton’s words were technically true. However, in early 1948 the Conservative Central Office considered an amalgamation of the BHL with the Women’s United Front, a similar organisation that Lord Woolton aided in its creation as a Conservative front.¹⁰ The plan did not go forward.

Although Crisp’s request for funds, and her offer of turning its membership into an auxiliary for the Conservatives, never reached the public, Labour politicians still considered the BHL as a hostile organisation. Manny Shinwell labelled its members ‘maid servants of the Tory party’ and Stanford Cripps called the league ‘a political instrument encouraged and misdirected by our opponents’.¹¹ Regardless of describing itself as a non-partisan group, clandestine connections with the Conservative Party were not its only violation of such a pledge: it regularly and publicly attacked the CPGB and its guiding tenets.

Although not the league’s sole raison d’être, it still openly functioned as an anti-communist organisation. In 1947, a resolution passed by the group’s Kettering branch un-equivalently stated, ‘We the members of the British Housewives’ League view with exceedingly grave concern the present communistic activities and we will whenever possible help to stamp it out.’¹² Speaking at league rallies were the likes of Waldron Smithers, who talked on such themes as ‘materialism of communism and false prophets’.¹³ Attacks on perceived communist encroachment often appeared in the organisation’s newsletter Housewives Today. ‘Everyone who understands anything at all knows that communism is the enemy, we are fighting communism’, read one article in its May/June 1948 edition. It recommended ‘a purge from the school staffs’ of all CPGB members so ‘our children could be saved from the subversive influence of communism in schools’.¹⁴ Despite its attempts to associate with the Conservatives, this did not stop the league from attacking members of the party. A Housewives Today news piece appearing in its January 1951 edition, titled ‘Our Stand against Communism, Mr. Eden ought to know better’, condemned a remark by Anthony Eden for supposedly subscribing to a communist viewpoint. An article in the same issue claimed that both parties were permitting ‘the undermining of the family’ by quasi-communist notions which were ‘having a most pernicious effect’ on society.¹⁵

It is doubtful the BHL shifted the opinions of many regarding communism. As Marjorie Maxse rightfully asserted, BHL, and a number of similar groups, preached almost solely to the converted. However, the league did make headlines when it engaged in the aforementioned ‘battle’ of Albert Hall. On 6 June 1947, over 7,000 of its supporters packed into the hall for a demonstration demanding the resignation of Labour ministers John Strachey and Manny Shinwell. The attendees’ energy levels were piqued since many were still feeling the rush of storming Westminster Palace to demonstrate against the two ministers only a day before.¹⁶ Not surprisingly, the selection of the night’s speakers again tested the group’s claim of being non-partisan. Alongside Dorothy Crisp, the principal speaker was Conservative frontbencher David Maxwell Fyfe.¹⁷

Shortly after the rally got underway, over 100 shouting protestors jumped up, unfurling banners denouncing the league and its attacks against the government. From the upper balconies of the hall, CPGB members showered down on the audience buckets of water and hundreds of leaflets titled: ‘Don’t be misled by the Housewives League’. The flyers depicted three well-dressed members of the BHL addressing a street meeting. The caption of the image stated: ‘Never mind the label on the packet. The stuff inside is a Tory.’¹⁸ Chaos erupted with rally attendees physically engaging with the communist demonstrators; the scene became one of women tearing hair and kicking. A male protestor attempted to charge the stage, but a number from the female audience halted his advance by attacking him with their umbrellas.¹⁹ The brawl soon spilled onto the streets. Mounted police and many patrolmen were dispatched to break up the disturbance.²⁰ Despite their best efforts, sporadic fighting continued into the night. The evening ended with the battered umbrella man formally arrested and several CPGB members escorted away in police cars.²¹

The league did its best to garner as much publicity as possible from the fracas. A regional organiser of the group claimed that far from harming the BHL, the communist attack ‘put it on the map’.²² A BHL member stated she never considered Marxism as a threat, but after the trouble at Albert Hall, her eyes were open to the ‘communist menace’.²³ Lovelock used the incident as a selling point for the BHL, claiming it proved the group was fostering a more anti-communist nation:

For at least a year now we have given warning of the danger of communism. It was obvious, in the efforts made at the Albert Hall last June to wreck our meeting, that we were feared as a bulwark against this insidious threat to individual freedom. At first, when we said we stood against communism we were told it was a bogey with no power in England. Now we find many to support our view. It has been the same with much we are fighting for. Things we have said for months are trotted out by others as new and original. But we are making an impression, even if we do not get the credit.²⁴

The Albert Hall scuffle proved the high watermark of the BHL. No more battles with the CPGB erupted. Over the following years, it steadily haemorrhaged members and with them political relevance. Only a few months after attempting to hand over the BHL to the Conservative Party, Dorothy Crisp resigned as chairwoman in a cloud of scandal. The BHL continued to exist until 2000, but by 1951 it had lost most of its relevance in the public sphere.

The League of Empire Loyalists: an assault from the right

Unlike the Labour Party, the Conservatives never found it necessary to purge their ranks of supposed crypto-communists. Yet they were plagued instead with attempts by far-right extremists seeking to infiltrate their membership. In almost all instances these extremists promoted their cause under the guise of anti-communism. The most disruptive threat from the right came in the form of an organisation founded in 1954, the LEL. This reactionary pressure group was the brainchild of a former leading member of the British Union of Fascists named A.K. Chesterton – cousin of the famed Catholic apologist G.K. Chesterton.²⁵

The members of the LEL rallied around the banner of preserving the British Empire. Yet historian Mark Pitchford argued the fear of encroaching communism both domestically and throughout the colonies was the key factor in its emergence.²⁶ It proved popular within several demographics such as returning expatriates, colonial veterans and retired military officers.²⁷ Although Chesterton and a number in the leadership held past associations with Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, the LEL appealed to traditional right-wingers. Its brand of politics was more reactionary than revolutionary.²⁸ By 1955, the LEL started garnering support, to some degree, inside the Conservative Party. Many in the party found this worrisome. From its initial emergence, the Central Office considered the LEL a menace to party operations. They were not proven wrong. Through a steady campaign of literature and public speeches, the LEL criticised the Conservative leadership for both betraying the empire and appeasing communists. Not satisfied only to denounce the Conservatives through its printed literature, the group routinely personally protested its leadership. A constant irritation for Conservative functions and meetings during the period were hecklers of the LEL. From 1955–6, these centred on the most obvious of choices, Anthony Eden. As the leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister, the group considered him the man most responsible for the rotting of the empire. The LEL heckled Eden when he spoke in public and often protested at 10 Downing Street.²⁹ The most infamous incident occurred during a state visit by Soviet leaders Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev. LEL members confronted Eden as he met the two foreign dignitaries inside Victoria Station. The LEL supporters shouted that Eden had just shaken hands with murderers and the Soviet leaders had come to make the British people into slaves.³⁰ It resulted in the arrest of two LEL officials and caused a minor international stir.³¹

Seemingly oblivious to the anger they generated, the LEL resented their hostile treatment by Conservatives. An LEL member demanded to know from Quintin Hogg why his party tolerated ‘treachery in high places by communists and secret communists and fellow-travellers’ but ejected from its meetings and events the ‘Loyal Britishers’ of the LEL.³² Its author found no sympathy from its recipient; in his memoirs, Quintin Hogg described the LEL as ‘the sworn enemies’ of the Conservative Party.³³

Setting the LEL apart from other British anti-communist organisations of the period was its decidedly anti-American standpoint. Such a stance is discernible through the editorial content of the group’s newsletter Candour. In the editions of Candour, the organisation argued that US anti-imperialism, working in conjunction with Soviet communism, was stripping the empire away from the British people:

Apart from driving the communists out of South Korea, United States policy has done nothing to discourage, and much to encourage, growth of the communist empire, whereas its attack on the British world system has been sustained and amazingly successful. If we are to survive it is imperative that our people be made to understand this unpalatable but undeniable truth.³⁴

Such anti-American diatribes rose to a fever pitch in 1956 but did not necessarily hurt the group’s recruitment efforts. In the disastrous aftermath of the Suez crisis – caused in part by threatened US intercession against the UK – a number of Conservative members, now mistrustful and wary of American foreign policy, were more respectful towards the league.

The LEL’s Americaphobic stance did not prohibit it from having glaring similarities with a US organisation founded only four years later. The conspiratorial theories and reactionary politics of the LEL were analogous to those of the US John Birch Society (JBS). Like the LEL did to the Conservatives, the JBS situated itself on the right of the Republican Party and campaigned that communistic-controlled international interests sought to destroy the US through covert methods. In a striking parallel to the LEL, the reactionary JBS caused much more consternation for the right than the left that it detested. The JBS made wild claims such as accusing President Dwight Eisenhower and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren of being communist agents. Another commonality the two shared was an aggressive hostility towards the UN. The leadership and members of both the JBS and LEL campaigned for their respective nations to withdraw forthwith from it. In 1955, only minutes after Minister of Defence Selwyn Lloyd officiated over the raising and flying of the UN flag in Trafalgar Square, LEL members tore it down while chanting ‘Britain first’ and ‘stand by the Empire’.³⁵ The LEL as well took a firm stance against UK integration within Europe, calling any move towards continental federation an attempt to enact communism. Chesterton labelled the creation of a common market as ‘an avowedly communist concept’ and nothing other than slightly ‘disguised European communist states’.³⁶

The LEL continued to harass the Conservatives long after the resignation of their primary target, Anthony Eden. If anything, rancour increased due to the decolonisation policies of Eden’s successor, Harold Macmillan. To put it mildly, the LEL membership were not sympathetic towards talks of ‘Winds of Change’. The group’s apotheosis of publicity-seeking antics occurred when it invaded the annual Conservative Party conference at Blackpool in late October 1958.³⁷ In what The Times termed ‘excessive violence amounting to brutality’, the Conservatives ejected LEL members as they interrupted the conference.³⁸ The violent methods used by the Conservatives to expel the league garnered extensive coverage in the press. By the early 1960s, the LEL’s escapades were less frequent; its membership dropped dramatically (from a height of 3,000 to around 300 in 1961) and the group struggled with financial troubles.³⁹ In 1967, the remnants of the LEL disbanded to help form the National Front.⁴⁰

Common Cause – an American front?

