Special Bulletin: Response to Denis Lenihan

I thank Denis Lenihan for his kind words, and for his thorough and perceptive investigation into the stories about Hugh Shillito, Len Beurton and Sonia. I sincerely welcome such challenges, as that is the only way that knowledge will evolve. I would be the first to jettison any of my pet theories should new evidence to undermine it arrive [Is this right? You don’t need to go overboard! Ed.], and I am always prepared to modify my conclusions in the light of new facts.

But I wonder whether it would still be a bit premature to do so. Denis’s counter essentially boils down to Shillito’s slowness on the uptake, in pursuing, in September 1942, a request for telephone taps, and inspection of correspondence at 134 Oxford Road, Kidlington, when Len Beurton and Sonia had evidently both moved into new accommodation at Avenue Road, George Street, in Summertown, Oxford. That would (Denis claims) invalidate any suggestion that Len was using the Kidlington address for serious wireless work, while Sonia’s establishment of a wireless apparatus (receiver/sender) at the Laskis’ cottage was intended as a decoy. (I have since studied the file on the Loefflers at KV 2/2927: in fact my analysis simply required a close re-examination of KV 6/41.) Yet we need to ponder over a few questions.

• Was Shillito ‘dim’? In general, I would say ‘definitely not’. Pincher described him as ‘terrier-like’. He engaged in a very serious study of the Oliver Green case, and his analysis of it brought him to the attention of Director-General of MI5, David Petrie, for whom he wrote a special report in August 1942. Yet we must recall his career history, and the reorganization of MI5 in July 1941. His initial treatment of Sonia is admittedly casual. Soon after her arrival, in March 1941, Shillito was informing Ryde, of Special Branch in Reading, that he considered that no further action be taken over her, but that ‘an eye should be kept on her’. We can also read that Shillito at that time passes the file on to B4, ‘as her father, Professor Kuczynski, holds Communist views’. This judgment, and the transfer of paperwork, are not surprising, since Shillito was at that time representing B10E, which, according to Curry, was responsible for ‘Preliminary Investigation of Cases of German Espionage in the U.K.’. I do not understand why a specialized section was required for this task, but the implication is clear: suspected spies were considered in terms of their being Nazi agents, and B4 presumably took care of those with communist links. In any case, B10 was disbanded in July 1941, and Shillito became a member of the new F Division. Shillito thus became detached from the Sonia investigation, which was handled by the not very determined Vesey, and Shillito  correctly focused on the Oliver Green network until Len arrived from Switzerland in July 1942. (Pincher makes no mention of Vesey, so far as I can gather.) Shillito then started to pick up the pieces.  He soon came to the conclusion that Sonia and Len Beurton were probably agents of the Comintern, yet the Beurton files are conspicuously lacking in any coverage from Vesey, or any other B4A officer from this point, as if Shillito, Vesey and others were all being discouraged from peering any further. For what it is worth, Roger Hollis, having earlier expressed enthusiasm for Shillito’s work, complained to Guy Liddell on December 9, 1944, that Shillito was ‘lazy’ – a palpable untruth, but, since that judgment was prompted by a request for Shillito’s assistance from Anthony Blunt, the motivation behind the characterisation must be questionable. In any case, Shillito became very frustrated, and left MI5 before October 1945.

