Common Cause: UK anti-communist organisation

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Common Cause and IRIS

The failure of the Freedom and Democracy Trust seems to have deterred the TUC members from creating another body so directly linked to the TUC General Council.(79) Instead, some individual members of the General Council, who had been involved in the Freedom and Democracy Trust fiasco, joined a private group with the same anti-communist aims. This was Common Cause, whose origins are to be found in the merging of two quite distinct political strands.

The AEU's 'Club'

One strand was the clandestine anti-communist (and anti-socialist) organisation in British trade unions, of which the best example is to found within the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU). Within the AEU,

'An anti-Communist organisation was established at meetings of the fifty-two-member national committee,

their ruling body in 1943 and 1944, and was followed a few years later by a loose national organisation, working in secret and known as "the side" or the "antis" which succeeded in removing a good many communists from office.'(80)

This was the organisation which later came to be known as 'the Club' or 'the Group', and 'defined its purpose in terms of preventing a Communist takeover of the union'.(81)


'In the mid 1950s ..... the Right-wing members of the Executive Council began attending the factional meeting. In this period also a National Committee "Club" organiser was discreetly appointed from amongst the regular delegates to tighten the organisation of the Right-wing faction(82)....At all National Committee meetings during the period from 1956 to 1970 the right-wing controlled all places on the Standing Orders Committee, and J. Ramsden, organiser of the National Committee "Club" for nine years, was also Chairman of its Standing Orders Committee for seven of them. With [President] Carron in the Chair at the National Committee and the union Secretaryship also held by a "Club" member for the whole of the period, procedural control by the Right was overwhelming.'(83)


The late Ernie Roberts MP quotes from a report of a 1951 meeting of 'the Club' (infiltrated by a member of the left in the union), and notes that the principal figure was Cecil Hallett, then AEU General Secretary.(84)

Common Cause

This clandestine trade union anti-socialism joined up with an Anglo-American anti-communist group called Common Cause. The American group was formed in January 1947 as Common Cause Incorporated, by Mrs [[Natalie Wales Latham]] (nee Paine). Among the great and the good on its letterhead National Council were Adolph Berle Jnr, Max Eastman, Sumner Welles and Hodding Carter. Another well-known member was Clare Booth Luce, wife of the owner of Time, Henry Luce, and later US Ambassador to Italy. In his biography of Mrs Luce, Alden Hatch notes that as early as 1946, before its official launch, Common Cause had established liaison with the anti-Soviet group, Russian Solidarists, better known as NTS, and that John Foster Dulles was the organisation's 'unofficial adviser'.(85) Hatch also notes that Mrs Wales Latham became Lady Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton - the only link I am aware of between the US and UK groups. For when the British Common Cause was formally launched in 1952, its first joint chairs were John Brown, ex General Secretary of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation and member of the TUC General Council and the self-same Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton MP.(86)

The British Common Cause, however, had been in existence for some years before its official launch, originally very much as the vehicle of Dr. C. A. Smith, one of the more interesting mavericks of the British Left in the 20th century. Smith met Trotsky in the 1933, was Chairman of the Independent Labour Party from 39-41, quit and joined Common Wealth as its Research Officer in 1941. When some of the Common Wealth party left to join the Labour Party, Smith became Chair of Common Wealth. As the nature of the Stalinist takeover of Eastern Europe became clear in 1947, Smith tried to take Common Wealth with him in his increasingly anti-Soviet stance. They baulked and eventually Smith left the party and joined or formed - which is not clear - Common Cause in Easter 1948.(87)


The British League for European Freedom

Whatever the British Common Cause amounted to in 1948, four years before its official launch, it had joined forces with the British League for European Freedom (BLEF), the first organisation formed in this country in direct response to the Soviet Union's takeover in Eastern Europe. The BLEF had been initiated in 1944 by a quartet of Tory MP's, including Victor Raikes, a pre-war member of the Imperial Policy Group.(88) Despite the dominance of Tory MPs, the BLEF attracted a trio of Labour MPs: Ivor Thomas (who defected to the Tories in 1950 after the publication of his book The Socialist Tragedy); George Dallas, former TUC General Council member and Labour MP, Chair of the Labour Party's International Committee during the war; and Richard Stokes MP. Stokes was a 'socialist' of the most idiosyncratic kind, having been a member of the anti-Semitic Right Club before the war.(89) Although information on these groups in this period is very thin, it is clear that Common Cause and the BLEF were very close. In 1950, for example, Common Cause published a pamphlet, Communism and Democracy, by Smith, in which he said he was writing as a member of the BLEF. The two groups shared an office in Elizabeth Street in London donated by the wealthy Duke of Westminster.(90)

The Duchess of Atholl, one of the founders of the BLEF, notes in her autobiography that the decline in the BLEF's 'political work' was attributable to the arrival of Common Cause, and from then on the BLEF 'concentrated its efforts on bringing home to people the unhappy plight of the many Displaced Persons still in Germany.'(91) This is something of a euphemism for the BLEF's role as support group for Eastern European exile groups such as the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) then being run by the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). The BLEF produced an offshoot, the Scottish League for European Freedom, headed by Victor Raikes' colleague in the Imperial Policy Group, the Earl of Mansfield. In 1950 the Scottish League organised a conference in Edinburgh for Eastern European exiles, many of them Nazi war criminals and collaborators, who had been recruited by SIS. They had been moved to the UK during the scramble at the end of World War 2 by the British and American governments for good, reliable, anti-Soviet 'assets'. (92)