Common Cause was first and foremost an American invention. It formed in 1947 solely as a vehicle to combat domestic communism. It crossed the Atlantic when its leader, Natalie Payne, appealed to Unionist MP Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton to undertake the formation of a similar organisation in the UK. Intrigued by the prospect, he travelled to the US on a fact-finding mission to look into the group. Accompanying him was a man named C.A. Smith, who held the reputation of being somewhat of a maverick in and around the British ultra-left. Smith, and not Douglas-Hamilton, would arise as the driving figure behind Common Cause (UK). A Labour man during the 1920s, Smith stood unsuccessfully as a parliamentary candidate for the party in the 1924 and 1929 elections. By the 1930s, he had deserted Labour and converted to Trotskyism. In 1933, he met with Leon Trotsky and soon afterwards vocally supported the Fourth International. The rising influence of the Trotskyist movement inside of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in the late 1930s allowed Smith to take over the leadership of the party in 1939. Smith’s support of the war effort caused him to break with the ILP. Shortly afterwards he joined the Common Wealth Party, where he took up the post of its research officer. As with the ILP, Smith soon took over the leadership of the Common Wealth Party. Again, Smith’s position as Common Wealth Party chairman proved short-lived. The onset of increased international tensions with the Soviet Union turned Smith into a fervent anti-communist. After failing to steer the Common Wealth Party in this political direction, he resigned from the party in 1948.⁴¹

In November 1951 Smith and Douglas-Hamilton, accompanied by John Brown (former general secretary of the Iron and Steels Trades Confirmation), contacted prospective members for a British Common Cause. Shortly afterwards in January 1952, Common Cause (UK) began to function. The trio had been successful in their recruitment efforts and had found many influential supporters for the new enterprise. The organisation released a list of its governing council. It included well-known persons from both the Conservative and Labour Parties, alongside several prominent trade union leaders. The inclusion of John Brown, by Douglas-Hamilton and Smith, helps explain a large amount of trade union support early on. Prior to his participation in Common Cause, Brown had formed a short-lived but similar organisation, directed primarily at combating communism in trade unions. It went by the colourful name of Freedom First and had closely worked with the IRD to spread anti-communist propaganda.⁴² The creation of Common Cause took up the mantle in the fight from Freedom First. It also brought about a diminishing domestic role of another anti-communist group called the British League for European Freedom (BLEF). The duchess of Atoll, a founding member of BLEF and a Common Cause supporter, stated with the start of Common Cause the BLEF put less emphasis on ‘purely political work’.⁴³ The BLEF and its sister organisation the Scottish League for European Freedom were both heavily involved with MI6-sponsored exile operations behind the Iron Curtain. Although the two groups did function inside the UK, their domestic anti-communist activities were quite limited.

Like its American counterpart, Common Cause (UK) declared its main aim was ‘to expose the Communist party as a treacherous conspiracy serving a foreign totalitarian dictatorship whose global imperialism threatens freedom everywhere’.⁴⁴ As with other anti-communist pressure groups of the period, Common Cause advertised itself as a non-partisan organisation which welcomed members from any political party – except, of course, the CPGB. In a letter to the Labour Party chairman, C.A. Smith emphasised this non-partisan nature by declaring, ‘I myself [am] a lifelong unswerving socialist.’⁴⁵ However, Smith’s questionable affiliations did not put the Conservative Party off the organisation. The concern which arose in the Central Office was the prospect that Labour ‘will use it [Common Cause] as an instrument to show how anti-communist they are and that it will eventually become a socialist organization on an anti-communist basis’.⁴⁶ This worry lessened. A later Central Office report on the group classified it as ‘a genuine all-party anti-communist organization’ but still cautioned ‘it is too early to say whether they are working on the right lines’. The memo advised that ‘too many’ similar organisations had ‘preached only to the converted’.⁴⁷ In the early days directly after Common Cause announced its formation, what struck the Central Office as odd was the source of the organisation’s funding. It reported that ‘a great many dollars are coming from America’ or, put more simply, ‘there are Yankee dollars behind it’. Conservative sources reported that this US-funded British pressure group intended ‘to spend a considerable number of dollars over the years in this country with the purpose of combating communism’.⁴⁸

The British government considered the US connection to Common Cause unsettling, and potentially troublesome. Sources at the FO reported Natalie Paine – the chief American promoter for the creation of a British Common Cause – claimed the group had the direct backing of the US State Department and the approval of her close friend Walter Bedell Smith, the director of the CIA. They also stated she privately confessed that the real objective for Common Cause in the UK had more to do with influencing US politics than fighting domestic communism in the UK. Paine believed ‘there is a considerable body of opinion in the US which considers that the UK is only lukewarm in its anti-communist attitude’. Hence, the creation of a well-funded and highly publicised group like Common Cause (UK) would cut ‘the ground from under the feet of Americans who retain isolationist prejudices, and also … weaken the campaign already existing there to reduce American financial help to the UK on the grounds that the UK is using such help in riotous living and not in combating communism’.⁴⁹ The British embassy in Washington, DC, supported Paine’s objective. It supported her efforts ‘to help restore the belief of Americans that we are playing our full part in the struggle for Western values against communism’.⁵⁰ Opinions on the benefits of Common Cause were not all as favourable back at Whitehall. In November 1951, Maggie Hamilton of the Information Policy Department wrote to a journalist who had frequent contact with Paine. She warned, ‘I think you know that we are officially more than doubtful of the wisdom of anything like a public campaign against communism in this country.’ In a confidential letter to the British Information Services, Hamilton reported the FO sought to damage the group. ‘We have been occupied here in trying to keep the infant Common Cause England on the rails’, she explained; ‘in other words to prevent them launching out on anything in the nature of an anti-communist campaign.’⁵¹ Like Hamilton, many in the British government feared that the Americans wished to export (sanctioned by the CIA and the State Department or not) Common Cause not only to improve US public opinion towards the UK but also to spread the McCarthyite anti-communist reaction across the Atlantic.

Her superior, John Peck, the department head of the IRD, overruled Hamilton’s fears about the potential dangers of Common Cause. Peck, a dedicated cold warrior in the same vein as IRD’s creator Christopher Mayhew, considered the outside organisation as both a worthy ally and a potential tool in the fight against the domestic red enemy – an ally who deserved his department’s support. Even before the official launch of Common Cause, on 3 December 1951 Peck wrote to Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton to offer suggestions on the organisation’s anti-communist efforts. He recommended it should focus its attacks on the Soviet-sponsored peace campaign: ‘We feel, therefore, that it would be a tactical error to concentrate on straight communist propaganda and activities if a large part of the real damage is being done by the peace campaigners.’⁵² Such advice and assistance to the group was not an isolated incident. On another occasion, C.A. Smith’s secretary contacted the IRD requesting sensitive information to strengthen its ‘press battles’ supporting West German rearmament, which the IRD then provided.⁵³

While Common Cause garnered some limited success from gaining ‘unofficial’ support from IRD, this did not set the group apart from other anti-communist organisations. Many of the larger pressure groups of the same ilk were also provided a helping hand by the IRD – such as the MRA and the Economic League. Common Cause’s basic operations and structural make-up mirrored those of its competitors. It set up a national structure with local branches – in 1954 there were fourteen scattered through England, Scotland and Wales. Like similar pressure groups, its principal function was the production and distribution of anti-communist literature to ‘inform’ the public of the encroaching ‘red menace’. It appeared Common Cause also covertly worked against communist campaigns in officer elections of the Amalgamated Engineering Union.⁵⁴

What differentiated Common Cause from other anti-communist pressure groups were two major themes it emphasised. One was its non-partisan nature; while others also claimed this, none did so more than Common Cause. Common Cause claimed it had a better reputation with the working class than the Economic League, which it privately labelled as appearing reactionary.⁵⁵ The second theme was an almost unwaveringly pro-American stance. As an anti-communist force in the UK, Common Cause remained one of the few entities which refused to condemn the excesses of the red scare raging across the US. Even as the Army–McCarthy hearings turned millions of Americans against McCarthyism, the organisation did not openly refute McCarthyite methods:

For several months there has been a steady trickle of requests from readers of this Bulletin that Common Cause should define its attitude towards McCarthyism. Hitherto we have declined to do so for the reason that much of the frenzied denunciation of the Wisconsin Senator is motivated by the conscious desire to create ill-will between Britain and America. Since the preservation of freedom in the world depends on Anglo-American friendship and co-operation, Common Cause will not assist in playing the game of hate America party-liners.⁵⁶

Although the British Common Cause publicly proclaimed itself as having no ties to its US namesake, its unfalteringly Americanophile stance calls this into question. The only other body which refused to take a harsh line towards McCarthy was the CIA-backed Congress of Cultural Freedom and its magazine Encounter.⁵⁷ An article appearing in Encounter, written by Tosco Fyvel, a founder of the magazine, argued the rise of McCarthy was merely a fad and nothing to worry about. He favourably compared it to the British domestic sentiment after the First World War.⁵⁸ The fact the only other anti-communist entity in the UK that openly defended McCarthy was Common Cause gives some credence to the supposition that American interests directed it. Also, if Paine’s assertions of having the tacit backing of the CIA and the State Department were accurate, then it takes little guesswork to determine who ultimately defined Common Cause’s politics. Regardless of whether it had links to the US government or not, the organisation sought tirelessly to defend American anti-communism, even when this proved wildly unpopular.

In terms of ingratiating itself with the two main political parties in its own country, Common Cause’s efforts proved less effective. In 1954, a motion at the Labour Party conference to declare Common Cause a proscribed organisation was put forward. In response, Smith – as general secretary – wrote to Morgan Phillips, defending the group. Smith claimed Common Cause was a target of communist ‘smear-campaigns’ which ‘included we are financed by American interests and are supported by the British government – all of which are lies’.⁵⁹ As the records prove, this all turned out to be true. Although the Conservatives never attempted to dissociate officially from Common Cause, the party questioned the effectiveness of the group’s anti-communist efforts. In 1956, the Central Office assessed that the group had done a certain amount of work ‘within the trade unions by means of propaganda and week-end schools but it is difficult to gauge what success has been achieved’.⁶⁰ It recommended that the Conservatives focus on other more worthwhile endeavours than contributing their time and money towards Common Cause.