• Why would Shillito want to pursue Beurton in Kidlington, when it was apparent that the Beurtons had moved to Summertown? There is no doubt that Sonia was living at Kidlington in July 1942, when Len arrived at Poole Airport from Lisbon (on the 29^th). Len knew of the address: he and Sonia had exchanged letters (although, rather strangely, Sonia could reproduce in her memoir only hers, not his). But note that Shillito, in the report of November 30, 1942, indicates that ‘Beurton has gone to live there (Kidlington)’, as if he had intelligence that Len had made the move to set up there alone since arriving in the United Kingdom. He does not say that ‘the Beurtons live there’: he talks about ‘this man’s number’, not ‘the Beurtons’ number’. He must surely have known about the move to Summertown by then. His report of December 19, 1942, shows that he is familiar with the claims that Sonia had been making about Len’s detention in Switzerland. If, as Denis  claims, he was misled by a previous paper on file, an intercepted letter from Lisbon to Beurton, he would have seen the other information concerning Avenue Cottage. In July 1943, Shillito even states to Curry that the Beurtons ‘have been living together since their return to this country’, which is wrong in two aspects. Was that simply careless? Or was he covering up an earlier mistake for Curry’s sake? Whatever the explanation, it does show that he was aware of their shared address in Summertown.

• Why would Shillito duplicate and overlap the surveillance work of Vesey? Vesey was in B4A, under Major Whyte (head of B4A), and Major Dick White (chief of B4, responsible for ‘Espionage’). Shillito was F2B, responsible for Comintern agents, under Roger Hollis, head of F2, at that time reporting to John Curry, who in May 1943 was seconded to SIS, allowing for Hollis’s promotion. Thus Shillito was undertaking a completely separate investigation. By December 1942, he was advertising himself as F2B/C, thus incorporating ‘Russian Intelligence’ as well. (On June 23, Anthony Blunt had informed his Soviet masters that Shillito was responsible for counter-intelligence against the Soviets.) One might well ask, however, why the task of counter-espionage was so dramatically split: it was because Petrie, in 1941, had wanted B Division to focus solely on enemy (i.e. Nazi) spies, and have other subversive threats handled by a different group – hence the creation of F Division. Yet the fragmentation of the attention to Soviet agents clearly turned out to be a dreadful mistake.

• Would Petrie and Liddell not have been aware of the possibly duplicated effort? Almost certainly. There is evidence in the archive of Shillito’s working closely with Petrie, who admired Shillito’s investigation into Green. Roger Hollis was indeed away on convalescence for several months in the summer of 1942, and his stand-in was the not totally impressive Roger Fulford. It seems as if F Division was working closely with B Division – or, at least, some effort was being made. During the war, Liddell and Hollis met regularly. Hollis returned from his illness just before October 7, 1942, on which date  he dined with Liddell: they discussed continued Comintern activity. On November 29, Shillito passed to both Liddell and Hollis his suspicions of Sonia and Len, and Hollis enthusiastically received Shillito’s report on Green a few days later. On December 20, Shillito made his first definitive assertion that he thought Len was a spy. Yet we then have to deal with the a very provocative series of events: the inquiry into Sonia within B4A is cooled, but as soon as Shillito becomes involved, writes a very well received report on Oliver Green, and is then led to the Sonia case through Len, his energies also appear to be quashed.

• What evidence is there that Len ‘moved back’ to Kidlington? Admittedly little. But a close inspection points to a minor paradox. In her memoir, Sonia informs us that the owners of the bungalow gave her and Len notice, as they required it for their own use, and that she and her husband consequently found ‘Avenue Cottage’. Since JM (John Marriott?) of B2A (under Maxwell Knight’s ‘Agents’ – another group with a finger in the pie) made a request for correspondence to be intercepted at Avenue Cottage from September 15, the Beurtons must have found new premises quite easily. That was an achievement in those days: Sonia had described how difficult it was finding the Kidlington bungalow. Thus the example of letters arriving between September 19 and October 3 proves that Len and Sonia were installed in Summertown at least by mid-September. [You weaken your own case, Denis, by indicating that the surveillance occurred between August 19 and September 3, when it in fact took place a month later.] On September 9, when Vesey asks Michael Ryde, of Special Branch in Reading, to contact Beurton so that he and an officer from SIS may interview him, Vesey gives him the Kidlington address. We must bear in mind that Shillito was not the prime Sonia-watcher: when Pincher lists his claims that Sonia was a probable spy, I believe he should have been identifying Shillito’s suspicions about her husband. Yet Shillito kept track of their movements, as his forwarding a copy of the notorious March 3, 1943 letter from the Oxford constabulary shows. He was informed about the discovery of the wireless set by Major Phipps. Why would Shillito, if he was mistaken about the Beurtons’ move, assume that only Len had moved back to Kidlington, and specifically mention the need to intercept Len Beurton’s communications alone, instead of those of the pair of them?

