GREAT BRITAIN: Fair Play for Spies

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It was, said London's Daily Telegraph, like school prefects lecturing the student body. "The Head Prefect talked soberly about the tone of the school, and received solemn nods from the Old Boys on the Opposition benches. Were we to have a 'kind of NKVD or OGPU system in our public offices'? No, the House murmured quietly, we were not. The prefects, on both sides of the House, were only too anxious to deal tidily with a discreditable story which involved the honor of the school." As Herbert Morrison, Foreign Secretary in the former Labor government, explained: "Five governments in all were involved. We are all in it."

Thus, after more than four years of stubborn official silence, bumbling and evasion, Britain's government undertook to explain how Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean had managed to work as spies for Russia within the Foreign Office and then escaped untouched.

Calming the Clamor. Ever since the government published its inadequate white paper (TIME, Oct. 3), the press has clamored for more explanations. Who protected and promoted Burgess and Maclean? Who tipped them off that the jig was up? Who let them escape?

Inside the House last week, Foreign Minister Harold Macmillan answered none of these questions, instead turned his defense into an exposition of Britain's principles of fair play and legality. No other course was possible, he argued, without violating one or the other. Before he was through, the slovenly security practices and clubby indulgence of the Foreign Office had become shining testaments to British high-mindedness and a standing reproach to "McCarthyism."

"Our Foreign Service regards this case as a personal wound," said Macmillan. "Action against employees . . . arising from suspicion and not from proof may begin with good motives, and it may avert . . . disasters, but. judging from what has happened in some other countries, such a practice soon degenerates into satisfaction of personal vendettas or a general system of tyranny, all in the name of public safety."

Since 1952, Macmillan admitted, the Foreign Office has instituted "positive vetting"—before then, a man was investigated only if he had already come to the "unfavorable notice" of the security officials. Result: four Foreign Service officers dismissed, "about half a dozen" others moved to less sensitive work . . .

The "Cover-Up." The Laborites were just as anxious to avoid any hint of "McCarthyism." Said Herbert Morrison, during whose tenure the pair escaped: "After all, the noblest band of men in history had their Judas ... If they had been arrested and ultimately found innocent, that would have brought discredit ..." Only a few were so rude as to be blunt. The truth is, snapped Laborite Alfred Robens, that there was "a close circle of 'coverup' for one's friends [in the Foreign Office], How can it be that a couple of drunks, a couple of homosexuals well known in this city could for so long occupy important posts?"