Born to rule over us. And we want them to do it again...

“Poor loves. Trained to Empire, trained to rule the waves…”

A gem of a description. Through the voice of one of his most colourful characters, Connie Sachs in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John Le Carré elegantly sums up the tragedy of the men of privilege who grew up in thirties Britain. Their generation provided some of the most swashbuckling of our spies – and of our traitors.

Kim Philby. "One of us" and not to be touched
even though he was working for them

They were educated at the finest schools and universities. Their background, their families and their training guaranteed them entry to any clubs, ministry or intelligence agency they chose. According to Ben Macintyre’s excellent book, A Spy among Friends, the most infamous of our traitors, Kim Philby, was interviewed for recruitment into counter-espionage agency MI6by a Miss Marjorie Maxse. She was:

…chief organisation officer for the Conservative Party, a role that apparently equipped her to identify people who would be good at spreading propaganda and blowing things up.

Valentine Vivian, then Deputy Head of MI6, explained his decision to clear Philby for recruitment, in what MacIntyre describes as the “quintessential definition of Britain’s Old Boys network”:

I was asked about him, and said I knew his people.

Macintyre provides invaluable insight into the workings of the British establishment. Philby drifted through that world with untroubled ease. Even after he was exposed as a double agent. In an Afterword, John Le Carré reproduces extracts from his notes of an interview he conducted with Nick Elliott, the last MI6 agent to interrogate Philby before he defected to Russia. At the time, PHilby was in Beirut. Elliott explained that nobody wanted him back in London, where a trial would only have been deeply embarrassing. But, Le Carré suggested, more extreme, even terminal, measures, could have been taken:

”… could you have him killed, liquidated?”

“My dear chap. One of us.”

One of us. Indeed. A commoner like George Blake, who passed British secrets to the Russians, could be condemned to 42 years in gaol, but not a Phlby. Allowing him to flee to Moscow was the only thing for a gentleman.

Micintyre doesn’t try to count the number of agents who were killed as a result of Philby’s spying. For a wonderful object lesson of his betrayals and British establishment ineptitude, we need only turn to Western action against Albania. The US and British decided that it would make sense to select young men from among Albanian refugees, train them, arm them and send them back into their country to foment revolution against its Communist government.

One might question the wisdom of this policy. Think Vietnam. Cuba. Cambodia. Iraq. Syria. Libya. The cause of democracy hasn’t been particularly advanced by Western interventions. But then, experience does rather show that the establishment of our great nations isn’t distinguished by good judgement or principle, even when it isn’t actively engaged in treason. I don’t approve of what the infiltrators into Albania were planning to do, and they may well have been thoroughly unpleasant people.

Even so, it’s painful to think of those young men taking their training, their weapons and their lives into their hands, to back Western plans ostensibly designed to promote their freedom, only to find that the secret police knew the time and place of their landing in the country and were waiting for them. Few got out. Most were tortured, imprisoned or killed, as were their families, their friends and even people who had the misfortune to share a surname with one of the infiltrators. Two agents were tied to the back of a jeep and dragged around until they were reduced to bloody pulp.

Their fates were sealed by Philiby. And yet the establishment, who sent the young men, felt that no punishment was appropriate.

Not for “one of us”.

Of course, when I say, “one of us”, I really mean “one of them”. This was a tiny number of people, bound by friendship and blood, especially blood. Their families had passed power from generation to generation, for centuries. As Connie Sachs understood, they had been bred to run an Empire and, after World War 2, there was no Empire for them to rule. Betrayal was an outlet for their pent-up frustration.

Sadly, that establishment hasn’t gone away. The more recent generations have lowered their sights and no longer aspire to Empire. But in all other respects they continue the tradition. The previous British Prime Minister, David Cameron, had been a member of the Bullingdon Club at Oxford University, made up of entitled sons of the obscenely rich for whom a night out was to wreck a restaurant and have Daddy pop by to pay for the damage the next day.

Britain’s current Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, was a contemporary in the same Club. Born to rule, bred to behave badly.

One of the great advantages of the European Union is that it put a limited brake on their behaviour.

It’s interesting that a major aim of the Brexit movement is to “bring back control”. Free us up from those tiresome constraints from Brussels.

So that those born to rule can take control back and rule again.

God help us all.

War, peace and halcyon days

1975. What a year. The longest, hottest summer I remember in England. I was between two phases of my existence and living at my grandparents’ house – rather overstaying my welcome, I’m ashamed to admit – but finding the time extraordinarily comforting and restful.

The BBC was running an adaptation of War and Peace on television and, in a time before DVDs or catchup, you just had to tune in each week if you wanted to know what was happening. I couldn’t wait in suspense a whole week at a time, so I borrowed my grandmother’s copy of the novel, an Everyman edition in battered red cloth covers which I’ve since inherited. I lay in the back garden surrounded by the vivid green of a lawn I did everything I could to avoid mowing, soaking in the sun while immersed in an extraordinary novel.