By 1953, the IRD began covert discussions on the future of Common Cause. The talks centred on a proposed unofficial ‘takeover’ of the group by the government. The FO determined that, as a domestic anti-communist propaganda engine, the organisation could potentially ‘serve a useful purpose’. However, for this takeover of Common Cause to transpire, a change of leadership needed to occur. Writing on the situation, IRD department head Peck stated:

The danger is that as at present constituted ‘Common Cause’ is inclined to employ slightly hysterical methods and its leading spirit Dr C. A. Smith is a fanatic who sometimes comes dangerously near to advocating witch hunts and also appears to be vain and indiscreet … It looks therefore as if we should discreetly work for the building up of an effective executive committee to run ‘Common Cause’.⁶¹

Peck’s point on the fanatical mindset of Smith was evident when reading the material produced by the group. The front page of one of the group’s newsletters gives a typical example:

Democratic rights are for those who accept democratic procedure. Freedom is for those who respect the freedom of others … So let us treat Stalinist traitors in 1952 as we treated Hitlerite traitors in 1940 and remove them from positions in which their treachery could do most harm. This is not a witch-hunt. It would better termed a rat-hunt – save that this is unfair to the quadrupeds.⁶²

The man Peck recommended to officiate the oust of Smith was Major Tufton Beamish, a reactionary Conservative MP who sat on the advisory council of the group. It was recommended that Beamish ‘should be pressed to co-operate in finding suitable members who could take effective control of Common Cause’. Beamish rejected the FO request and excused himself from such a role, claiming his duties as an MP left him little time for such an operation. Disagreeing with Peck, Anthony Nutting saw little use for Common Cause. Exclaiming about such groups, Nutting said, ‘I doubt very much that they do any serious good.’ He added, ‘It’s always the same story – a bunch of enthusiasm from some well-meaning but not very stable do-gooders and then a gradual run-down, leading to collapse.’⁶³ Peck remained firm; despite his misgivings towards Smith, he maintained that Common Cause filled ‘large gaps in the anti-communist organization particularly in the field of general education’.⁶⁴

Eventually, Nutting’s assessment proved correct. In 1956, Common Cause fell apart and split into rival factions. Its trade union members helped found a new group called Industrial Research and Information Services Ltd (IRIS) to continue the struggle against communistic influence in unions.⁶⁵ Evidence suggests that the IRD succeeded in having effective control over IRIS, but disavowed the remnants of the Common Cause organisation with which it broke.⁶⁶ In 1962 the Committee on Communism (Home) later classified IRIS as the ‘most useful of the anti-communist organizations, at least from the point of view of the government’.⁶⁷ Although Common Cause continued to exist, by the mid-1960s the government considered it an unusable organisation for its anti-communist purposes:

Common Cause is a useless, counter-productive, right-wing and irresponsible organization. It suffers from too ample an income, apparently derived from business circles, for which it has no real use … its progress has been beset by internal schisms and feuds … by 1959 there was discernible neo-Fascist element inside the organization.⁶⁸

In 1967, when questioned if IRD ever had dealings with Common Cause, departmental officials lied and claimed it did not.⁶⁹

Moral Rearmament or ruin

Of all the anti-communist organisations operating in the UK during the postwar period, one of the most successful was the MRA. In terms of funding, logistics and political influence, the group far surpassed its contemporaries. From 1945 and throughout the next decade it proved one of the most effective anti-communist organisations inside the UK. A self-proclaimed religious movement, it did not spread a specific dogma or an underlying sacred belief, though it constantly sought converts to its cause. The MRA claimed it proselytised a simple choice to the world: either live or govern by the principles mandated by the MRA or become enslaved by the tyranny of godless communism. It preached that the struggle between East and West boiled down to a global plebiscite in which the only correct vote was the adoption of MRA moralities or else Marxist communism conquered. In December 1954, one of the groups’ most ardent devotees articulated this point in the House of Commons. ‘The moral standards of Moral Rearmament are something above religion’, stated Labour MP John McGovern. He continued, ‘People can worship God in their own way and yet can unite around the moral and spiritual forces provided by Moral Rearmament and … present a solid phalanx throughout the world against the communist creed.’ McGovern’s anti-communism did not result from his conversion to the MRA. As early as 1937, he railed against communist atrocities during the Spanish Civil War, and in 1939 he memorably denounced the ‘bloodstained handshake of Stalin and Ribbentrop’.⁷⁰ Yet by 1954, McGovern had come to believe that no alternative existed to halt the ‘red menace’ except the MRA: ‘In the struggle which is taking place in the world Moral Rearmament has been the one unifying force presented as a superior ideology … I believe that if we cannot unite the population on that basis the world is lost and godless communism will take over country after country, step by step.’⁷¹

The founder of the MRA, and its leader until his death in 1961, was Frank Buchman. Born in Pennsylvania in 1878, Buchman came from a Swiss family which immigrated to the US in the 1700s.⁷² Having completed his education, and after undertaking various international study tours, he took up jobs both pastoring and running a home for runaways. In 1918, he undertook a mission trip to China under the auspices of Hartford College. In 1921, Buchman was invited to Oxford, where he soon found friends and followers, especially among the undergraduates attracted by his puritanical outlook. He made use of the experience he had gained as a missionary to gather followers to his teachings. At Oxford, one of the methods he employed was holding house parties as a means of converting people to his spiritual beliefs.

Soon his meetings turned into a formal organisation called the Oxford Group. Buchman laid down its goals in four points known as the ‘Four Absolutes’. He defined these tenets as absolute unselfishness, absolute honesty, absolute purity and absolute love on the personal and national plane.⁷³ Adherents adopting these standards were instructed to take active and conscious steps to ensure that their daily lives were lived entirely in accordance with them. The standard method adopted by his followers was to receive divine guidance by having a quiet time each morning, during which the follower wrote down thoughts on the action to be taken during the day. Buchman maintained that all problems, whether personal or political, were solvable if an individual examined themselves and acknowledged their own moral corruption and dealt with it in an honest fashion. The group, which changed its name to Moral Rearmament in 1938, extended this programme to cover personal, social, industrial, national and supranational fields. It sought, in the words, of Buchman to solve personal, national and international problems by bringing men and women everywhere back to the basic principle of a Christian life, thus enhancing all of their primary loyalties.⁷⁴ According to Buchman, the MRA was not an organisation, sect, society or denomination. He claimed it had no membership lists, subscriptions, badges or rules. And he proudly boasted that a large number of persons, members of all the recognised Christian churches throughout the world, representing almost every creed, political party, class and colour, were following in its teachings. According to the founder, its aim was a new social order under the control of the spirit of God, making for better human relationships, for unselfish cooperation, for cleaner business, for cleaner politics, and for the elimination of political, industrial and racial antagonism. In essence, the group preached that the moral redemption of individuals would bring about a spiritual reconstruction of nations.

Buchman sought a wider field of followers than that of mere university students. He targeted the influential and the wealthy. Through Buchman’s efforts, the MRA became composed of politicians, industrialists and trade unionists. When international tensions increased during the late 1930s, the MRA’s popularity skyrocketed in both the US and UK. The movement promoted the belief that if only world leaders adopted and governed through the philosophy of the four absolutes, peace could be maintained. In the UK, a book published by the group entitled The Battle for Peace (1938) sold over half a million copies. In 1939, 240 members of the House of Commons and 25 members of the House of Lords signed messages of greetings and support for the movement.⁷⁵ Throughout the US, the group gained powerful allies such as Harry S. Truman.⁷⁶ By the end of the 1930s, the MRA had expanded its followers to include those residing in over fifty countries. The advent of the Second World War brought the MRA to the attention of the British government.⁷⁷ Both MI5 and MI6 investigated reported links between the group and Nazi Germany. This examination included contacting the FBI for information the American government held concerning the movement.⁷⁸ The Home Office requested a police report on the group as well. What concerned British intelligence about the MRA was its anti-war message but also remarks made by Buchman regarding Hitler. As well as a devoted Christian, Buchman was also a devout anti-communist. So much so that he viewed it as the ultimate evil and thus a much greater danger than fascism. Buchman would later regret saying, in an August 1936 interview with the New York World-Telegram:

I thank heavens for a man like Adolf Hitler who built a front line defence against the anti-Christ of communism. My barber in London told me Hitler saved Europe from communism. That’s how he felt. Of course, I don’t condone everything the Nazis do. Anti-Semitism? Bad, naturally. I suppose Hitler sees a Karl Marx in every Jew.⁷⁹

In the spring of 1941, MI5 reported that ‘there is no doubt that Buchman was on terms of friendship with certain of the Nazis leaders’ and stated it is ‘certainly curious’ that the MRA had ‘perhaps unconsciously been of assistance to the German cause’.⁸⁰ Nevertheless, after a thorough investigation, British intelligence determined that the MRA had no ties with Nazi Germany and was not seeking to impede the war effort in any manner.⁸¹

The postwar era revitalised the MRA. It brought about a revolutionary shift of its priorities and stated goals. Also, through the generous donations of wealthy supporters, the MRA began to expand its political activities and its outreach programmes. In 1946, Frank Buchman moved its headquarters to Caux, a small town in Switzerland, which his followers essentially purchased. But more importantly, the onset of the Cold War saw the movement’s emphasis transform from focusing on individual lives to a much grander narrative. As Buchman stressed, the MRA now provided an ideology for the salvation of the world against the West’s greatest menace, communism.⁸² Buchman directed MRA chapters to actively attempt to influence and alter the political agendas and civil societies of nations in which they were located. He directed them to push an anti-communist agenda. The two countries where this campaign garnered the most success in Europe was in West Germany and the UK. West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer stood as one of the movement’s most prominent allies. In 1952, Adenauer awarded Buchman his nation’s highest honour – the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

According to the movement’s numerous critics, the methods the MRA employed were anything but subtle. Through its growing propaganda machine, the MRA put forth a dichotomy of how the future of the world would progress. Simply put, the nations of the world could either embrace the principles of Moral Rearmament or fall to the tyranny of godless communism.⁸³ Buchman and his followers preached that democracy as an ideology was too vapid and empty for effectively overcoming the strength of Marxist totalitarianism. In 1950, MRA supporter and former wartime director of British naval intelligence Admiral J.H. Godfrey gave a ringing endorsement of this theory:

We have an urgent need to develop a moral ideology which can effectively answer communism on a world front. We made Fuchs a British subject and gave him a passport, but omitted to provide him with a moral background and he remained a communist at heart … I believe that Caux offers the following things at this critical moment in history: An ideology strong enough to change communists and make them fight with at least equal vigour for a democratic way of life.⁸⁴

The MRA preached that the world needed something more to fill the void inside the common man in order to stop communism. This void-filling ideology was the central teaching of the MRA – not the allure of capitalism. The MRA propaganda postulated that the conflict between communism and capitalism amounted to a struggle between two forms of materialism. It argued that tired, old capitalistic materialism could not win against the much more aggressive and revolutionary communist ideology. Only the ‘revolutionary ideology’ of Moral Rearmament, which is superior, can build the coming new world. Although officially non-denominational, the movement addressed its message in American fundamentalist rhetoric. In regards to communist countries, it stated:

The nations that have forgotten this struggle, have forgotten God, and lost their freedom. Some have remembered this struggle and discovered the master of Evil … An extreme of evil must be met with an extreme of good; a fanatical following of evil by a passionate purist of good. This is why democracy fails time after time in the world today. Only a passion can cure passion.⁸⁵

The dissemination of this message was the primary aim of the MRA. Working with professional advertising agencies and with the assistance of trained journalists such as Peter Howard, its propaganda wing in the UK soon rivalled those of both the Conservative and Labour Parties. Howard, who eventually succeeded Buchman as leader of the MRA after the latter’s death in 1961, joined the MRA in the 1930s. While working as a reporter for the Daily Express, the newspaper’s owner Lord Beaverbrook ordered him to investigate Buchman and his movement. Howard soon fell in with Buchman and worked as the head of the MRA in the UK, as well as becoming its chief propagandist. Like his leader, Howard was a committed anti-communist who sincerely believed communism explicitly threatened the British way of life.⁸⁶ In 1951, he warned Buchman that the UK ‘is sick unto death with problems’ and thus ‘the infiltration of communism into the heart and head of Britain is truly astonishing’.⁸⁷ Seeking to curb this ‘red menace’, the MRA distributed anti-communist literature but also sought more inventive ways to spread its gossip. One of these was the use of performance art. The movement produced and staged plays – and even created feature-length films – in a bid to generate interest for the movement within the larger public.⁸⁸ None other than Peter Howard authored a substantial portion of these pro-MRA plays.⁸⁹ On numerous occasions, the MRA used these plays in order to specifically bolster its influence inside one segment of the population, the trade union movement. One of its most successful plays was entitled The Forgotten Factor – the group later produced an American film version of it. The plot dealt with industrial unrest and how the principles of the MRA could solve this over those of the communists. The group held showings of The Forgotten Factor in coal mining and manufacturing regions. It invited trade union officials and prominent members of the local communities to the play’s numerous premieres. Often a spokesperson for the group forestalled the play in order to give a speech promoting the movement’s message. At the 1946 premiere of The Forgotten Factor performance at Belfast Opera House, Peter Howard was on hand. Before the film, he compared a democratic state without an underlining ideology to ‘a crab without a shell – tempting bait and easy meat for the evil birds of totalitarianism’.⁹⁰ Praising the play when it showed in his city, the Lord Mayor of Cardiff said: ‘Western civilisation is on the verge of a great crisis, and this play holds the unsuspected solution.’⁹¹ Making sure to advertise its positive reaction, the MRA produced literature reprinting praise for the film by a number of trade unionists.

