Eric Hobsbawm & Christopher Hill were MI5 targets for decades

Sat Oct 25 00:15:25 BST 2014

what about....
EP Thompson: the unconventional historian
The Making of the English Working Class is 50 
this year, yet it is still widely revered as a canonical work of social history
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/06/ep-thompson-unconventional-historian
and...

A Very English Hero: The Making of Frank Thompson by Peter J Conradi  review

Frank Thompson, poet and freedom fighter, was a 
man too brilliant for his own good
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jul/29/english-hero-frank-thompson-review
Frank Thompson is better known in Britain as 
brother of the historian 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._P._Thompson>EP 
Thompson, but in Bulgaria he is a national hero. 
Attached during 
the<http://www.theguardian.com/world/secondworldwar>second 
world war to Special Operations Executive (SOE), 
he was parachuted into the Balkans to work with 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_resistance_movement_during_World_War_II>Bulgarian 
partisans; after two weeks of eating salted 
leaves and live wood-snails, he was captured, 
tortured and murdered by the Nazis.
The Americans dobbed him in to the Nazis............

MI5 spied on leading British historians for decades, secret files reveal

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/24/mi5-spied-historians-eric-hobsbawm-christopher-hill-secret-files
Eric Hobsbawm and Christopher Hill had phones 
tapped, correspondence intercepted and friends and wives monitored
    * 
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/24/http://www.theguardian.com/profile/richardnortontaylor>Richard 
Norton-Taylor 
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/24/http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian>The 
Guardian, Friday 24 October 2014
MI5 amassed hundreds of records on Eric Hobsbawm 
and Christopher Hill, two of Britains leading 
historians who were both once members of the 
Communist party, secret files have revealed.

The scholars were subjected to persistent 
surveillance for decades as MI5 and police 
special branch officers tapped and recorded their 
telephone calls, intercepted their private 
correspondence and monitored their contacts, the 
files show. Some of the surveillance gave MI5 
more details about their targets personal lives 
than any threat to national security.

The files, released at the National Archives on 
Friday, reveal the extent to which MI5, including 
its most senior officers, secretly kept tabs on 
the personal and professional activities of 
communists and suspected communists, a task it 
began before the cold war. The papers also show 
that MI5 opened personal files on the popular 
Oxford historian AJP Taylor, the writer Iris 
Murdoch, and the moral philosopher Mary Warnock 
after they and Hill signed a letter supporting a 
march against the nuclear bomb in 1959.
British historian Eric Hobsbawm at work in January 1976

Eric Hobsbawm

Lady Warnock told the Guardian on Thursday night: 
Id love to see the file, or anybodys file come 
to that, to see what was/is regarded as 
suspicious 
 I am completely taken aback and even faintly flattered.

Hobsbawm, who was refused access to his files 
when he asked to see them five years ago, died in 
2012, and Hill died in 2009. Many passages, 
sometimes whole pages, of their files remain 
redacted and an entire file on Hobsbawm has been 
temporarily retained. The files include long 
lists of names and addresses of letters written by Hobsbawm and Hill.

They make clear that MI5 frequently read  or was 
sent  copies of as many as 10 letters a day. At 
the same time, its officers, or special branch 
officers, or their informants  one of whom was 
given the codename Ratcatcher  were secretly 
taking notes of their phone calls and meetings.

The files show that Hobsbawm, who became one of 
Britains most respected historians and was made 
a Companion of Honour by Tony Blair, first came 
to the notice of MI5 in 1942 when he and 38 
colleagues were described as being obvious 
members of the CPGB [the Communist party of Great 
Britain] on Merseyside. He became number 211,764 
on MI5s index of personal files. Although he was 
cleared of suspicion of engaging in subversive 
activities or propaganda in the army, MI5 noted 
it was doubtful that he would be suitable for the 
Intelligence Corps. Roger Hollis, later head of 
MI5, and Valentine Vivian, the deputy chief of 
MI6, prevented him from joining the Foreign 
Offices political intelligence department.

At the end of the war, in July 1945, an MI5 
officer noted: As he is known to be in contact 
with communists I should be interested to see all his personal correspondence.

MI5 said the object of keeping checks on Hobsbawm 
was to establish the identities of his contacts 
and to unearth overt or covert intellectual 
Communists who may be unknown to us. Similarly, 
Hill was kept under surveillance, the files note, 
to establish the identity of his contacts at the 
University [of Oxford] and in the cultural field 
generally, and to obtain the names of 
intellectuals sympathetic to the [Communist] 
party who may not already be known to us.
Christopher Hill was a celebrated historian of the English civi

Christopher Hill

Telephone intercepts disclosed that Hobsbawm and 
his family were friendly with Alan Nunn May  a 
British physicist who had confessed to spying for 
Russia and was released from jail in 1952  and 
on one occasion put him up for the night. There 
is no evidence in the files of any attempt by 
either Hobsbawm or Hill to spy for Moscow or that 
the Russians were interested in them for any such purpose.

One early file on Hobsbawm describes his uncle 
Harry, with whom he sometimes stayed, as 
sneering, half Jew in appearance, having a long nose.

The surveillance intruded into the targets 
relationships. Hobsbawm is recorded in 1952 as 
having difficulties with his [first] wife, who, 
an MI5 officer noted, does not consider him to be a fervent enough Communist.

A report in 1950 revealed how Hills first wife, 
Inez, was becoming sick to death of his 
Communist party affiliation, which she had 
previously shared. There seems to be some reason 
to believe that she is not only fed up with her 
husbands politics but also with her husbands 
political activities, especially as his political 
sympathies lead him, according to her, to give a 
considerable amount of his money to the party, 
the report stated. A subsequent report revealed 
she was having an affair with another Communist party official.