Last weekend, the BBC started a new serialisation. I had to watch it, if only out of nostalgia for that time four decades ago. But it left me less than fully satisfied. So I got hold of the Audible version and started listening to it, on the way to and from work, and during my lunch hour, on my phone.

On Audible, the book lasts some 61 hours. The BBC series covers six one-hour episodes. To say that it fails to do the novel justice would be to fall far short of the truth of the travesty if makes of the Tolstoy. It just hasn’t given itself the space to do otherwise. The worst aspect of it? The book presents us with a panoply of characters which is bewildering enough even when they appear to us over a number of chapters. In the telescoped timescale of the series, they’re just dumped on us in a great rush of confusion. It put me in mind of the rather cruel words of the Mossad spy genius Kurtz, in John le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl. Talking about how two young women could switch identities in an airport, he explains:

“… they go to the ladies’ room, they switch tickets … they switch passports too. With girls, that’s no problem. Make up – wigs – … when you dig down, all pretty girls are the same.”

Without giving way to quite that degree of misogyny, I have to admit that the TV series did have something of that effect on me. The BBC provided a large number of pretty young women actors, but that just left me wondering who they all were. Was that one Julie Kuragin? Lise Meinen? Hélène Kuragin? Or even, I’m ashamed to admit, the key figure Natasha Rostova herself? I had only a hazy idea. And, to be honest, that did make following a complex plot a trifle difficult.

The 2016 BBC version of War and Peace.
Lots of lovely people. But which one is which?

Still, who cares? It’s splendid spectacle. And it’s spurred me to re-read the book, and I really mean read as well as listen: so that I can keep on going at home, I’ve downloaded the Kindle version too, for the princely sum of £0.00. 

Besides, series has reminded me of an idyllic time in my youth. How much more can I reasonably demand of the BBC?

Friends spying on friends: as Obama says, we all do it

John Le Carré is the outstanding writer of spy novels of the Cold War, and one of his best came unbidden to my mind in the middle of the febrile, spook-filled atmosphere of the Edward Snowden scandal this week.

Peter Egan as Magnus Pym
in the excellent BBC adaptation of the Le Carré masterpiece

Do you know A Perfect Spy? If not, I can’t recommend it too warmly. To give you a small taster, it contains what must be about the most upfront pickup line you’ll ever read. A Czech interpreter, who we later discover has more to her than meets the eye – and she has plenty to meet the eye – asks the protagonist Magnus Pym:

‘You want I give you Czech lesson on Saturday?’

When he tells her that he would like that very much, she continues, severely:

‘I think we make love this time. We shall see.’

The driver of the car they are travelling in nearly takes it into a ditch.

The novel charts the progress of Pym from his childhood with his father, a professional embezzler, into a series of betrayals of increasing severity, until he gravitates into British intelligence and the greatest treason of them all.

At one point, the CIA are closing in on him and Grant Lederer, the man leading the hunt, attends a meeting with senior agency operatives at the US Embassy in London. He announces with pride that he has just had a phone call, in the Embassy, from his wife in Vienna, where she has spotted Pym’s wife being contacted by a known Czech spy.

Sadly, Lederer does not receive the congratulations he expects for this dramatic news. In the first place, involving his wife was a breach of his orders for the operation against Pym. But there's a second reason for the dissatisfaction of his superiors, which emerges at the end of the discussion. One of them asks:

‘Next question, what the hell do we tell the Brits and when and how?’

And another replies:

‘Looks like we told them already. That’s unless the Brits have given up tapping US Embassy telephone lines these days, which I tend to doubt.’

That last line came back to me as I followed the row over the latest stage in Snowden’s revelations. It seems that the US has its agents gathering intelligence on many of its ostensible allies. They spy on the French. They spy on the European Union, a dear old institution which surely has barely a secret that can’t be found out in a Brussels bar or that’s worth knowing anyway. Worst of all, they spy on the holy of holies in Europe today, the Germans. 

Everyone’s scandalised.

Obama’s response has been highly instructive. 

‘Every intelligence service, not just ours, but every European intelligence service, every Asian intelligence service, wherever there’s an intelligence service, here’s one thing they’re going to be doing: they’re going to be trying to understand the world better and what’s going on in world capitals around the world from sources that aren’t available through the New York Times or NBC News.

‘If that weren’t the case, then there would be no use for an intelligence service. And I guarantee you that in European capitals, there are people who are interested in, if not what I had for breakfast, at least what my talking points might be should I end up meeting with their leaders. That's how intelligence services operate.’

Yep. Spy agencies exist to spy. Obviously, first and foremost on their enemies but, hey, why not on their friends too? After all, a country may well be an ally, but it’s a competitor as well, and it’s always worth knowing what the competition’s up to.

