[A-List] UK state: CIA penetration of the Labour Party

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

"If some of the Labour left were 'fellow-travellers' in the sense of being
naive believers in the Soviet model of society and the economy, the right
was at least as naive about America. If there is any evidence of Soviet
involvement in the Labour Party in the fifties, we have never seen it; and,
given the enthusiasm with which such information would have been sprayed
around, had it existed, we conclude that there was none. The endless cries
of 'Moscow gold' hurled against the left -- none of which has ever been
found other than in the Soviet subsidies to the CPGB's paper Daily Worker --
concealed the fact that it was Washington gold that was shaping the face of
British politics.

During the Cold War the United States (and to a much lesser extent the UK)
engaged in what have been called 'robust' methods, i.e. covert operations,
bribery, propaganda and the occasional assassination. From 1947 onwards
State Department and CIA money and personnel flooded out across the European
political scene. In some places, such as Italy, US intervention was massive
and barely hidden, but behind such fire-brigade operations were quieter,
long-range operations to shape the political development of Europe. Under
Thomas Braden, head of the Agency's International Department, and 'with the
support of Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner, the CIA began its covert support
of the non-Communist political left around the world -- trade unions,
political parties, and international organizations of students and
journalists'. Into this great ocean of money swam many on the right of the
Labour Party.

"The history of US involvement in post-war Labour politics has yet to be
written and is beyond the scope of this book. We shall only lightly skim
across the surface. Joe Godson was the US Government's main, semi-overt link
with the Labour Party in the fifties and was based in Britain from 1953 to
1959 as US Labour Attaché at the London Embassy. His obituary in The Times
in September 1986, headed 'Determined Champion of Anglo-American relations',
noted that: 'He was a friend of many leading members of the social
democratic parties and trade unions in Western Europe.' Godson was the
friend of the social democratic wing -- in effect, the anti-socialist
wing -- of the Labour Party, and had a hand in making that wing the dominant
faction. Curiously missing from The Times' list of Godson's friends is the
most important of them all, Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell.

"Godson's close, covert ally was Irving Brown, head of an anti-communist
grouping within the US American Federation of Labour (AFL) called the Free
Trade Union Committee. This grouping, which was the link to the British
Labour movement, was funded by CIA dollars, distributed by Brown. Brown's
role in the CIA is now well documented. His CIA case officer was Paul Sakwa,
who handled Brown's annual budget of nearly $300,000. While Godson and Brown
'befriended' Labour and union leaders, Sakwa was placed under cover as the
Assistant Labour Attaché at the US Embassy in Brussels, from where all the
CIA's European labour operations were controlled. According to Jack Anderson
and Drew Pearson, 'few labor attachés are appointed to American embassies
abroad without Lovestone's okay'.  Jay Lovestone was an asset of the CIA.

"A number of leading anti-socialist intellectuals within the Party, who
would later be called Gaitskellites, became involved in the Congress for
Cultural Freedom (CCF) -- one of the CIA's covert operations in the 1950s.
The liberal faction within the CIA recognised that in Europe the best
opponents of the socialist and communist movements were going to be the
social democrats within the European labour movement. Funds for the CCF came
from the CIA via Lovestone; something alleged by the Soviet media at the
time but not believed.

"The CCF began spawning journals -- in Britain, in co-operation with MI6, it
launched the magazine Encounter. The CCF's flagship publication, which began
in 1953, became the major outlet for the 'revisionist' thinking of the
younger intellectuals around Gaitskell, such as Douglas Jay, Patrick Gordon
Walker and Anthony Crosland. Crosland and Gaitskell were regular guests at
CCF conferences: Crosland's CCF role in the fifties as member of the
International Council, says one CIA officer, was 'encouraging sympathetic
people' to attend CCF conferences.

"Parallel to the growth of Encounter was that of Socialist Commentary as a
vehicle for the anti-socialists in the Labour Party. This had begun life
post-war as the journal of a group of refugee German social democrats but by
the early 1950s had been absorbed by the right wing of the Labour Party. In
1953 a 'Friends of Socialist Commentary' group was set up -- Gaitskell
became its Treasurer, raising money for the paper through his contacts with
the unions. Denis Healey had written widely for Socialist Commentary's
American counterpart, New Leader, which was funded by the CIA. Unwittingly,
a tiny part of Healey's income in the late forties and early fifties came
indirectly from the CIA, but -- and in this Healey is representative of
other social democrats -- it was the exposure through the columns of
magazines like Encounter and New Leader which mattered: careers were
assisted, status acquired, ideas spread. These days we should perhaps write
of the creation of an intellectual hegemony. For the most part the Labour
Party members who were cultivated by the Americans were people comfortable
within the British ruling circles, natural successors to the Conservatives:
Oxbridge, clever, educated, middle-class men, élite members, many with
wartime experience of the secret services -- all except Wilson, who had
never had any connection with this secret world.