Hobsbawm never left the Communist party but the 
MI5 files show he argued with the party 
leadership so strongly that it considered 
dismissing him, according to transcripts of MI5s bugged conversations.

At a fraught meeting at the partys headquarters 
at King Street in Londons Covent Garden, at the 
end of 1956, Hobsbawm, Hill and the writer Doris 
Lessing agreed to write a letter attacking the 
party leaderships uncritical support 
 to 
Soviet action in Hungary, a reference to the 
crushing of the uprising there. That support, the 
letter explained, was the undesirable 
culmination of years of distortion of facts. 
Hill, who left the party a year later, used the 
phrase the crimes of Stalin at the meeting, 
according to the MI5 report. The partys paper, 
the Daily Worker, refused to publish the letter 
which was later run by Tribune, the leftwing weekly.

Unlike the very public manifestation of 
McCarthyism in the US, the discreet British 
version had its victims. Although political 
activities did not affect Hills academic career, 
Hobsbawm was prevented from getting the Cambridge 
lectureship he wanted. He was later appointed 
professor at Birkbeck College, London.

The documents show that years later MI5 was 
furious with the BBC for allowing Hobsbawm to 
broadcast. In October 1962, an MI5 officer noted: 
My BBC contact tells me that Hobsbawm is still 
an occasional contributor to the Third Programme 

 Some recent talks were entitled Sicilian 
Peasant Risings and Robin Hood. What is 
described as slightly unexpected was a series of talks on Jazz.

Earlier that year, MI6 asked MI5 if they had any 
objection to telling the CIA that Hobsbawm was 
going on a tour of South America funded, to its 
surprise, by the Rockefeller Foundation (Hobsbawm 
had already visited Cuba). In a document marked 
Top Secret, dated 13 May 1963, MI5 told MI6: A 
reliable and very delicate source has reported 
that Hobsbawm visited a number of countries.

The files also reveal that the FBI feared that 
the atom bomb pioneer Robert Oppenheimer would 
use a visit to Britain to defect to Russia. He 
had come under investigation in America for his 
leftwing sympathies and in 1954 the FBI urged MI5 
to put him under surveillance if he entered the 
UK. In a cable from the US embassy, legal attache 
JA Cimperman wrote: Information has been 
received that Oppenheimer may defect from France 
in September 1954. According to the source, 
Oppenheimer will first come to England and then 
go to France, where he will vanish into Soviet 
hands. No further details are available.

MI5 was anxious to assist. One officer noted: 
Undoubtedly, if Oppenheimer came here under the 
shadow of reliable reports that he was possibly 
going to defect to the Russians, we should treat 
the matter as of major importance and in that 
light do what we could to help. The warning 
proved to be a false alarm and no such attempt occurred.

Hill, who became a celebrated historian of the 
English civil war and was later elected Master of 
Balliol College, Oxford, first came to MI5s 
notice when he visited Russia as an undergraduate 
in 1935. On his return a year later, MI5 noted 
that Hill has the appearance of a Communist; but 
his baggage which was searched by HM Customs, did 
not contain any subversive literature.
Secret files on Eric Hobsbawm

Secret files on Christopher Hill. Photograph: National Archives

The files show he was turned down after applying 
for a post in military intelligence. He should 
not be employed as a lecturer to the Forces, MI5 insisted in 1946.

In 1953, MI5 described Hill as a popular history 
don at Balliol 
 a Marxist and Communist party 
member. It added, apparently with relief: He 
does not, however, engage in Soviet studies. His 
period is the seventeenth century.

One file contains a copy of a letter to Tribune 
supporting an anti-nuclear bomb march organised 
for 27 November 1959. It was signed by Murdoch, 
Taylor and Warnock, as well as Hill. MI5 had 
opened personal files on all of them.

Three years later, in October 1961, MI5 noted 
that Hill had become a strong supporter of the 
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It added: 
This fact, however, does not shed any light on 
his political sympathies, since very many shades 
of left wing opinion are opposed to nuclear weapons.

Lord Lipsey, who had been asked by Hobsbawm to 
inquire about the possibility of MI5 keeping 
files on him, said on Thursday: As a supporter 
of increased openness I am at least delighted 
that these files have finally been released.

Eric Hobsbawm

Born: Alexandria, June 1917
Died: September 2012
Main Works:
The Age of Revolution (1962)
Industry and Empire (1968)
The Age of Capital (1975)
The Age of Empire (1987)
The Age of Extremes (1994)
Interesting Times (2002)
Globalisation, Democracy and Terrorism (2007)
How to Change the World (2011)
(Hobsbawm also wrote The Jazz Scene (1959), 
originally under the pseudonym, Francis Newton)

Christopher Hill

Born: York, 1912
Died: February 2003
Main works:
Economic Problems Of The Church (1955)
Puritanism And Revolution (1958)
Society And Puritanism In Pre-Revolutionary England (1964)
Intellectual Origins Of The English Revolution (1965)
Gods Englishman (1970)
The Century Of Revolution (1961)
Reformation To Industrial Revolution (1967).
The World Turned Upside Down (1972)
Milton And The English Revolution (1977)
Some Intellectual Consequences Of The English Revolution (1980)
The World Of The Muggletonians (1983)
The Experience Of Defeat (1984)
John Bunyan and His Church (1988)
The English Bible In 17th-century England (1993)
Liberty Against The Law (1996)
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