• Why did the GPO not respond sensibly to the conflicting requests? We note that both Vesey’s and Shillito‘s requests were sent to Colonel Allan of the G.P.O. One might have expected Allan to have noticed the anomaly, and pointed it out to Shillito. But he apparently did not. Allan would also, had new owners moved in (as Sonia claimed) have informed MI5 that their subject of surveillance was no longer at that address. But he did not. It is not surprising that Shillito’s searches were ‘unremunerative’, as Beurton would not have been expecting any mail at the Kidlington address, but it is surprising that the GPO kept open a watch on the address without any mail at all being recorded. Nevertheless (contrary to your claim, Denis), a letter to Beurton from Geneva was registered and opened on March 9, 1943, in which the sender laments lack of any communication from Beurton. So the search was not entirely fruitless.

• Why did the Beurtons move to Summertown? In her memoir, Sonia writes that ‘the owners of the bungalow gave us notice as they required it for their own use’. This message is intensified in John Green’s A Political Family, where he writes that ‘on top of it all, and before he even had time to unpack his bags, the owners of the cottage decided to give them notice as they required it themselves’. That suggests a speedy departure, perhaps in a matter of days. Chapman Pincher judges that it is all a fraud: “Sonia was to explain that she moved into Oxford because the owner of her Kidlington bungalow wished to return there, but that may have been another part of her legend.” Pincher suggests that moving to Oxford made it easier for Sonia to meet Fuchs in Birmingham. Yet he overlooks the fact that Kidlington had a train station that lay directly on the line between Birmingham and Oxford. There may have been another reason, as I outlined. Moreover, Len Beurton received a hefty tax demand from the Inland Revenue days after he arrived. If SIS had truly been managing the premises as a safe house, they would have wanted to divert attraction from it.

• Why would Shillito behave so obstinately over the Summertown address? I accept there are some puzzling aspects to Shillito’s behavior. It carries on until December 1943, when Shillito requests that the Home Office Warrant for Kidlington be cancelled. Moreover, Shillito’s wording is often so obscure and unusual that one wonders what was going through his mind. For example, he writes to Denniston of E5 on August 16, 1943 (after another MI5 reorganisation: E5 is Alien Control, under Colonel Brooke-Booth), seeking opinions on the Beurtons from any contact the group has ‘in their circle’. He continues to maintain, however, that Len lives at 134 Oxford Road, while adding that the Kuczynskis live next door to Neville Laski. Maybe he did not want to give anything away, but his assertion that Len had gone to ‘live’ in Kidlington, while maintain a residence with his wife, without any evidence of his following up to see what was happening in Kidlington, is very problematic. Len Beurton, if he did spend time at Kidlington, had to abandon it by late 1943, as he was enlisted in the RAF as a trainee wireless operator, and thus the trail went cold.

One lesson from all of this is the need to keep in mind a clear understanding of the organisation of MI5 when trawling through the archives. There is a crisper story to be told about the shared responsibilities of B and F Divisions in the surveillance of the Beurtons, and how Sonia appeared to be protected by some agency at a level higher than Hollis.

In the meantime, I believe that part of the key to unlocking the Riddle of Kidlington must be determining the identity of the owners of 134 Oxford Road, and who lived there immediately before and after Sonia took up the lease. If, as I suspect, the domicile was an SIS safe house (like that of the Skripals in Salisbury), it may have been registered as being owned by a friendly name. (We should recall that two of Sonia’s residences were owned by Neville Laski, and the MP for Oxford University, Arthur Salter.) Two-and-a-half years ago, I pursued this line of inquiry, and sent a letter to HM Land Registry Citizen Centre in Gloucester, as an on-line search had indicated that the records did not go back very far, and offered to pay for a professional search. I never received a reply.

