Red List: MI5 and British Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century

This book is best read as a refutation of Christopher Andrew’s 2009 The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, which claimed that Britain’s internal security agency had always respected the line between national security and “party politics.” Drawing on recently declassified files, Caute (Isaac and Isaiah) documents MI5’s repeated crossings of the line. It maintained thick files on people designated as threats to national security when there was often little or no evidence they merited scrutiny. Agents tapped phones, intercepted mail, bugged houses and offices, shadowed suspects, and committed covert burglaries. They were suspicious of leftists of any flavor, even those known to be inimical to Soviet Russia. Racism repeatedly raised its ugly head. Jews were suspect per se, as were Indians or Black men seen with white women. “Scruffy” intellectuals needed watching on the face of it. Britain never had anything like the blacklisting in the States, but many lives were disrupted by MI5’s intrusions, which were a serious violation of British subjects’ civil liberties.