5 September 2005 releases: Known or suspected Communists

Walter Ulbricht

File ref KV 2/2007-2008

Walter Ulbricht (1893-1973) was a notable German Communist politician. He was a founding member of the Communist Party of Germany and served as a member of the Reichstag (the German parliament) from 1928-1933.

Following the Nazi takeover in 1933, he lived in exile in Paris and Prague, before moving to Moscow in 1938. He remained in the Soviet Union during World War II. Following the war, he became leader of the East German Socialist Unity Party and head of state of East Germany. He was replaced by Erich Honecker in 1971.

The Security Service monitored his activities for a number of years from 1931 to 1954, when Ulbricht resigned as head of the Communist Party of Germany. The files initially deal with concerns that Ulbricht and other leading German Communists should not gain entry to Britain if they fled from Nazi persecution.

After Ulbricht resurfaced in Paris in 1934 as a leading figure in the German Communist Party in exile, he was placed on the Home Office watch list of "undesirables". He was closely allied with Moscow and followed the Soviet party line, including supporting the Nazi-Soviet pact. There are reports on this file that communists who did not agree with the pact were denounced to the Gestapo by Ulbricht.

He later relocated to Moscow, and after the German invasion of June 1941 is recorded as shifting his views along with changing official Soviet positions. The file contains allegations that he headed an international sabotage organisation from Moscow, which the Security Service dismissed as Nazi propaganda.

At the close of the war, the file records how the Soviets infiltrated Ulbricht into Berlin, where he set about organising the Communist Party in the dying days of the Third Reich. Ulbricht retired through ill health in May 1954 as leader of the German Communist Party, at which point the file closes, though his political career in East Germany lasted into the 1970s.

Betty Reid

File ref KV 2/2042-2047

Betty Reid (1915-1988) was a prominent figure in the Communist Party of Great Britain during and after the Second World War. She was a subject of interest for the Security Service for many years, and these files give a huge amount of detailed reports and investigations into her activities in the period 1936-1956.

Reid was responsible for Party security in the 1940s and 1950s. However, she believed that the Security Service had compromised her in 1950 when she hired a home help, whom she later believed to have been a Security Service operative.

Reid first came to the attention of the Security Service in 1936 when she took up employment at the Left Book Club department of publishers Victor Gollancz. The Service established a close watch on her, as documented by the files. They contain detailed accounts of her movements and meetings, reports of speeches, and copies of intercepted correspondence and telephone conversations.

KV 2/2042 (1936-1950) covers the period when Reid was secretary of the Holborn Branch of the Communist Party, and her time as Secretary of the London Council for Anti-Fascist Aid (from May 1941 the National Council for Democratic Aid), the body that supported refugees who had fled to Britain from fascist-ruled Europe. From 1946, Reid was in charge of Party membership issues, in practice meaning the vetting of members for dissident views and to check their loyalty to the Party.

Reid faced significant difficulties in her work because she had not been able to find somebody suitable to help her with childcare. This was certainly known to the Service, as the files, especially KV 2/2043, contain references to her problems in intercepted phone calls and reports of conversations. The Service would have had the opportunity to insert an operative, as Reid suspected had happened. However, there is no information on the files (from which numerous folios have been retained) to confirm or deny Reid's belief that her home help did in fact work for the Security Service.

Files KV 2/2044 (1952) and KV 2/2045 (1953-1955) also contain some amusing appraisals of her personality by various sources. The latter file includes the following detailed appraisal by source NORTH (folio 259a):

"In spite of her bulk and apparent lack of beauty she is a feminine personality...[who] tends to have a disarming effect on comrades who have been summoned to see her, and who have mounted the stairs to the Org. Dept. prepared for severity. As far as I know, she has been entirely responsible for the elaborate machinery for the vetting of party comrades...Her patience and robust sense of humour are more than a match for the leg-pulling to which she is constantly subjected, and her great weakness is a profound liking for cheese cake!"

KV 2/2046 (1955) includes accounts of Reid's meetings with her contact in the Soviet embassy in London, 2nd Secretary Nikolai Timofeev, whom Reid describes as her 'cream cakes pal'. She reports that Timofeev was astounded that the Daily Worker's printers, who were on strike, were not Party members. The files continue with further similar material in KV 2/2047, covering 1955-1956.