So I’m sure Le Carré’s right. British intelligence must routinely bug the US Embassy – I really can’t believe they’d pass up such an opportunity.

So why all the anger? 

Some of it’s synthetic, no doubt. Some of it’s routine: you have to protest if someone’s found to have been spying on you. But I wonder if some of it’s not just plain envy. The US has such technology, and such a well-resourced intelligence community, they’re much better at spying than the others. 

Isn’t the problem that the Germans, the EU and above all the French, are just annoyed as hell to discover that US spies on them far more effectively than they can spy on the US?

Family gatherings and logistical cock-ups: a Christmas story

Nothing could make me regret the end of the Cold War.

Even so there are iconic images from that time that remain burned into the imagination, to the extent that one looks back on them with something akin to nostalgia. One of these must be a scene that we’ve all watched countless times in innumerable films.

Usually the backdrop is Berlin, at night. A street runs along the side of a waterway. In the background is a box-girder bridge, one end of which is adorned with barbed wire and a watch tower. Along the street are lampposts so widely spaced that they seem to obscure more than they illuminate: between them, there are patches of deep shadow into which any passerby vanishes momentarily before reappearing many seconds later into the next pool of cold light.

The camera briefly focuses on the watchtower where a sniper in the uniform of the East German border guards stares intensely into the Western street, his look somehow contriving to express both malice and boredom. His gun, which we somehow know is a high-velocity rifle equipped with a telescopic sight, is slung over his shoulder. He pauses to strike a match: momentarily the flame lights his face from below making his expression even more sinister. As the camera slides away, his cigarette glows red in the newly-dark guard box.

Down in the street, the silence is broken by the sound of footsteps on the paving stones. A man, carrying a suitcase, leaves one of the pools of light and disappears into shadow. He may have vanished, but his footsteps continue. And suddenly they seem to have provoked an echo – but then we realises that we are hearing no echo, but a second set of steps, irregular and slower, as another man, coincidentally also carrying a suitcase, limps into the camera shot from the opposite direction and disappears in turn into the shadow. The two sets of steps continue until a few moments later, both men reappear into the light, moving away from each other. Each still carries a case. But is each man holding the same case as before? Or have we just witnessed a crucial exchange between agents, right under the noses of the East German guards? Has there been a handover of crucial material? And if so what was that material? Documents? Photographs? Money? Weapons?

Ah, the atmosphere, the excitement, the suspense. It would be a pity to see that kind of scene lost for ever.

Well, I can now reveal that the tradition is continuing despite the end of the Cold War. But instead of Berlin, the venue of the classic scene may be less predictable than it was. And all thanks to another tradition, that of bringing families together for Christmas.

My son Nicky and his girlfriend Nicola, collective noun ‘Nick-Nick’, both live in Madrid. Both were due to fly into Liverpool to join their respective families for the holidays. Nicola’s family lives in Southport, not far from Liverpool, and at the time we made the travel arrangements we lived in Stafford, not that far from the airport. Then, however, we moved to Luton. The idea of a long drive northwards on Christmas Even didn’t appeal to us, so we contacted Nicky and he agreed to fly instead to our local airport. Crucially, as it turned out, his Luton flight was scheduled to leave Madrid at pretty much the same time as Nicola’s to Liverpool.

They turned up at Madrid airport together and handed their bags into the Easyjet desk. Fond goodbyes followed and they boarded their planes. The first intimation that things might not be going right came when Nicky looked out of the window and saw what looked distinctly like Nicola’s case being loaded into his plane. And no sign of his own.

His worst fears were confirmed by the luggage carousel at Luton airport. He had indeed been delivered Nicola’s suitcase, and she had his.

‘No problem,’ I told him, ‘I’d be quite amused to see you in a bra and I’m sure we’d get a lot of pleasure from Nicola’s gifts to her family.’ She had, apparently, bought and lovingly wrapped rather a lot of fine presents.

Nicola sadly took a more jaundiced view of the situation, and showed absolutely no inclination to adopt my relaxed solution. So we resigned ourselves to having to give up on our cherished desire to avoid a long drive on the icy roads. We loaded Nicky and the suitcase into the car and drove the hundred miles or so to a deserted service station on the M6 motorway north of Birmingham.

There, in the fleeting light and shadows of a windswept, icebound car park, at midnight, the exchange took place.

The Nick-Nick handover takes place in the sinister surroundings of Hilton Park Services

It was pure John Le Carré. Two people approach each other, each with a case, two people separate and go their ways, each with a case – but not the same case.

The plot possibilities are endless. However, I’m glad to say that in this instance the outcome was much less exciting, much more banal but a great deal more enjoyable than in most of those classic espionage films. Too much to eat, far too much to drink, excellent company and a pleasant holiday break.

Just the kind of break that I hope anyone reading this enjoyed too. And the kind of pleasurable interlude that I hope will set the tone for us all in 2011.