John Bingham (Lord Clanmorris)

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John Bingham, Lord Clanmorris, (1908-1988) also known as Michael Ward, was a British novelist and intelligence officer, reputed to be the inspiration for the character George Smiley, created by his former colleague David Cornwell (John Le Carré).[1]

Bingham was the son of Maurice Bingham, Sixth Lord Clanmorris and Leila Cloete, a descendant of one of the earliest Dutch settlers in South Africa.[2] A great-grandfather on his father's side founded the first Orange Lodge.[3]

He was educated at Cheltenham College.[4]

Through a family contact with Lord Rothermere, Bingham found a job on the Hull Daily Mail in 1930.[5] He moved to the Sunday Dispatch in 1933.[6]

He was briefly a member of the British Democratic Party in the 1930s, a move which led to criticism from his uncle, the MP for Belfast East, Herbert Dixon.[7]

MI5 B Division

It was through Dixon's contacts that Bingham gained an entrée to MI5, using suspicions about what he later decided was an innocent German acquaintance.[8] He was subsequently interviewed by Maxwell Knight, who introduced himself as Captain King.[9]

After Knight was authorised to recruit five new officers by the head of MI5 B Division, Guy Liddell, on 18 June 1940, Bingham was one of the first approached.[10] For much of World War Two, he worked as Maxwell Knight's deputy in B5(b) section at 308 Hood House, Dolphin Square.[11]

However, among his first tasks, carried out directly for Liddell, was the creation of an MI5 press section, which would eventually be run by Derek Tangye.[12] He subsequently became heavily involved in MI5's Double Cross deception operations against German intelligence.[13] He interrogated potential agents among aliens being processed at the Royal Patriotic Schools.[14] He also posed as an Abwehr officer to trap British nationals attempting spy for the Germans, notably Irma Stapleton, arrested on 19 November 1941.[15]

In 1942, he conducted security investigations on General Charles De Gaulle, along with Bill Younger, and on Lady Diana Cooper.[16] Using the name 'John Bentley', he also investigated the Portuguese diplomat Rogeiro Menezes.[17]

In the summer of 1944, Bingham was ordered to continue associating with right-wing pro-German groups, despite the imminence of German defeat.[18] With B Division work winding down, Bingham was seconded to the Allied Control Council in Germany in 1945, on the initiative of Guy Liddell.[19] Based in Gehrden, Hanover, Bingham spent much of his time interviewing refugees and attempting to weed out Soviet agents.[20]

Return to Fleet Street

He returned to London in June 1948.[21] He rejoined the staff of the Sunday Dispatch under editor Charles Eade, a former PR advisor to Lord Mountbatten.[22] One of his first article was a detailed attack on the career of Aneurin Bevan, prompted by Bevan's attack on conservative voters as 'lower than vermin'.[23]

MI5 F4

In the summer of 1950, Bingam was invited by Maxwell Knight to rejoin his MI5 section, now known as F4.[24] Concurrently with his return to MI5, Bingham embarked on a career as a novelist, with My Name is Michael Sibley about an innocent man accused of murder.[25]

Among the agents recruited by Bingham was a family friend, Louis Denaro, assistant managing director of International Nickel.[26] he later recruited Denaro's Czech contact, Emil Smidak.[27]

In 1952, he recruited Julie Pirie, the former secretary of the Duchess of Atholl to infiltrate the Communist Party of Great Britain.[28] This led to Operation Tie Pin and Operation Party Piece, on the latter of which Bingham worked with Arthur Spencer of MI6.[29]

According to Mike Hughes, Bingham became head of MI5's F4 agent-running section after Knight's retirement in the mid-1950s.[30] However, Michael Jago claims that, despite Knight's wish for Bingham to succeed him, he was content to remain a senior agent-runner within the section.[31] He worked closely with David Cornwell (John Le Carré) who joined MI5 in 1958.[32] Their friendship would later deteriorate as Le Carré's character George Smiley, partly based on Bingham, appeared in a series of books that gave a more morally ambiguous picture of the intelligence services, and which eclipsed Bingham's own literary achievements.[33] Bingham is reported to have claimed before his death, that Le Carré worked for Maxwell Knight while a student at Oxford.[34]

Bingham inherited the title of Lord Clanmorris in 1960.[35]

In response to the satire boom of the early 1960s, Bingham created a new subsection of F4, entitled F4/ARTS (colloquially 'FARTS').[36]

According to biographer Michael Jago, Bingham may have interrogated Anatoli Golitsyn alongside Arthur Martin in 1963.[37] Bingham was commissioned to research Golitsyn's biography as a result of the controversy about his far-reaching claims, which included allegations casting suspicion on Harold Wilson.[38]

Bingham's planned retirement in 1968, was delayed by the onset of the Troubles in Northern Ireland:

He had family and contacts there and, although his attempts at an Ulster accent were notoriously dreadful, he was the obvious officer to gather intelligence on the spot.[39]

He made several visits to Northern Ireland over the next six years, where despite his family connections, he regarded unionists as intransigent.[40] By the early 1970s, 'using a network of contacts supplied by a relation, he gathered a mass of useful background information about Ulster'.[41]

MI5's increased emphasis on domestic counter-subversion under Michael Hanley increased Bingham's prestige within the service during this period.[42]

According to Michael Jago, Bingham distrusted Harold Wilson but was nevertheless involved in infiltrating a 1974 right-wing anti-Wilson plot which included his distant relative Lord Lucan.[43]

Bingham's last official task at MI5, was dealing with the fallout from the 1979 exposure of Anthony Blunt, as liaison with Fleet Street.[44]

He retired from MI5 in 1979.[35] he nevertheless continued to carry out occasional assignments for a further three years.[45] In 1982, he confirmed that Betty Gordon had been an MI5 agent in the Communist Party in the 1950s.[46]

Notes

  1. Smiley's model, LA Times, 23 December 2007.
  2. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.15.
  3. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.208.
  4. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.22.
  5. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.58.
  6. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.62.
  7. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.81.
  8. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.81.
  9. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.83.
  10. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.87.
  11. Anthony Masters, The Man who was M: The Life of Maxwell Knight, The real-like spymaster who inspired Ian Fleming, Grafton Books, p.101.
  12. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.89.
  13. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.91.
  14. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.92.
  15. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.95.
  16. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.99.
  17. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, pp.99-100.
  18. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.110.
  19. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, pp.111.
  20. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.139.
  21. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.133.
  22. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.139.
  23. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.141.
  24. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.147.
  25. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.155.
  26. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.159.
  27. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.160.
  28. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.161.
  29. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.171.
  30. Mike Hughes, Spies at Work, Chapter Nine.
  31. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.183.
  32. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.183.
  33. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.191.
  34. Le Carre draws a veil over a lost chapter, Sunday Times, 5 January 1992.
  35. 35.0 35.1 The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Andrew Lownie Literary Agency, accessed 5 June 2015.
  36. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.198.
  37. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.201.
  38. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.202.
  39. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.208.
  40. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.208.
  41. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.226.
  42. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.226.
  43. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.233.
  44. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.238.
  45. Michael Jago, The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Biteback Publishing, 2013, p.238.
  46. Britain's Communists infiltrated in 1950s, United Press International, 23 January 1982.