As early as 1947, it began targeting its efforts to converting prominent union officials in the coal mining industry. As an MRA report stated, ‘the question of what men and ideals will control 700,000 British miners’ was of prime importance to the organisation.⁹² The MRA promised an end of all industrial ills if trade unions only adopted its principles and its leaders converted to the movement. It pledged through the guiding hand of MRA leadership industry production would increase, teamwork between management and workers would foster and, most importantly, the subversive forces of communism would wither and die. The MRA ran their own candidates for union offices held by communists.⁹³ It also paid the expenses of trade union leaders to visit Caux, where the group then attempted to ‘convert’ these individuals to the movement. Often these conversion methods succeeded. By 1955, the organisation had over 150 full-time agents working to convert trade union members. Through concerted attempts, the MRA sought first to infiltrate and then seize control of the trade union movement. This was the exact same strategy, a number of its critics pointed out, used by the MRA’s greatest foe, the communists. In a 1951 memorandum on the group, a government official stated the MRA ‘sometimes seems almost to have learnt lessons from the communist technique by ways in which by persistent and steady pressure it gets interested persons into the net’.⁹⁴

Both MI5 and the FO’s postwar sentiments towards the MRA were mixed. In particular, the debate broke down to the moral question of means justifying ends. In a number of department correspondences and letters, British officials both praised its anti-communist efforts but in the same breath questioned its methods. Director of MI5 Percy Sillitoe wrote in 1951 that the leadership of the MRA ‘have always been strongly opposed to communism’; however, the movement exaggerated its successes in converting communists to its cause.⁹⁵ A later MI5 memo to a security liaison officer emphasised that the MRA ‘may be doing useful work in this field’ against communism. However, it stressed the movement ‘must be regarded with a certain amount of caution partly because some of its supporters are of somewhat unstable character and because its methods of obtaining support for the movement are not always entirely above board’.⁹⁶ In 1955 a confidential report from the British embassy in Bern to the head of the security department at the FO described a visit by FO diplomats to the movement’s headquarters in Caux. The account stated:

On the whole I think we can claim to have extricated ourselves from the MRA spider’s-web spun from Caux without undue hurt … this personal experience of the methods of the MRA headquarters staff, as it were, leaves, however, a somewhat nasty taste in the mouth and evokes the conclusion that whatever one might think of the purposes of MRA their methods are quite unworthy of respect. It may, of course, be argued that one cannot fight communism with kid gloves and so MRA is obliged to play the Kremlin at its own game (e.g. the ends justify the means). However plausible such a plea may be, this recent example of its application is scarcely calculated to make friends. Having thus been warned of the unscrupulous tactics of these MRA chaps we propose in the future to give them a wide berth.⁹⁷

As the above account demonstrates, by the mid-1950s facets of the British government viewed the MRA as a liability and if not quite dangerous, then a menacing organisation. The Conservative Central Office essentially assessed the MRA along the same lines. The party applauded its successful efforts fighting communism but also did its best not to closely associate with the organisation. But not everyone agreed with this lukewarm stance towards such a potentially powerful ally. In a report to the Conservative Party chairman, the stalwartly anti-communist Marjorie Maxse sought to change the party’s attitude towards the group:

The effect that MRA is having on communists cannot be denied. We have received several reports on this. Luckily for us, MRA have decided that communism is the complete antithesis to their message and are therefore concentrating on infiltration into communist ranks, in some cases with remarkable success … The gist of this memorandum is that in view of the fight of MRA against communism, should we take a more sympathetic attitude towards it? There is no question of finance as they have all the money they need, but we have consistently kept them off with the proverbial barge-pole.⁹⁸

In a separate memo, Maxse argued that her party should not do anything to impede the movement, stating, ‘It is so obviously anti-communist in its action that I feel it can be safely left to its own momentum.’⁹⁹ Her colleagues at the Central Office did not hold her zeal for the movement. One labelled it ‘as something of a snob version of the Salvation Army.’¹⁰⁰ W.M. Ridwell, the party’s publicity organiser, conceded that the MRA did hold a ‘number of well-known Conservatives among its active supporters’, but still argued ‘no useful purpose could be served by our giving official blessing to the movement’.¹⁰¹ ‘Buchman is largely a charlatan’, one employee wrote, but callously added, ‘one cannot help thinking an organization which fights communism to this extent cannot be a harmful influence … it would be a pity if it got into socialist hands’.¹⁰² A handwritten note he scrawled on a memo sent by Maxse concerning the MRA reveals Conservative Party chairman Lord Woolton’s opinion towards the group. It simply stated, ‘I distrust the people who run this movement.’¹⁰³ The leadership of the MRA had mutual feelings towards the Conservative chairman. Peter Howard, in a letter to Buchman, branded Woolton a man of ‘questionable calibre’.¹⁰⁴

Many interested and influential parties agreed with Woolton’s assessment of the MRA. As the movement grew in size and influence, it garnered a larger number of opponents from a various range of affiliations. The loudest and earliest critic of the movement was future Labour Party chairman Tom Driberg. Early in his career as a journalist, Driberg wrote negatively on the activities of both Frank Buchman and his movement.¹⁰⁵ A career transition to electoral politics by Driberg did not stop him from continuing this endeavour. Like his Labour colleague John McGovern, Driberg loudly voiced his opinion of the MRA – though the two men vehemently disagreed over the supposed merits of the organisation. In 1946, Driberg urged the Home Office to prohibit Buchman from visiting the UK and to deport him if he set foot on British soil. Later in life, he authored a book on the movement entitled The Mystery of Moral Re-armament (1964). In it, he criticised the movement thoroughly and in depth. He surmised the MRA worked as an American organisation which sought to promote the goals of its wealthy financial backers. Driberg argued that its anti-communist strategy

had been adopted because MRA’s rich backers – particularly the American industrialists who have contributed so generously to its funds – had seen in it a convenient instrument for anti-communist propaganda, or another ‘voice of America’ in the Cold War. That would indeed be to confuse means with ends, to use religion and God in a totally impermissible way, and to reduce what had begun, in intention, as a humane and ‘life-changing’ force to a mere quasi-spiritual McCarthyism.¹⁰⁶

In September 1953 in a bid to counter the MRA’s efforts towards trade unions, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) published a critical report on the organisation. It accused the movement of anti-trade union activities, which went as far as to label its efforts as attempts to form ‘yellow trade unions’. Mirroring Driberg’s later criticism, the report questioned both where the MRA received its financial support and how these unidentified sources likely directed the objectives of the organisation. The ICFTU also labelled Buchman’s authoritarian control over the group as a concern: ‘His is not the path of a democratic movement, but that of a dictatorship.’ The report concluded that the group’s motives were ‘hardly aimed at the welfare of mankind in general’ and argued that the ‘MRA should be prevented from encroaching upon trade union preserves’.¹⁰⁷ In November 1956, continued interference of the MRA in industrial matters caused the ICFTU executive board to issue a statement advising trade unionists to sever all connections with the group. Arthur Deakin, the leader of the TGWU, stated his union was ‘completely opposed to any interference’ by the MRA ‘in our industrial organization’. Driberg wrote that: ‘These sharp rebuffs by the ICFTU must be among the severest set-backs that MRA has received.’ In this case, obviously, the MRA could not indulge in its usual McCarthyite smear and allege that anybody who criticised it was a communist or ‘communist-inspired’.¹⁰⁸

In 1955 the Church of England publicly criticised the MRA through a report issued by the Social and Industrial Council of the Church Assembly. The Times quoted it as calling the movement ‘psychologically dangerous and gravely defective in its social thinking’.¹⁰⁹ Critiquing its strong anti-communism, the church body wrote that the MRA ‘as an ideological warfare against communism is a naïve and irresponsible response, and fails to measure up to the magnitude of the communist challenge to mankind’.¹¹⁰ In its most damning of statements on the movement, the council’s report determined it a form of Christian heresy.¹¹¹ Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher found much at fault with the MRA as well. Prior to the issuing of the council’s report, the MRA applied to Fisher, as he put it in his own words, the ‘strongest possible pressure upon me and upon other people to prevent any report being published’.¹¹² Privately Fisher described its methods as ‘those of American evangelism and high business’. He considered the movement dishonest, saying, ‘it gets money from people by what I can only describe as very nearly false pretences’.¹¹³ ‘I think some of their methods are unhealthy’, Fisher wrote in January 1955, ‘and their dominance by Frank Buchman with money and publicity is dangerous.’¹¹⁴ The archbishop also doubted the threat the MRA claimed to pose against the communist ideology. Replying to pro-MRA correspondence, Fisher wrote:

You say that communists regard MRA as their most active and dangerous enemies: that requires corrections: the communists undoubtedly regard the Roman Catholic Church as their most active and dangerous enemies … I have never heard any communist criticism of MRA. It does not reach me.¹¹⁵

Speaking ‘brutally’, Fisher concluded that the MRA did not ‘offer any alternative at all’ in fighting against red ideology, since ‘only the Christian religion does that’, and as ‘MRA had really ceased to be in any tangible form a Christian movement’, he assessed it as a useless tool in the fight against communism.¹¹⁶ Fisher was quite correct in his ‘criticism’ of the MRA not remaining a Christian movement. By then, it had begun seeking allies and converts from all world faiths, except the faith of Marxist-Leninism. Disagreeing with the Church of England and the archbishop of Canterbury was Pope Pius XII. In 1950, he christened the movement ‘a good thing. We must, above all, give the world peace. We must also abolish communism by giving those people something better and the Church and Moral Rearmament can do this. I give Moral Rearmament my blessing’.¹¹⁷

Communists remained another obvious critic of the movement. As early as 1941 the CPGB had opened a file on the group.¹¹⁸ It labelled the organisation as ‘an Anglo-American plot’ supported by business interests from both sides of the Atlantic.¹¹⁹ Although the CPGB was publicly dismissive of the group, MI5 reported in 1950 the party was concerned over the success the MRA was having in converting some of its members. Thus, the CPGB ‘is considering placing an agent in the movement to expose the methods by which it works and so nullify its effect’.¹²⁰ For its part, Pravda termed the MRA a ‘pro-fascist international organization … which is headed by the outspoken Hitlerite, Frank Buchman’.¹²¹