And then, about a year later, I received an out-of-the-blue email from a coldspur-watcher, Mr Alan Anderton, after which (for one day) we held an intense discussion. I reproduce it in full here (with minor edits):

Hello Mr Percy

I have been reading your Misdefending the Realm and also Sonia’s Radio. An impressive amount of work has gone into them.

There was a comment in Sonia’s Radio about finding the owners of 134 Oxford Road, well I can’t quite do that but the 1939 Register of England and Wales is now available online. I took a look and in Enumeration District DJZA and there is 134 Oxford Road in Kidlington.

The 1939 Register is a bit weird, they used it to keep tabs on people , my parents married in 1950 and her new surname has been pencilled in on my mum’s entry.

So there is a Sidney and Violet Haynes, rather getting on in years and presumably their granddaughter Diana Haynes who was 21. The black line usually means it was a child. The Heineken and Carne are the names of Diana’s first and second husbands , I found a marriage to a Cyril Carne in 1958 but no idea who Heininen was. There is also a reference to “RADIO SHOP” written in, I guess at some point after 1939 she started working at a radio shop , bit convenient perhaps.

Anyhow, as usual in your line of investigation , this probably poses more questions than it answers. If I could be of any further use you are welcome to ask , I have a subscription to Ancestry which is the reason I can find this

Best wishes , Alan Anderton

(Percy to Anderton, 8/8)

Dear Alan (if I may),

How kind of you to get in touch with me! I hope you are enjoying the slog through MTR. Yes, there was an enormous number of sources to go through, and the process continues . . .

It is a fascinating entry you sent me. I must confess, when I first looked at it, I assumed that the items ’88’, ’94’ and ’21’ must be years-of-birth, especially as one would expect the wife in those days to be younger than the husband, and which would make the arrangement more credible. But I am sure you are right, familiar with the column headings. Yet what does the ‘July’ indicate, overwriting a numerical ’11’?

And the black line means what? That someone was living there who had subsequently died? And is it not amazing that officials would use the Register to record facts about persons who had subsequently moved on elsewhere? Did they do this for everybody, I wonder, or only those who ‘needed to be kept an eye on’? Heininen appears to be a Finnish name.

The radio shop connection is odd, is it not? So it all does come back to whoever the owner of the property was, who next leased it to the Beurtons. I never heard back from the Land Registry  . . . It will probably have to wait until my next trip to England.

Please let me know of any fresh information you turn up on ancestry.com or elsewhere. Do you have a professional interest in all this spy stuff? It amazes me how many unexplained riddles still exist after all these years.

Best wishes, Tony.

(Anderton to Percy, 8/8)

Hello Tony

You may of course call me Alan , the 1939 Register is entirely weird. It was used until at least the 1950s and was updated. My mum’s entry was annotated with the date 12.10.56 which means nothing to me (I was 5 at the time). She certainly was nobody the powers would need to keep tabs on. The original entries were quite heavily modified after the Register was compiled so the JULY has been added sometime afterwards as has the RADIO SHOP entry. The 88 , 94 and 21 are the years of birth – where JULY has been added I think the 11 is actually a crossing out , it is usually the birth day and month and. The black line is usually children under a certain age , something to do with not being released for 100 years , or as it seems 90 now. Why all three birthdates would be changed to JULY is a mystery.

