LOCAL HISTORY
Spies: The real ‘M’
Maxwell Knight was a
paradox, writes Henry
Hemming. A jazz obsessive
and nature enthusiast
(he is the author of the
defi nitive work on how to
look after a gorilla), he is
also seen as being one of
MI5’s greatest spymasters.
H
e was a man who did more
than any other to break
up British fascism during
the Second World War – in
spite of having once been a British fascist
himself. But his most famous operation
targeted Soviet spies, as you will see below.
He wa s known to his agents and
colleagues simply as M, and
was rumoured to be part
of the inspiration for
the character M in the
James Bond series.
What few people
know about the real M
is that the espionage
operation for which he
would become most well-
known was very nearly
undone by the popularity of
a sports club in Ealing.
In 1931, Maxwell
Knight recruited
a pair of female
secretaries as
MI5 agents. Both
were told to
start attending communist
meetings in London in the
hope one or both of them
would be taken on by an
important communist as
his secretary. Over time,
they might then learn
more about the British
Communist Party’s links
to Moscow and any illegal
Soviet espionage taking
place in Britain.
It worked. One of these
secretaries, an MI5 agent
called Olga Gray, was taken on by Percy
Glading, a Londoner who was secretly
working for Moscow. Olga came from a
respectable, Conservative-voting family in
Birmingham. But as Glading’s secretary she
had to pretend to be someone who had
been won over entirely by the intellectual
appeal of communism. Olga was a talented
agent, and the ruse seemed
to be working well – until
one day she heard
about the Ealing
Ladies Hockey Club.
Olga could not
resist the urge to
join this lively
sporting club in Ealing
even though playing
hockey with public-
school-educated girls
from west London was
not the kind of thing that
would exactly enhance
her cover; in fact, it could
undermine it entirely. As
well as being a resourceful
MI5 agent, Olga was
handy with a hockey stick.
She went straight into
the fi rst XI of the Ealing
Ladies Hockey Club and was even selected
to take part in a Middlesex County trial.
When it was Olga’s turn to host the
club’s committee, several years later, the
meeting had to be held elsewhere because,
by then, Olga was in hiding. Only days
before that gathering took place she had
been the star witness in MI5’s prosecution
of a Soviet spy-ring centred on the
Woolwich Arsenal, where she was referred
to only as ‘Miss X’. Olga’s membership
of the Ealing Ladies Hockey Club may
have weakened her cover as an ardent
Marxist revolutionary, but ultimately her
skill as an agent, and the experience of
her spymaster, Maxwell Knight, or ‘M’,
ensured that she was able to
complete her mission.
Henry Hemming is
More
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the author of M:
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Maxwell
Knight, MI5’s
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Greatest
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cludin
history in
(published in May by
was
’s medal
Penguin); which is also
war hero
eBay
due to be turned into a TV
found on
series. Dr Jonathan Oates is
to give a talk on the subject at
Ealing Central Library on 13 June.
around ealing
June 2017
29