Routinely countering the onslaught of negative criticism of the group were prominent and influential allies of the MRA. Just as its criticism came from various societal factions – political, governmental, religious and union movements – a number of its defenders arose from these as well. However, during the early Cold War period the MRA could rely on the consistent support of individuals from one group more than any other. Ironically, this particular group also housed its most dogged opponent, Tom Driberg. After Driberg forcefully criticised the MRA during a Commons speech in 1946, fifty Labour MPs wrote an open letter ‘dissociating’ themselves from their colleague’s words. ‘Our present wish is to place on record our belief in the principles which MRA stand’, the letter stated. It went on to say, ‘We believe that civilisation will be submerged in a welter of materialism unless the spirit of MRA … is understood and practised in all walks of life’.¹²² Labour MP Arthur Lewis went so far as to label Driberg’s attacks ‘a smear campaign’.¹²³ In response to the ICFTU criticisms of the MRA, six Labour MPs issued a statement voicing their continued support for the movement.¹²⁴

During times of crisis, the MRA relied on Labour Party members to work as a de facto parliamentary lobby for the group. Some in Labour even wished for it fully to align with the movement. As early as 1946, four Labour MPs issued a joint statement, arguing if their party only embraced the ‘force and philosophy’ of the MRA, ‘it would give Labour a new spiritual dynamic and bring unity where there is danger of discord’.¹²⁵ In 1955, a member of the party executive, James Haworth, said the only way to ‘restore the lost soul’ of Labour was the adoption of ‘the four absolute standards of MRA’.¹²⁶ By far the loudest voice for Moral Rearmament, inside or outside the Labour Party, during the period was John McGovern. Like some trade unionists who visited the MRA headquarters in Caux, McGovern came back from an August 1954 visit a ‘converted man’ and, in his own words, with ‘the beginning of a new life’.¹²⁷ In the period from 1955 to 1959, McGovern travelled over 150,000 miles and addressed more than 125,000 people across the globe endorsing the MRA.¹²⁸ Despite his zeal, McGovern projected little influence over his colleagues or the government. This was not the case with another Labour MP. Prior to McGovern’s conversion, the MRA already had a key ally in the form of a person situated in a strategic position within the Attlee government. Evidence shows that the founder of the IRD, Christopher Mayhew, was both a personal friend of Peter Howard and an ardent advocate of the MRA.

Like McGovern, Mayhew transformed into a vocal supporter of the MRA following time spent at its facilities in Caux. After visiting, he wrote of being ‘tremendously impressed with Moral Rearmament’ and, despite it not having ‘got a very good name in this country [the UK]’, he ‘hoped and believed the movement will thrive’.¹²⁹ Mayhew’s conversion to supporting the MRA appeared to be one the group wholeheartedly orchestrated. On two separate occasions, in 1949, Labour MP Arthur Lewis and prominent artist Lawson Wood, both MRA devotees, met with Mayhew to discuss the group and praise its accomplishments.¹³⁰

After his visit, Mayhew sought to influence the government towards a more sympathetic and accepting stance regarding the group. He also went to great lengths to aid the movement, often in ways which bordered, if not entirely crossed into, the illicit. ‘You cannot call me a member of the party’, Mayhew relayed to his close friend Peter Howard regarding his connection with the MRA, ‘but I am an enthusiastic fellow-traveller.’ However, he assured Howard, ‘If it would help for me to go on the public record how highly I regard the work of Moral Rearmament, I shall be very glad to do so.’¹³¹ Public or not, he worked to promote the cause. Mayhew requested all British ambassadors in Europe to give reports on Moral Rearmament, for what ends Mayhew did not state. When HM Treasury and the FO advised against an MRA application for funds, Mayhew lobbied his superior, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, to support the application, since the MRA would ‘forward the purposes of our foreign policy’.¹³² He also secretly warned Howard that Bevin’s main source of information on the MRA came from ‘our old buddy, Tom D[riberg]’.¹³³ Indeed, Mayhew held no love for Driberg personally. He called him a ‘friend of [Guy] Burgess’ and ‘a fellow traveller’.¹³⁴ According to Howard, Mayhew sought to counteract Driberg, sell the movement to Bevin and even ‘tackle the prime minister on the subject of Moral Rearmament’. He gleefully reported to Buchman that Mayhew planned to lobby the BBC to produce a favourable television programme on the movement. Howard emphasised, ‘These are Mayhew’s own convictions and it will be interesting to see how far he gets with them.’¹³⁵ With respect to the BBC, Mayhew did not get far. The BBC denied Mayhew’s request in airing a show on the group, justifying it by calling the MRA ‘highly controversial’ and stating ‘in spite of the most continued and varied attempts we have never managed to persuade anybody from MRA to discuss or argue it’. ‘The group seemed to be prepared to put out propaganda’, the BBC response to Mayhew noted, ‘but not to discuss.’¹³⁶

Mayhew sought to assist the MRA without foreseeable reservations. After the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean, while the nation collectively wondered about the two missing diplomats, Howard, and by extension Buchman, were given confidential information regarding the situation by Mayhew. Howard informed Buchman that Mayhew ‘told us that the Foreign Office have no news of any kind whatever about where the disappearing diplomats have gone to, but added in confidence that another Foreign Office official here has just had his passport withdrawn by the intelligence authorities’. Such leakage of governmental information suggests Mayhew violated the Official Secrets Act. Howard excitedly recounted in summer 1951 that Mayhew ‘is known now as an MRA spokesman right through the Labour Party’. He added, ‘he talks about us wherever he goes’.¹³⁷

Although the MRA had substantial influence inside the Labour Party, this did not prohibit the organisation from attempting to cultivate prominent Conservative politicians as well. The most committed Conservative in the Commons to the group was Hamilton Kerr, but Howard aimed for higher allies within the party.¹³⁸ Two that Howard personally targeted were David Maxwell Fyfe and Quintin Hogg. The MRA’s chief propagandist reported that despite Maxwell Fyfe’s history as a ‘Russophile’, the Conservative ‘now sees the communist danger’ but still ‘lacks an ideological answer’. ‘God I know he is meant to be a spokesman and statesman of the new [MRA] order’, Howard maintained, ‘and we are going to fight for him.’¹³⁹ Howard also met with Hogg, who he wrote ‘understands ideology better than many of the British Conservatives’. Hogg’s views of the ‘red menace’ were those that the MRA also campaigned on. ‘The fight to answer communism overrides every other issue in the world today’, Hogg told a delighted Howard. He added, ‘Until we understand that they are as devoted to their faith as monks we shall never be able to bring the answer.’¹⁴⁰ Evidence is unclear if Hogg and Maxwell Fyfe promoted the MRA’s agenda in such a manner as Mayhew, but it appears highly doubtful.

Enthusiasm for the MRA waned after Buchman’s death in 1961. Its influence in British politics diminished and its recruitment numbers stalled. These trends escalated and continued after Buchman’s handpicked successor Peter Howard died suddenly only four years later. Its former allies, like Christopher Mayhew and Konrad Adenauer, jumped off the movement’s bandwagon. Driberg quoted Mayhew admitting having been an MRA ‘fellow-traveller’ but protested that he ‘always resisted’ complete involvement with the group and had ‘cooled off’ on the movement by the 1960s.¹⁴¹

Economic League: private McCarthyism

Historian John Jenks characterised the Economic League as the ‘grand-daddy of anti-communist publicists’ inside the UK.¹⁴² The label is quite fitting, since the founding of the group even preceded the creation of its chief enemy, CPGB, by a year. But classifying the league’s activities as only publicists merely covers one-half of the organisation’s efforts. While the well-financed group did generate a large and steady amount of literature attacking communism – as well as socialism and trade unionism – it also functioned as a private intelligence group for corporate and business interests. Its focus on intelligence gathering makes sense when reviewing the group leadership, which had direct links within British intelligence. The founding fathers of the league were William Reginald Hall and John Baker White. Hall was the head of naval intelligence from 1914 until 1919. Baker White was the league’s director-general (1926–39) until taking a post with MI6 in 1940. Also, ‘MI5’s greatest spymaster’ – as his biographer labelled him – Maxwell Knight worked for the league in his earlier days.¹⁴³

The Economic League proudly advertised its ‘educational efforts’ about the benefits of the market economy and the ‘evils’ of the Marxist ideology. In 1938, it boasted in the past sixteen months the league had held 12,128 meetings, which addressed close to 2 million people. In the same time period, it distributed over 4.5 million leaflets. Baker White maintained these efforts were necessary just to keep the red threat at bay. Without a ‘continual counter-campaign’, Baker White argued, ‘the menace of communism and its power to do harm would be far greater’. He also claimed that the ‘influence of the Communist Party must not be gauged by its numerical strength’, since even if the number of CPGB members was small, one had to remember ‘each and every member of the party is a danger to the state’.¹⁴⁴

Unlike its propaganda efforts, the organisation sought to keep its intelligence-gathering activities from the public at large. During the 1930s, the Economic League monitored and infiltrated left-wing political groups, which it considered ‘dangerous subversives’. The league then compiled reports on these groups’ members and distributed them to companies. One of its initial targets dealt with persons involved with the Young Communist League (YCL). The league in one year alone issued 150 such reports on YCL activists.¹⁴⁵ Throughout the decade, the Economic League collected hundreds of files on ‘subversive individuals’ which documented their movements and personal activities. Its enquiries into subversive activities led to trouble in 1937. Allegations appeared in the press that Manchester police allowed members of the Economic League access to its files on communists. The Daily Worker got hold of league correspondence which stated as much and greatly publicised it, to the embarrassment of the police and the league. After an investigation, the chief constable stated no police information was given to the league. However, he did concede that the police did ‘somewhat indiscreetly’ tell the group about materials it compiled on certain individuals. The incident caused the Home Office to recommend other departments to ‘take care’ when dealing with the league and warned ‘it had some trouble with the organization’.¹⁴⁶

Despite the negative press attention that the Manchester affair garnered, by the 1940s MI5 held a favourable opinion of the group. Answering a 1942 Home Office request for information on the league, MI5 called it ‘quite a reputable anti-communist (and anti-fascist) [organisation] whose chief function seems to be to act as a kind of private intelligence agency to collect and publish information about communist and other extremist activities’.¹⁴⁷ MI5 did state they had some misgivings about the group:

It may perhaps be said that the league does on occasions fail to distinguish sufficiently sharply the real communist or agitator from the man who is merely a good trade unionist and generally anxious to improve the working conditions of his fellow men. This failure may, of course, result in the penalisation and ultimate embitterment of useful members of the community. Within these limits the league is regarded as a perfectly reputable concern.¹⁴⁸

