Notorious MI6 double agent George Blake died on Boxing Day at the age of 98
He was feted in Russia after escaping from a prison term for spying for the USSR
A newly uncovered report from 1961 said he was unreliable and very un-British
The report said it had been a mistake for MI6 to recruit Blake in the first place
IT WAS one of those gloriously serendipitous coincidences. In the Morning Star of December 28 late last year Nick Wright gave us an analytical obituary of spy and novelist John Le Carre and the writer’s undoubted deep understanding of the Cold War.
In the same edition, on the paper’s news pages was the report that George Blake, one of Russia’s best known spies in Britain, had died in his Moscow “dacha,” or country cottage at the age of 98.
The news item reported tributes to the former Soviet spy and Russian national hero George Blake and outlined the basics of Blake’s amazing story.
by Binoy Kampmark / December 29th, 2020
Filling the espionage ranks with legions of the non-belonging comes with its share of risk. The process is counter-intuitive, putting stock in skill and aptitude above the potential compromise of loyalty and divergence. Eventually, such a recruit might find a set of closely guarded principles.
The son of a Sephardic Jew and Dutch Protestant might well count as excellent material for British intelligence but George Behar ended up condemned in Britain and the toast of the now defunct Soviet Union. George Blake, as he came to be known, along with that other great British export of betrayal, Kim Philby, was always convinced that to authentically betray, you had to belong. That belonging came in loyalty to the Soviet Union. As Russian President Vladimir Putin declared solemnly on Blake’s passing this month, “The memory of this legendary person will be preserved forever in our hearts.”
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