There is also a CR283 and 5.9.83 OX plus MIC where the address goes. They only wrote the address once , all others at the same address had a blank entry there. Diana May H Carne died in Q3 1986 aged 65 in Cheltenham , maybe she moved there in 1983 ? It is suspicious that this list was apparently updated for several decades after it was produced. I have to say that it seems that Diana was still living there until 1958 at least. My mum’s entry has her new surname (acquired in 1950) and we lived there until 1957. I would hazard a guess that Mr & Mrs Beurton stayed there along with Diana and possibly Mr Heininen though I don’t know when Diana became Mrs Heininen. This is only conjecture based on what my mother’s entry looks like.

Sorry I can’t help with the name of the owner , the Land Registry moves in mysterious ways. I have no professional interest but have always been intrigued by the bland statement that there were no Nazi spies transmitting from the UK during the war other than the double cross ones. It seems the Germans had more than one source of intelligence here though they may have been sending less than accurate data. Having read your research it is hard to see how they can justify such statements since it seems all and sundry could transmit with almost impunity.

It may be that Diana moved out for a while , it may be that the Beurtons lived with her , maybe the other Haynes had passed on or moved away but I feel certain that Diana was there in 1958 but I have been known to be wrong before. Having had another quick look it seems that Diana and Cyril Carne were living in Western Road Cheltenham in 1962 and 1968 (from the electoral roll). As usual, every answer generates more questions 

It is a national scandal that the commies were able to penetrate our supposed security services to such a level, if you wrote a thriller with that story you would be laughed out the door.

I will try and dig out something about the uses the 1939 Register was put to 

Best wishes , Alan

(Percy to Anderton, 8/8)

Thanks, Alan.

I just read up the explanation of the National Registry at TNA. I had never realized how it was undertaken and then modified later. I understand better now why they kept tabs on everybody.

So Diane was certainly a daughter of Sydney and Violet, if those numbers are birth-years, not ages? Obviously more useful to maintain an absolute. You seem confident that Diane was still at that address: do you think her parents were, too? If not, why not? The fact that there were other residents there would rather scotch my theory that it was a safe-house for Len Beurton – unless, of course, they were complicit somehow. I shall have to return to this topic when I have finished my research into the radio-detection of the Abwehr agents – which is all related, as you know!

I am now delving into the very mysterious cases of Bjornson/Hans Schmidt and ter Braak (Fukken) who, according to some sources, were for a while able to transmit undetected from English soil in 1940/41. I believe MI5 was being rather devious in the records on ter Braak that were eventually released. Look out for the September Coldspur for an update.

Best wishes, Tony.

(Anderton to Percy,8/8)

Hi Tony 

Yes , they are birth years and Diana was born in 1921. I suspect they were somehow involved , she presumably went to work in a radio shop after September 1939 and then ends up in Cheltenham in perhaps the 1950s. I can’t say for sure if they were still there when the Beurtons moved in but somebody somewhere was keeping tabs on just about everyone , probably the local councils. I can’t find any trace of her marrying Mr Heininen , maybe she went to Finland.

MI5 being devious, I’m shocked

Have a good evening , Alan

(Anderton to Percy, 8/8)

Hi Tony

Just found something on lostcousins dot com

When the National Health Service was founded in 1948 the National Register was used as the basis of the NHS Central Register, and this continued in to the early 1990s. As a result many name changes were recorded as the result of marriages (and divorces) that took place in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

I can’t believe they were still updating that register in 1970 , that is extremely weird – still , I suppose they couldn’t use the normal census data so were stuck with this National Register.

It’s a strange old world, Alan

(Percy to Anderton, 8/8)

Now when did computers come in, Alan? You’d think the NHS would have digitized all this at some stage. I wonder what they kept and what they dropped . . . I suspect the answer must be out there somewhere.

I enjoyed our exchanges today, Tony.

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Diana Haynes? Heininen? Carne? Can anyone shed any light on her?

And then, a few weeks ago, I also received the name of a sleuth who might be able to track down the owners, this person having performed similar work. He expressed great interest, but was completing another project. And I suspect the virus pandemic will close down any research for a while.

The investigation continues  . . .

(I shall respond to Denis’s other points later.)