The Cold War brought a renewed vigour to the Economic League’s battle against communism. By 1950, the group reported its activities were far exceeding its interwar output.¹⁴⁹ In the summer of that year, the league distributed 700,000 copies of a single leaflet denouncing the Soviet-backed peace campaign. They employed fifty-seven full-time and twenty-six part-time speakers. Only weeks after the invasion of Korea the group had seventy-eight letters denouncing communism and supporting the war published in seventy different newspapers.¹⁵⁰ Its estimated 1951 income amounted to £142,000.¹⁵¹ Like similar anti-communist groups, it advertised itself as a non-partisan organisation. Through its propaganda, it argued that it was the only British group fighting full-time against the ‘red menace’:

The three main political parties, Conservative, Labour and Liberal, are vehemently opposed to communism by the very nature of their constitutions and programmes, but their first concern must be with parliamentary affairs. The Economic League, supported by industry, has the countering of communism as its major task. It exposes the aims and plans of the communists, and counteracts their propaganda by economic education and giving the facts.¹⁵²

Some Conservatives gravitated towards supporting the league because of its right-wing nature. Like Labour’s support for Moral Rearmament, the league counted many in the Conservative Party as powerful allies. Both league bigwigs Hall and White represented the Conservative Party in the House of Commons. Unsurprisingly, the group held the enthusiastic support of Waldron Smithers, who also sat on its central council.¹⁵³ As a league member, Smithers personally recommended those he knew to support the organisation. In 1939, Smithers joined a delegation of Conservative 1922 Committee members who met with Chancellor of the Exchequer John Simon. Smithers used the opportunity to thrust on Simon ‘several voluminous documents’ dealing with ‘the danger of the menace of communism and communistic tendencies’.¹⁵⁴ Included in these documents was a litany of Economic League literature. This trend of Conservative support for the league continued into the early Cold War. In 1954, again Smithers sought to promote the league, writing to the chief publicity officer of the Conservative Party that he was impressed by the ‘remarkable record of work by the Economic League’. He urged the party to ‘cooperate with them as much as possible’.¹⁵⁵ In 1949, the league held an ‘anti-communist staff course’ at Caxton Hall in Westminster. On the itinerary were speakers that included the former military attaché in Moscow, alongside Conservative MPs Christopher Hollis (the brother of MI5 agent Roger Hollis, who later headed the agency) and Tufton Beamish, who was involved with Common Cause as well.¹⁵⁶ Alongside individual Conservatives, the party’s Central Office also gave tangible support to the league’s anti-communist efforts. A 1951 Central Office memo from the speakers’ department stated the party held no objection to Economic League members speaking at Conservative meetings. It even suggested to local branches the group’s ‘popular talks’ on ‘full employment and communism’.¹⁵⁷ In 1950, Marjorie Maxse requested all of the party’s Central Office agents to assist in an Economic League survey gauging communist support in English universities.¹⁵⁸ A year earlier, speaking on the party’s position, she wrote in definite terms: ‘We work very closely with the Economic League.’¹⁵⁹

Throughout the early Cold War period, the league sought to coordinate its anti-communist efforts with the British government. It largely failed in these attempts. On at least one occasion the IRD did pass on confidential data to the league, but overall the covert FO department did not hold it in high esteem.¹⁶⁰ The IRD considered the league a ‘reactionary outfit’, which tended to regard ‘social democracy as a step in the direction of communism and a pretty long step at that’. In its estimation, the league preached ‘only to the converted, and its efforts in the anti-communist field may be reckoned, I think to do us possibly more damage than good’. Since the league was considerably disfavoured in trade unions, it did not reach a prime target audience of the IRD: ‘its activities are anathema to those circles about whom we may feel concerned in this country’.¹⁶¹

On 13 February 1951, the director of the Economic League, Robert Hoare, met with Home Office Permanent Secretary Frank Newsam to offer direct assistance of the organisation to the government. Hoare asked Newsam whether the league could be of help to the Home Office in fighting the activities of the Communist Party and whether Newsam could express on behalf of the government the best line of anti-communist propaganda for it to take. Hoare told Newsam that he personally thought the league could take a much harsher line towards communism. Newsam said that the ‘government could not be in any way associated with the activities of the league’ and it would ‘be quite inappropriate for the government to express any opinion as to the line which the propaganda of the league should take’. Although not the news Hoare sought, not all of Newsam’s reply was negative. The permanent secretary did say the league was ‘perfectly entitled to attack communism vigorously’ and, in lieu of official support, Newsam proposed an informal arrangement between the league and the Home Office,¹⁶² one in which the league would keep providing information on communist activities and individuals through documents issued by the group directly to the Home Office. Newsam’s restrained response to Hoare met the approval of Home Secretary James Chuter Ede. Familiar with the Economic League’s history, the Labourite Ede called it ‘an active anti-socialist organization’.¹⁶³

An unsigned Economic League memo dated 2 August 1950 that is located in the Home Office files proposed that in case of a future crisis or war, the British government should elevate the private organisation to an official anti-communist body of the state. The private and confidential document entitled ‘The Economic League and the Present Crisis’ stated:

It would be difficult to confine even the 40,000 known members of the [Communist] Party (quite apart from the crypto-communists) to the Isle of Man or elsewhere. It is reasonable, therefore, to assume that the government would have to establish, at the outbreak of any crisis, a strong political warfare organization which would conduct its activities not only externally against the enemy overseas, but also internally to counter the work of enemy agents in our midst. The work of the Economic League already fits into this picture. It is obvious that it should become part of the overall plan of the government’s political warfare organization. No existing body is better equipped to fight communism on the home front than the Economic League.¹⁶⁴

The plan explained the government should exempt league members from any future draft requirements and grant the group ‘preferential treatment in regard to the obtaining of transport, petrol, and paper for leaflets and other publications’. Throughout the crisis, the league would ‘work in close co-operation with the directorate of the ministry responsible for all matters connected with communism’.¹⁶⁵ How the Home Office viewed this offer from the league remains a mystery, since no response or commentary appears with the unsigned memo. MI5’s postwar view of the Economic League is somewhat murky, though it appeared deputy director Guy Liddell had friendly relations with the league or at least some of its leadership. He labelled Hoare ‘intelligence’ and thought he ‘held a fairly balanced view of communist activity in this country’.¹⁶⁶ Liddell also speculated Hoare had ongoing dealings with the IRD.

The Economic League continued its efforts far beyond the 1950s, disseminating its anti-communist propaganda. It also continued its investigations on behalf of private businesses into the political affiliations of their workers. Acting as a form of privatised McCarthyism, such controversial practices endured decades after the 1950s. At the time of its closure in 1993, the Economic League still held thousands of files on left-wing individuals, including large numbers of serving Labour MPs. A file even existed on future prime minister Gordon Brown.¹⁶⁷ Despite this revelation and its controversial legacy, the closing of the Economic League did not halt others from continuing to employ the practices it first began. Its immediate successor, Corporate Asset Protection and Risk Management (CAPRiM), and other comparable businesses such as The Consulting Association (TCA), continued to gather information and place on blacklists individuals who were deemed far left.¹⁶⁸ This form of political discrimination and unofficial vetting only stopped after an act of parliament declared such practices illegal in 1999.

Conclusion

As this chapter has shown, anti-communist pressure groups were both numerous and influential during the early Cold War period. Regrettably, this is a key aspect of British domestic Cold War politics that has been left unexamined. While academic works have focused on both the BHL and the LEL, these writings, which have been cited throughout this chapter, do not explore the fact that a key function of these two organisations was combating communism. Also, the suspected link between Common Cause and the US government has in the past not been raised. Indeed, hardly any scholarly work is available on the Moral Rearmament movement in general – let alone its anti-communist activities.¹⁶⁹ Of particular note is the absence of research on Mayhew’s relationship with Peter Howard and by extension the MRA. Speaking to the larger context, what these groups show is that a desire to fight communism transcended the efforts of the British government and the Labour and Conservative Parties. Various concerned individuals and interested groups used these anti-communist organisations as vehicles to promote ancillary agendas which agreed to the fight against Marxism. With respects to the BHL and the LEL, these groups’ reasons for organising against communism are obvious. For the BHL and the LEL, their efforts arose from ideological conflicts with Marxism, pure and simple. However, when examining the latter three organisations covered in this chapter, a pattern emerges. The ambitions of these more influential groups speak to a grander narrative of the interests encouraging anti-communism in the UK, namely those of the American and British governments, capitalists, and those who sought to defend the economic and political status quo. Comprising these supplementary aims were the promotion of business and corporate interests, spreading an America-centric worldview to the British citizenry, and the dissemination of quasi-religious dogma.

With Common Cause, the MRA and the Economic League, a dovetailing theme emerges: one of defending and strengthening Anglo-American relations – and in the case of the MRA and Common Cause, defending aspects of US anti-communism which Britons found unpopular and excessive. Although the literature and activities of the Economic League focused on domestic industrial relations, it still promoted a pro-American stance. League speakers and leaflets indicated on a number of occasions that one of the main objectives of communists which needed halting was their attempts to split the UK away from the US. The league also sought to expose supposed communist plots to sabotage Marshall Aid.¹⁷⁰ If Natalie Paine (later Lady Natalie Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton) – founder of Common Cause (US) and the wife of the creator of Common Cause (UK) – is to be believed, then the raison d’être for Common Cause was to transform British views on anti-communism to resemble those of the US public. The ultimate goal was that such a transformation in the UK would result in decreasing isolationist and Anglophobic sentiments that existed across the Atlantic.

Although never stated explicitly, the MRA’s overarching objective was quite similar. Tom Driberg, who spent a large amount of his adult life investigating the movement, viewed its aims as such. He charged that after the Second World War, the MRA, beholden to its wealthy backers, became an American-sponsored tool to promote anti-communism and defend US interests. Admiral William Standley, former chief of naval operations and US ambassador to Moscow, and a devoted MRA follower, promoted the same notion.¹⁷¹ Standley said the objective of the movement was ‘to make men and nations incorruptible and therefore a bulwark against the advance of communism’ in every ‘free country’. ‘It is the continuation of the American Revolution on a world scale’, he said in a 1959 speech. He assured his US audience, ‘With Moral Rearmament America can go on the offensive in the world war of ideas.’¹⁷² Alongside Common Cause, the MRA in the UK refused to denounce American McCarthyism. Writing on the UK in 1951, Peter Howard blamed communist infiltration into ‘the thinking of this nation’ for the ‘anti-Americanism’ and ‘anti-MacArthur’ sentiment.¹⁷³ He told Buchman that such ideas were crippling the UK. For Howard to state the public’s dislike of Douglas MacArthur, a darling of the American public, was a ‘communist inspired’ creation is telling. Because of MacArthur’s bellicose rhetoric, the majority of Britons approved Truman’s decision to fire the general. A UK Gallup Poll conducted in May 1951 showed 55 per cent supported Truman, with only nineteen backing MacArthur.¹⁷⁴ The head of the MRA in the UK classifying British ‘Anti-MacArthur’ sentiment as communistic shows that his views aligned more with an American standpoint than with the mainstream political sentiment inside his own native country.

