21 May 2004 releases: Soviet intelligence agents and British communists

A number of files on the activities of Soviet intelligence agents and British citizens suspected of involvement with the Communist movement were among those released to The National Archives by the Security Service on 21 May 2004.

Soviet intelligence agents: Douglas Springhall

File ref KV 2/1594-1596

Springhall was a founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and held various administrative positions in the party, culminating in a National Organiser role from 1940. He cultivated a contact at the Air Ministry, Olive Sheehan, who was one of a small ring of Communist supporters in the Ministry and provided Springhall with, among other things, classified information about the anti-radar device WINDOW.

Their arrangement was uncovered when Sheehan's flatmate overheard a conversation about classified information, and Springhall was arrested and convicted in 1943 on a charge of passing classified information to the Russians. The trial was held in camera because of the still secret nature of WINDOW, so although the case is well known, this is the first time contemporary transcripts and details of the trial have been released.

After Springhall's trial, it also emerged that he had obtained classified information from a Special Operations Executive officer, Captain Desmond Uren, who also a Communist. Uren was court martialled and, like Springhall, was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. Springhall emigrated to Russia after his release, and died in Moscow in 1953.

File KV 2/1594 (1917-1931) shows how Springhall acted as a distribution agent for seditious material in the armed forces during and after the First World War (for which he was eventually discharged from the Navy in 1920). As a result of this activity he was kept under surveillance and his correspondence was closely watched.

The product of that surveillance (intercepted letters, a report of a meeting of ex-Service Communists addressed by Springhall at the Minerva Café, High Holborn in June 1928, examples of his journalism and so on) is on file, as is a photograph of Springhall submitted with his passport papers (he eventually travelled to Russia before his passport was issued). There is further material in file KV 2/1595 (1931-1935).

File KV 2/1596 (1936-1943) includes similar material, but also a copy of Springhall's speaking notes for addressing meetings, obtained by the Metropolitan Police, a copy of his pamphlet "Fair Play for Service Men and their Families", and other material leading to Springhall's arrest and trial for dissemination of seditious material in the armed forces.

The file includes reports on the development and uncovering of the plot, and Security Service observations on the case from 1943, along with police statements and reports about visits made to Springhall while he was in Brixton prison.

Perhaps the most interesting item on the file is the assessment made by the Security Service of the impact that Springhall's arrest and trial had on the rest of the Communist Party hierarchy.

Communists and suspected communists: Sylvia Pankhurst

File ref KV 2/1570

Pankhurst (1882-1960), the daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, achieved fame in the Suffragette movement before the First World War, but was later associated with communist, anti-fascist and anti-war causes. She was involved in support for the Abyssinian cause after the Italian invasion of 1936, founding and editing the "New Times and Ethiopia News". She emigrated to Ethiopia in 1944, where she became a friend and adviser to the Emperor Haile Selassie, and maintained a steadfast anti-British outlook.

This reconstituted file chiefly concerns her post-Suffragette activities, though there are summaries of her activities, and those of the publication "The Workers' Dreadnought" and the Workers' Suffrage Federation from 1914. The main body of the file follows Pankhurst from the launch of the "New Times and Ethiopian News" in 1936, from which time there are reports of meetings addressed by Pankhurst, notes of interviews with her and the product of a watch maintained on her correspondence.

In 1940 she wrote to Viscount Swinton in his capacity as head of a committee investigating fifth column activities, and provided him with a list of Fascists at large and conducting propaganda, and of anti-Fascists who had been interned. The copy, which is on file having been passed on by Swinton, is annotated in Swinton's hand "I should think a most doubtful source of information."

The file concludes that Pankhurst's information most probably came from her long-term Italian partner, Silvo Corio. After the liberation of Ethiopia, the file follows her activities there, where she was a strong supporter of a union of Ethiopia with ex-Italian Somaliland, later to become part of the independent state of Somalia. The file considered in 1948 various strategies for "muzzling the tiresome Miss Sylvia Pankhurst."