Morning music
Historical footnote
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/22/mi5-surveillance-british-spy-kim-philby-made-public
“Secret surveillance of Britain’s notorious double agent, Kim Philby, made public for the first time in archived documents, reveals how keenly the Security Service wanted to confirm or disprove early suspicions of his high-level treachery.
In daily bulletins submitted to MI5 in November 1951, undercover operatives describe how Philby, codenamed Peach, moved about London.
They said he gave “no outward sign of being either nervous or on the alert, but your well trained man should not do so; every movement is natural – again as it should be”
[Guardian]
The whole Philby thing has always been hugely overblown. Philby himself has been over-rated, too. Superficially well-educated, yes, but really a rather dogmatic Marxist-Leninist who, under other formative circumstances, might have been like some of the other basically mediocre professional-level bourgeois Englishmen I have met in my life, and who were not in secret-intelligence work but, variously, Roman Catholic converts, and/or military officers or barristers or other activity.
Philby was certainly no great mind, though he evidently thought himself very clever. Likewise, he was a bit of a plodder ideologically.
I recall that Philby wrote in his supposed memoirs (possibly part-ghosted by KGB helpers), My Silent War, or elsewhere, that “you choose your side and stick with it“, i.e. rather as others do to the Labour or Conservative parties, or to (the contemporary British obsession) football clubs. Unthinking loyalty. Stick-in-the-mud loyalty.
The puffing of Philby as the “masterspy”, or even “spymaster”, suited both sides in the Cold War: the Soviet side getting the gloss of having not only suborned Philby and other “Establishment” Englishmen to the Marxist/Soviet cause, but also having outplayed Western intelligence agencies in the spy game.
As for the British part of the Western side, Philby’s prominence could be presented as an example of why pervasive “security” (and the whole Cold War stance) was necessary. Also, his supposed “brilliance” in a way bolstered the reputation of institutions such as the more expensive English schools (Philby was at Westminster School) and, of course, the supposedly elite universities, in particular Cambridge.
The whole “Cambridge spies” story tends to puff the reputation of SIS and MI5 (despite their having been outplayed) by making their role seem terribly important. One scribbler even penned a well-known book called Philby— The Spy Who Betrayed A Generation, as if the Cambridge Spies were pretty much the centrepiece of British history since the 1930s, rather than an obscure footnote to it.
In the 1930s (when Philby started to work for Soviet organizations), there was (in the first half of the decade) the Great Depression, and the initial triumph of National Socialism in Germany. In the middle of the 1930s to 1939, the Spanish Civil War, while in Britain itself, the economy was recovering and society changing .
Then, in the early/mid 1940s, there was the titanic Second World War (in the Soviet Union, the Great Patriotic War).
In Britain, after 1945, there were the great social changes of the 1950s and 1960s. By that time, the “Cambridge Spies” were mostly not even in the UK. Maclean and Burgess had fled in 1951, and Philby was in journalistic exile in the Middle East. The economic and social changes in the UK were the main events, together with the start of the disastrous migration-invasion of non-whites into the UK, and Britain’s retreat from Empire.
The “Cambridge Spies” were not even footnotes to much of that. Near-irrelevant, despite the obsessions of the Westminster Bubblers and newspaper scribblers.
What damaged Britain in the 1940s through to the 1960s, and then on to today, was not a few spies passing on information to the Soviet Union, but the abandonment of Empire, the importation of blacks and browns in vast numbers, the cultural decadence etc.
You often see Philby and his fellow Cambridge spies described as “upper-class” or even “aristocratic”. In fact, not one was of “aristocratic” background, though all (except Cairncross) were affluent or wealthy. Philby’s own father was from an affluent government-connected family [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John_Philby] but a fact generally ignored or covered-up is that Philby’s mother, Dora, was half-Indian, a so-called “chi-chi” (pron. “shi-shi”), which may have subtly affected his loyalties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Philby
General Kalugin, in his memoirs, describes how his superiors had the idea of using Philby, then in Moscow, as a kind of lure for potential agents in the West, by showing that he was respected, had a good life etc. His first meeting with the shambling drunken Philby makes a memorable picture.
Incidentally, Philby never learned to speak or read Russian beyond a rudimentary level, and had English-language books supplied to him via the KGB (presumably via people at the London embassy, and the diplomatic bag).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Kalugin
In the early 1990s, sometime around 1994, I was slightly acquainted with a Russian businessman living in London, and with an office in Regent Street, who had some legal business (I was a barrister at the time). We had lunch at least once at my Inn (of Court), Lincoln’s Inn. I recall that the Spanish waitress was very taken with “Ed” [Edvard] and his rather Scandinavian looks (he was from the Baltic regions) and even asked me later if I might effect an introduction for her (that never happened).