The MRA’s moral crusade against ‘godless’ communism never wavered during its lifespan. Yet as the Cold War progressed, the MRA downplayed the movement’s religious nature and its Christian roots. Seeking to open new frontiers to the message of the movement, the group opened itself to members of any religious or spiritual creed – including Islam, Shintoism, Buddhism and Sikhism. Eventually, atheists were considered potential allies as well. Speaking in the early 1960s, Howard told a crowd that the MRA would bring the nation back to God, ‘or if you don’t believe in God, a nation centred on the morality and spirit and character of men’.¹⁷⁵ While the four absolutes of the movement still held the answer to fighting communism and overhauling the world, they no longer exclusively worked as a path to the Christian God. As the Cold War spread from Europe into non-Christian regions of Africa and South-East Asia, the inter-faith and inter-religion stance of the MRA made perfect sense if it sought to promote and safeguard US interests and please its deep-pocketed American donors, in addition to garnering converts to the movement. Such a supposition is based on more than mere speculation. In his memoirs, CIA officer Mile Copeland admitted that ‘arrangements we [CIA] made with Moral Rearmament gave us useful secret channels right into the minds of leaders not only in Africa and Asia but also in Europe’.¹⁷⁶ The underlining motives of the MRA give insight into what role religion played in the postwar UK in a Cold War context. The MRA, like Lord Vansittart, considered the promotion of anti-communism as trumping an allegiance to a specific spiritual creed. In the mind of Vansittart, and perhaps in those of Buchman and Howard, the true heresy rested in not forsaking the Christian ethos of ‘disarming charity’ but in displaying an unwillingness to commit unflinchingly to the battle against the red religion.¹⁷⁷

All of these outside organisations had varying degrees of collaborative success with the British government and the Labour and Conservative Parties. Although wary of its true intentions, and the true motives of its American backers, the FO still measured Common Cause as a useful organisation, one the IRD sought to control. Despite its dogged efforts to exhibit itself as a non-partisan group, the attempts by Labour members to have the group prohibited by the party show this did not totally succeed. Because of its anti-trade union stance and its surveillance activities against workers, the Economic League had little luck in gaining support in the ranks of the Labour Party. In direct contrast, the MRA could boast that some of its most dedicated and ardent supporters were Labour politicians. Both John McGovern and Christopher Mayhew worked towards the advancement of Buchman’s agenda, alongside a large number of other Labour MPs. While other anti-communist organisations were unpalatable to Labourites because of their right-wing ideologies, the MRA’s form of anti-communism found a receptive home in certain circles of the British left. Of key interest here is the close working association of the MRA and Mayhew. The extent to which Moral Rearmament and the IRD collaborated can only be guessed at, since no files have yet been released on the subject. But with the personal backing of its founder and leader, it can be safely assumed some form of collaboration did occur.

Interested parties – for ideological, economic and self-serving reasons – wanted a more anti-communist UK. Through pressure groups, they fought for this cause. In this battle, they often found sympathetic allies in various facets inside political institutions, but not in any uniform manner. Although these groups all sought to curb and eliminate supposed communist influence inside the UK, they were received and treated by factions of the establishment in very different ways. Often certain organisations had an almost symbiotic partnership with the government and the Conservative and Labour Parties. Other times it was a relationship of contention and animosity. But the overarching theme which interlinked these groups and the powers-that-be was the promotion of a cause – the central genesis of pressure groups in the first place. When British officials, Conservatives or Labourites named these outside organisations as beneficial in aiding their ongoing war against the ideology of Marxist-Leninism, they readily used them towards this endeavour.

Notes

1. 1.  Treachery!, Common Cause pamphlet, 1951.

2. 2.  Lord Woolton to Marjorie Maxse, 27 September 1950, CPA: CCO 3/2/117.

3. 3.  See F. Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? (London, 1999).

4. 4.  A. Eister, Drawing-Room Conversion (Durham, NC, 1950), p. 202.

5. 5.  MI5 to Home Office, 21 September 1942, TNA HO 45/25476.

6. 6.  For its interwar activities, see A. Mclvor, ‘ “A crusade for capitalism”: The Economic League, 1919–39’, Journal of Contemporary History, 23 (1988): 631–55; for the league’s activities during the 1980s, see M. Hollingsworth and C. Tremayne, The Economic League: The Silent McCarthyism (London, 1989).

7. 7.  The British Housewives League, pamphlet by Irene Lovelock, 1948.

8. 8.  G. Love, ‘A “mixture of Britannia and Boadicea”: Dorothy Crisp’s Conservatism and the limits of right-wing women’s political activism, 1927–48’, Twentieth Century British History, 30 (2019): 174–204, at p. 201.

9. 9.  Lord Woolton to Dorothy Crisp, 5 February 1948, CCO 3/1/12.

10. 10.  J. Hinton, ‘Militant housewives: The British Housewives’ League and the Attlee government’, History Workshop Journal, 38 (1994): 129–56, at p. 140.

11. 11.  Dundee Courier, 25 June 1947, p. 3; Gloucester Citizen, 14 June 1947, p. 1.

12. 12.  Kent and Sussex Courier, 20 June 1947, p. 5.

13. 13.  Report by Kathrine Wilmot, 21 June 1948, CCO 3/1/12, CCP.

14. 14.  Housewives Today, May/June 1948.

15. 15.  Housewives Today, March 1951.

16. 16.  Sunderland Daily Echo, 5 June 1947, p. 8.

17. 17.  Western Morning News, 7 June 1947, p. 3.

18. 18.  London District Communist Party Leaflet, 1947.

19. 19.  Aberdeen Press and Journal, 7 June 1947, p. 1.

20. 20.  Nottingham Journal, 7 June 1947, p. 1.

21. 21.  Western Daily Press, 7 June 1947, p. 6.

22. 22.  Bath Chronicle Weekly Gazette, 14 June 1947, p. 16.

23. 23.  Kent and Sussex Courier, 20 June 1947, p. 5.

24. 24.  Housewives Today, May/June 1948.

25. 25.  S. Taylor, The National Front in English Politics (London, 1982), p. 11.

26. 26.  M. Pitchford, The Conservative Party and the Extreme Right (Manchester, 2011), p. 56.

27. 27.  D. Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good (London, 2005), p. 298.

28. 28.  R. Eatwell, Fascism (London, 2003), p. 334.

29. 29.  Western Mail, 19 January 1956, p. 1; Belfast News-Letter, 15 December 1956, p. 5.

30. 30.  Coventry Evening Telegraph, 19 April 1956, p. 17.

31. 31.  Birmingham Daily Post, 19 April 1956, p. 24.

32. 32.  G.E. Higham to Lord Hailsham, 23 June 1958, CCO 3/5/88.

33. 33.  Q. Hogg, A Sparrow’s Flight (London, 1990), p. 316.

34. 34.  Candour, vol. 5, no. 163, 7 December 1956.

35. 35.  Western Mail, 24 October 1955, p. 1.

36. 36.  Britain’s Graveyard, pamphlet by League of Empire Loyalists, 1957.

37. 37.  C. F. Scott, ‘Caring about the British Empire: British imperial activists groups, 1900–1967, with special reference to the Junior Imperial League and the League of Empire Loyalists’ (unpublished King’s College London PhD thesis, 2013), p. 210.

38. 38.  The Times, 29 October 1958.

39. 39.  Taylor, National Front, p. 13.

40. 40.  N. Fielding, The National Front (London, 1981), p. 19.

41. 41.  P. Corthorn, ‘Cold War politics in Britain and the contested legacy of the Spanish Civil War’, European History Quarterly, 44 (2014): 678–702, at p. 683.

42. 42.  Christopher Mayhew to C.P.A. Warner, 17 June 1948, Mayhew 4/1/1.

43. 43.  D. Atholl, Working Partnership (London, 1958), p. 252.

44. 44.  Common Cause (Britain), leaflet, CPA: CCO 3/3/57.

45. 45.  C.A. Smith to Morgan Phillips, 23 June 1954, LPA/GS/PROS/1-85.

46. 46.  ‘Common Cause’, The CPO, 22 February 1952, CPA: CCO 3/3/57.

47. 47.  Gill to Watson, 24 June 1952, CPA: CCO 3/3/57.

48. 48.  ‘Common Cause’, The CPO, 2 April 1952, CPA: CCO 3/3/57.

49. 49.  Desmond Morton to John Peck, 28 November 1951, TNA FO 1110/374.

50. 50.  Adam Watson to A.C.E. Malcolm, 5 November 1951, TNA FO 1110/374.

51. 51.  M.A. Hamilton to D’Arcy Edmondson, 6 December 1951, TNA FO 1110/374.

52. 52.  John Peck to Malcolm Douglas Hamilton, 3 December 1951, TNA FO 1110/374.

53. 53.  Handwritten note by J.E. Manchip-White on M. Sharman to Manchip-White, 9 July 1954, TNA FO 1110/704.

54. 54.  H. Wilford, The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War (London, 2003), p. 68.

55. 55.  File minutes by J. Manchip White, 16 December 1954, TNA FO 1110/704.

56. 56.  The Catholic Standard, 23 April 1954, p. 5.

57. 57.  Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?, pp. 203–4.

58. 58.  ‘The Broken Dialogue’, Encounter, August 1954.

59. 59.  C.A. Smith to Morgan Phillips, 23 June 1954, LPA/GS/PROS/1-85.

60. 60.  Barbara Brooke to Mr Banks, 26 March 1956, CCO 3/5/50.

61. 61.  J.H. Peck, ‘Paix Et Liberte and Common Cause’, 1 March 1953, TNA FO 1110/547.

62. 62.  Common Cause, no. 2, July 1952.

63. 63.  File notes, Anthony Nutting, 3 March 1953, TNA FO 1110/547.

64. 64.  File notes, John Peck, 12 March 1953, TNA FO 1110/547.

65. 65.  J. Jenks, British Propaganda and News Media in the Cold War (Edinburgh, 2006), p. 108.

66. 66.  ‘Common Cause Bulletin, Spring 1964’, J.C. Edmonds, 2 June 1964, TNA FCO 168/1237; L.C. Glass to Burke Trend, 4 June 1964, TNA FCO 168/1237.

67. 67.  Official Committee on Communism (Home) meeting notes for November 1962, TNA CAB 134/1347.

68. 68.  ‘Common Cause’, J.E. Tyrer, 17 November 1967, TNA FCO 95/408.

69. 69.  Handwritten note by J.S. Champion, 19 November 1967, on ‘Common Cause’, J.E. Tyrer, 17 November 1967, TNA FCO 95/408.

70. 70.  Terror in Spain pamphlet by John McGovern, 1937; P Corthorn, In the Shadow of the Dictators (London, 2006), p. 215.

71. 71.  Hansard, HC, vol. 535, c. 653 (6 December 1954).

72. 72.  Eister, Drawing-Room, p. 29.

73. 73.  Eister, Drawing-Room, pp. 167–8.

74. 74.  What Are You Living For?, MRA pamphlet by Frank Buchman, 1950.

75. 75.  F. Buchman, Remaking the World (London, 1953), p. 252.