"In the early 1950s Gaitskell, George Brown, Patrick Gordon Walker, Anthony
Crosland, Douglas Jay, Denis Healey, John Strachey and Michael Stewart all
found their way across the Atlantic. Their trips were paid for by a variety
of foundations and trusts set up to show sympathetic foreign politicians the
wonders of America. Jay went in 1954 with Gaitskell. He came away surprised
by the shared understanding of the world. 'At its strongest, naturally,
among Washington officials and Harvard academics, this similarity struck me
as permeating far wider and deeper than I had been led to expect.' These
social visits were supplemented by personal contacts. Gaitskell was friendly
with Joe Godson, George Brown with two CIA London station chiefs, Chester
Cooper and Archie Roosevelt.

"At one level sponsorship was a cheap way for the Americans to educate an
alternative team of élite managers and bind the two Anglo-American groups
together into the Atlantic community. But is that all? How would it look
from inside the CIA? One of its former senior covert operations officers,
Richard M. Bissell, described the Agency's political operational method as
'the identification of allies who can be rendered more effective, more
powerful, and perhaps wiser through covert assistance.' He added that 'many
of the "penetrations" don't take the form of "hiring" but of establishing
close or friendly relationship (which may or may not be furthered by the
provision of money from time to time).' Would the Agency's operations with
the Labour right not look like this in Langley, the CIA's headquarters?

"One major American target was the leader of the Durham miners, Sam Watson,
Gaitskell's main supporter on the NEC. In the Labour Party machine of the
fifties Watson formed a powerful alliance with two other key right-wingers:
Harry Crane, the long-serving Chairman of the conference machinery, known as
the Arrangements Committee; and Sara Barker, first assistant and later
National Agent. Watson had a close understanding with 'the velvet
steamhammer' Crane and 'shaped the latter's definition of what would be a
good outcome from the compositing meetings on foreign and defence policy'.
Not only did Watson influence the intended motions, but also the NEC
response. 'I used to have regular contact with the Security Services', Crane
later admitted. 'Whenever I got information about anybody from them, I would
pass it on to Sara Barker.'

"Wilson was never sucked into the Atlanticist infrastructure. He was his own
man, with his own support base inside and outside the Labour movement. After
his resignation from the Government in 1951 he accepted the part-time post
of economic adviser on foreign tax laws and exchange rates with Montague
Meyer, the timber importers. This gave him a degree of financial
independence and enabled him to travel abroad and develop contacts. There
was a great deal of adverse comment on his appointment for accepting the
fruits of private enterprise. Out of office, Hartley Shawcross called Wilson
a Communist 'fellow-traveller' and regarded his industrial contacts with
'distain'. [sic]

"An indication of how far out on a limb Wilson had gone by his support for
East-West trade was shown in the spring of 1952. That year the Soviet Union
sponsored an Economic Conference on international trade in Moscow. The
Labour Party leadership denounced those Labour MPs who attended -- Emrys
Hughes, Sidney Silvermen and Harold Davies -- as 'fellow-travellers'.
Despite that, and despite the fact that the Korean War was still in
progress, Wilson produced a Tribune pamphlet, In Place of Dollars, which
objected to American interference with East-West trade. It proposed fewer
strategic controls on exports to the Soviet Union and other Communist
countries. He alleged that American policy had consistently created
difficulties for Britain. This view was shared by a number of Labour
politicians who claimed that the most natural market for Britain was in the
East, but none were as visible in their support as Wilson.

"In May 1953, Wilson returned to the Soviet Union. It was his first visit
since the Board of Trade days, six years before, and the first by a senior
Western politician since the beginning of the Cold War, when an embargo had
been imposed following the Berlin Crisis. He stole the headlines with an
interview with the Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov, arranged by his old
friend [Anastas] Mikoyan. Relations between the two remained warm: it was
Mikoyan who organised Wilson's visas to the USSR. Even though he had cleared
the trip with Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and was debriefed on his
return by Churchill and the Foreign Office, his visit caused fury on the
Tory right."


-- Stephen Dorril & Robin Ramsay, "Smear: Wilson and the Secret State",
Grafton, 1991, pp. 14-18