“Ed” was quite open about the fact that, prior to his taking to capitalist business activity, he had been in the KGB, though that would only have been, at a guess, for a relatively few years. He recalled having been at a lecture or two given by Philby in Moscow (he said that that had been at the Lubyanka).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubyanka_Building
Small world. “Six degrees of separation” etc…
Incidentally, those comments in the Guardian from the MI5 surveillance directorate in 1951 do tend to beg the question; after all, if a surveillance target is acting naturally, then either he is not guilty, or is literally acting (and/or has been trained to act) naturally, so in fact may be guilty. If, though, the target looks nervous, looks for reflections in shop windows etc, does that mean that he is guilty, or is he just a nervous wreck and/or afraid of being thought guilty? Wilderness of mirrors.
Tweets seen
The sheer hypocrisy of the Labour Friends of Israel “Labour” government is simply unbelievable. Surely Liz Kendall, Rachel Reeves, Torsten Bell, Starmer-stein etc can see that? Or are they so removed from truth and decency that they cannot see it? That might be even more alarming.
I should imagine that even Labour-inclined voters will be voting Reform UK (or staying home) at the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, in order to send a message (and/or a kick) to this horrifyingly callous and irredeemably incompetent misgovernment.
As to Conservative Party loyalists in the area, I should say that the Cons have no chance— so vote Reform in order to stick it to fake Labour.
“Rachel from Accounts” knows no more about economics than George Osborne during 2010-2015. Both promulgating counter-productive fake “austerity”.
“Given that there is a lot of talk about changes to special educational needs provision and reform plans for the NHS, we should worry about what the government might focus on next. Equally alarming, it seems to me, is a belief in Downing Street that reviving the UK demands embracing the wonders of artificial intelligence, which Keir Starmer believes will have an almost magical effect on everything from social work to education, and realise his new dream of “totally rewiring government”. Because this is an administration so lacking in everyday humanity, that is a much more scary prospect than he and his colleagues seem to realise.“
[John Harris in The Guardian]
I should not be surprised to find (if I am still around) that, somewhere down the line, in 5+ years’ time, the members of the present Cabinet will find themselves up against a wall.
Send her back to Nigeria.
So 1930s Germany encourages Jews to depart = bad, but 2020s Israel encourages Palestinian Arabs to depart = good?
Will the new office be called something like “Palestinian Resettlement”?
Sumy Oblast or region is in NE Ukraine. Sumy city is NNW of Kharkov; about 150 miles from Kharkov by road but only about 90 miles as the crow flies. About 200 miles east of Kiev.
So Russian forces are in Sumy Oblast now. There seem to be Russian advances in all material parts of the overall front. Kiev-regime forces are falling back.
This blog has been referring to fake Labour as “Labour-label” since its inception in late 2016, certainly since 2019..
Why do many think it impossible that “the lion will lie down with the lamb” in a future age? All things are possible.
Talking point
More tweets
See previous blog posts for more, using the search box.
See also:
For those who are unaware of the outline of James Wilson’s (now-successful) libel case against three defendants (all Jews; in one case, possibly only a part-Jew), the defendants were advised and/or represented by Jewish solicitors and barristers who seem to have been, all or variously, professionally negligent and/or incompetent.
Mark Lewis and Daniel Berke were the main solicitors for the defendants, Beth Grossman of Doughty Street Chambers was the barrister (possibly the only barrister; I do not know, and only heard of her recently, via Wilson’s Twitter/X account and Substack blog).
“Lewis’s reputation“? Ha ha! Only ignorant fools think that that is worth more than a plugged nickel. I have blogged many times about him, over many years; he has never once threatened to sue me (no doubt partly by reason of my impecuniosity, but truth as defence –or other defences— may also have much to do with it).
See also:
Feel free to republish any of my blog posts. After all, I was a barrister until a pack of Jews procured my wrongful and, it turned out later, actually unlawful disbarment (in 2016): see
Ha. Amusing. As a matter of fact, I myself appeared as Counsel in the High Court several times before Sedley, a High Court judge at the time (early 1990s), notably in a case involving a former member of the Angolan Secret Service.
I doubt that there are many barristers who have never suffered excruciating embarrassment in open court. For example…
Late tweets
“They” are just appalling.
Late music
History moves on. Life moves on.
Ian Robert Millard 