76. 76.  One Hundred Million Listening, MRA pamphlet, 1939.

77. 77.  See DAV/274, Papers of John Campbell Davidson, Westminster Parliamentary Archives. The file contains dossiers of MRA members and full-time workers, some of whom were possible subjects of investigation by MI5.

78. 78.  Arthur Thurston to R.D. Gibbs, 15 April 1943, TNA KV 5/66.

79. 79.  Quoted in G. Lean, Frank Buchman (London, 1985), p. 239.

80. 80.  Roger Fulford to name redacted, 23 April 1941, TNA KV 5/66.

81. 81.  M.E.D. Cumming to name redacted, 4 May 1953, TNA KV 5/68.

82. 82.  T. Driberg, The Mystery of Moral Re-armament (London, 1964), p. 150.

83. 83.  A Hurricane of Common Sense, MRA pamphlet by Frank Buchman.

84. 84.  J.H. Godfrey to McGill, 15 August 1950, CPA: CCO 3/2/117.

85. 85.  The Answer to Any ‘Ism’ Even Materialism, MRA pamphlet by Frank Buchman.

86. 86.  P. Boobbyer, ‘The Cold War in the plays of Peter Howard’, Contemporary British History, 19 (2005): 205–22, at p. 207.

87. 87.  Peter Howard to Frank Buchman, 31 January 1951, M.S. Oxford 3/79.

88. 88.  Eister, Drawing-Room, p. 64.

89. 89.  R. Palmer, ‘Moral re-armament drama: Right wing theatre in America’, Theatre Journal, 31 (1979): 172–85, at p. 174.

90. 90.  Belfast Newsletter, 18 June 1946, p. 2.

91. 91.  Somerset County Herald and Taunton Courier, 12 June 1948, p. 6.

92. 92.  ‘Coal – key to recovery’ report by the MRA. Copy located in the Norman Kipping Papers, MRC.

93. 93.  Allen, V. Allen, The Russians Are Coming (Shipley, 1987), p. 289.

94. 94.  P.S. Scriverner to G.P. Young, 5 April 1951, with attached untitled memorandum authored by T.S. Tull, TNA KV 5/67.

95. 95.  Percy Sillitoe to Chief Constable Pembrokeshire, 4 November 1952, TNA KV 5/67.

96. 96.  E. McBarnet to S.L.O. Nigeria, 28 September 1955, TNA KV 5/68.

97. 97.  L.H. Lamb to A.J. de la Mare, 9 August 1955, TNA KV 5/68.

98. 98.  Marjorie Maxse to Lord Woolton, 25 September 1950, CPA: CCO /3/2/117.

99. 99.  Maxse to D.M. Redd, 23 November 1950, CPA: CCO 3/2/117.

100. 100.  Branston to Maxse, 20 April 1950, CPA: CCO 3/2/117.

101. 101.  W.M. Ridgwell to A.H.P. Nobel M.P., 19 June 1952, CPA: CCO 3/3/97.

102. 102.  Brigadier Clarke to Maxse, 4 April 1950, CPA: CCO 3/2/117.

103. 103.  Handwritten note by Woolton on memorandum from Maxse, 29 March 1950, CPA: CCO 3/2/117.

104. 104.  Peter Howard to Frank Buchman, 30 October 1951, M.S. Oxford 3/79.

105. 105.  T. Driberg, Ruling Passions (London, 1977), pp. 98–9. In an odd parallel to Peter Howard, Driberg was also working for Beaverbrook’s Daily Express when he first encountered the MRA.

106. 106.  Driberg, Moral Re-armament, p. 185.

107. 107.  Report on Moral Rearmament, issued by ICFTU, 1–2 July 1953, MSS 292/806/1–5, TUC, MRC.

108. 108.  Driberg, Moral Re-armament, p. 138.

109. 109.  The Times, 29 January 1955, p. 1.

110. 110.  ‘Moral Rearmament: A study of the movement prepared by the Social and Industrial Council of the Church Assembly’, C.A. 1129, 1955, MSS 292/806/1–5, MRC.

111. 111.  Guardian, 29 January 1955, p. 1.

112. 112.  Geoffrey Fisher to Gordon Home, 24 February 1955, Fisher vol. 159.

113. 113.  Fisher to Lord Luke, 28 July 1953, Fisher vol. 129.

114. 114.  Fisher to E.G. Sarsfield-Hall, 31 January 1955, Fisher vol. 159.

115. 115.  Fisher to Sarsfield-Hall, 19 January 1955, Fisher vol. 159.

116. 116.  Fisher to George West, 10 November 1955, Fisher vol. 159.

117. 117.  Quoted in D. Sack, Moral Re-Armament (New York, 2009), p. 159.

118. 118.  CPGB report, ‘Oxford Group’, November 1943, CP/CENT/ORG/12/05.

119. 119.  ‘The world movement for moral re-armament’, MI5 report, 27 August 1951, TNA KV 5/67.

120. 120.  Name redacted to G.R. Mitchell, memo attached ‘The Moral Re-Armament Group’, 29 December 1950, TNA KV 5/67.

121. 121.  Pravda, 7 January 1951, TNA KV 5/67.

122. 122.  Londonderry Sentinel, 10 August 1946, p. 3.

123. 123.  Arthur Lewis to Christopher Mayhew, 6 October 1949, Mayhew 2/1/1.

124. 124.  The Times, 26 October 1953, p. 5.

125. 125.  Guardian, 26 August 1946, p. 3.

126. 126.  Valley Times (California), 14 January 1955, p. 3.

127. 127.  J. McGovern, Neither Fear Nor Favour (London, 1960), p. 185.

128. 128.  McGovern, Neither Fear, p. 193.

129. 129.  Christopher Mayhew to his father, 28 October 1950, Mayhew 2/1/1.

130. 130.  Arthur Lewis to Mayhew, 6 October 1949, Mayhew 2/1/1; Mayhew to Lord Henderson, 25 April 1949, Mayhew 4/2/1.

131. 131.  Peter Howard to Frank Buchman, 21 December 1950, M.S. Oxford 3/79.

132. 132.  Christopher Mayhew to Ernest Bevin, 10 January 1950, Mayhew 4/1/2.

133. 133.  Peter Howard to Frank Buchman, 25 May 1949, M.S. Oxford 3/79.

134. 134.  Notes on interview with Georgy Zhukov, undated, Mayhew 4/1/2.

135. 135.  Howard to Buchman, 21 December 1950, M.S. Oxford 3/79.

136. 136.  Grace Wyndham Goldie to Christopher Mayhew, 23 February 1956, Mayhew 12/2.

137. 137.  Howard to Buchman, 29 July 1951, M.S. Oxford 3/79.

138. 138.  Tom Driberg to Julian Amery, an enclosure with letter, 24 September 1963, AMEJ 1/6/10, CAC.

139. 139.  Howard to Buchman, 14 June 1947, M.S. Oxford 3/79.

140. 140.  Howard to Buchman, 22 April 1950, M.S. Oxford 3/79.

141. 141.  Driberg, Mystery of Moral Re-armament, p. 121.

142. 142.  Jenks, British Propaganda, p. 108.

143. 143.  H. Hemming, M: MI5’s Greatest Spymaster (London, 2017), pp. 32–3.

144. 144.  ‘Communism in Britain’, memorandum by J. Baker White, June 1938, TNA HO 45/25376.

145. 145.  M. Hollingsworth and R. Norton-Taylor, Blacklist (London, 1988), p. 149.

146. 146.  Frank Newsam to A.I. Tudor, 7 December 1939; Tudor to Newsam, 25 November 1939 – both located at TNA HO 45/25476.

147. 147.  File minutes by E.H. Gwynn, 12 September 1942, TNA HO 45/25476.

148. 148.  ‘The Economic League’, MI5 summary for the Home Office, 21 September 1942, TNA HO 45/25476.

149. 149.  Economic League Central Council 31st Annual Report, 1950.

150. 150.  Red Octopus, Economic League booklet, 1950.

151. 151.  C. Miller, ‘Extraordinary gentlemen: The Economic League, business networks, and organized labour in war planning and rearmament’, Scottish Labour History, 52 (2017): 120–51, at p. 130.

152. 152.  Red Octopus, Economic League.

153. 153.  Miller, ‘Extraordinary gentlemen’, p. 137.

154. 154.  Q.L. Drute to A.S. Hutchinson, 11 January 1939, HO 45/25467.

155. 155.  Waldron Smithers to Mark Chapman Walker, 14 August 1954, CCO 3/4/50.

156. 156.  ‘Technique of World Communism’, 6 October 1949, TNA HO 45/25476.

157. 157.  J.H. Constable to J. Dodd, 11 January 1951, CCO 3/3/68.

158. 158.  Marjorie Maxse to Central Office Agents, 16 June 1950, CCO 3/2/85.

159. 159.  Marjorie Maxse to Greville, 10 October 1949, CCO 3/2/85.

160. 160.  File notes by C.M. Kirwan, 22 September 1950, TNA FO 1110/361.

161. 161.  File notes by Maclaren Wilkinson, 6 October 1950, TNA FO 1110/361.

162. 162.  ‘Memorandum of an interview with Col. Hoare’, 13 February 1951, TNA HO 45/25476.

163. 163.  Handwritten note by Chuter Ede on ‘Memorandum of an interview with Col. Hoare’, 13 February 1951, TNA HO 45/25476.

164. 164.  ‘The Economic League and the present crisis’, 2 August 1950, TNA HO 45/25476.

165. 165.  ‘The Economic League and the present crisis’, 2 August 1950, TNA HO 45/25476.

166. 166.  Liddell diary, 11 December 1952.

167. 167.  D. Smith and K. Ewing, ‘Blacklisting of trade unionists: What is the point of human rights law?’, in Confronting the Human Rights Act: Contemporary Themes and Perspectives, ed. N. Kang-Riou (London, 2012), 249–68, at p. 251.

168. 168.  M. Hughes, Spies at Work (London, 2012), pp. 309–11.

169. 169.  An exception is David Belden, ‘The origins and development of the Oxford Group (Moral Re-Armament)’ (unpublished University of Oxford PhD thesis, 1976). As the name suggests, this work focuses on the MRA’s early years and its foundation, so its assistance is quite limited for those seeking to examine the movement’s Cold War activities. In addition, the previously cited monograph by Daniel Sack, Moral Re-armament: The Reinventions of an American Religious Movement, centres on the MRA in the context of American religious studies.

170. 170.  Hughes, Spies at Work, p. 74.

171. 171.  Ideology and Co-Existence, MRA pamphlet, 1960.

172. 172.  San Marino Tribune, 26 March 1959, p. 2.

173. 173.  Peter Howard to Frank Buchman, 24 January 1951, M.S. Oxford 3/79.

174. 174.  G. Gallup, Gallup International Public Opinion Polls: Great Britain 1937–1975 (New York, 1982), p. 248.

175. 175.  Sack, Moral Re-armament, p. 168.

176. 176.  M. Copeland, The Game Player (London, 1989), p. 177.

177. 177.  Vansittart, Even Now, p. 117.