Common Cause USA

In the USA the fledgling CIA had sponsored a front organisation, the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE). NCFE's 'sister organisation' was Common Cause Inc., which included among its personnel 'many of the men - Adolf Berle, Arthur Bliss Lane, and Eugene Lyons, among others - who simultaneously led CIA-financed groups such as the NCFE and, later, the American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism.'(93) Christopher Simpson notes that it was Common Cause Inc. which, in 1948, sponsored the NTS founder on a tour of the United States. (94) Just as the British League for European Freedom became the sponsor for the British exile groups in the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), Christopher Emmet, Chairman of the American Common Cause Inc, turns up later as head of the American Friends of the Captive Nations, the domestic support group for the CIA-sponsored Assembly of Captive Nations (ACEN).(95)

The BLEF's George Dallas was one of those who stayed close to American interests. He became preoccupied with the danger of a communist take-over in China, and formed the Friends of Free China Association, with himself as chair and the Duchess of Atholl as president. Dallas eventually attended the 1958 foundation meeting of what became the the World Anti-Communist League. The one time socialist farm labourer had come a long way. With him at that meeting were Marvin Liebman, one of the key members of the US 'China Lobby', the late Yaroslav Stetsko, Ukranian collaborator with the Germans and head of the ABN, and Charles Edison of the John Birch Society.(96)


Common Cause UK

The official, 1952-launched Common Cause was apparently founded by Neil Elles, Peter Crane (on both of whom, more below) and C.A. Smith. Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton, then a Scottish Tory MP, and John Brown were joint chairs. Brown had been the Treasurer of the Freedom and Democracy Trust which had tried to launch Freedom First five years before. It set up a national structure with local branches - in 1954 there were 14 - published a monthly Bulletin, and distributed many of the standard anti-communist texts of the time, for example Tufton Beamish's Must Night Fall?; some, such as the 'Background Books' series, published and/or subsidised by IRD; and leaflets from the CIA labour front in Europe, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).(97)

In 1955 Common Cause's 'Advisory Council' included:

Such 'advisory bodies' may mean very little: this might just be a notepaper job. Nonetheless, some of the 'advisory body' were people with rather specialised interests. For example, at one point the name of General Leslie Hollis appeared on it. Hollis had been the Secretary of the Chiefs of Staff committee which 'considered, with Sir Stewart Menzies, the head of MI6, and Warner [of IRD] and William Hayter of the Foreign Office, what form of organisation was required to establish a satisfactory link between the Chiefs of Staff and Foreign Office on matters connected with the day-to-day conduct of anti-Communist propaganda overseas.'(101)

In the Autumn of 1955 the Common Cause Bulletin reported that there had been moves at the Labour Party conference that year to get it proscribed - but the motion to that effect 'was among the many crowded out from discussion'.(102)


The Labour Party's intelligence-gathering Common Cause was one of the sources of information used by the Labour Party in its anti-communist activities in the 1950s. While no central unit was ever formally established 'for collecting information or monitoring the activities of communist-inspired or pro-Soviet groups', in practice the National Agent's Department at Labour headquarters, Transport House, did the job, using as sources the publications of proscribed organisations, regional organisers' reports, 'Foreign Office' material - i.e. IRD - and Common Cause.(103) The National Agent's Department [NAD] had 'lay responsibility for compiling the [proscription] list'. Shaw notes that in 1953 the proscription list was expanded by the addition of eighteen fresh groups.


'What happened was rather unusual. Without consulting the NAD the International Department had submitted a report to the Overseas Subcommittee on "peace" and "friendship" societies. In response the Subcommittee recommended that they all be proscribed. NAD officials were never told the source of the International Department's information though they assumed it to be the Foreign Office [i.e. IRD] and Special Branch.'(104)

A glimpse of the content of the NAD's intelligence-gathering has been provided by the late Ian Mikardo MP, who saw 'dossiers' in the possession of National Agent Sarah Barker At a meeting of a subcommittee of the NEC in 1955, Sara Barker objected to Konni Zilliacus and Ernie Roberts as prospective Parliamentary candidates. When Barker began quoting derogatory comments from files she had in her possession, Mikardo demanded to see the files.

'They were an eye-opener. No MI5, no Special Branch, no George Smiley could have compiled more comprehensive dossiers. Not just press-cuttings, photographs and document references but also notes by watchers and eavesdroppers, and all sorts of tittle-tattle. I'm convinced that there was input into them from government sources and from at least a couple of Labour Attaches at the United States embassy who were close to some of our trade union leaders, notably Sam Watson.'(105)

Common Cause splits - IRIS is formed

The pretty unstable-looking mixture of admirals, generals and trade union leaders that was Common Cause, disintegrated in 1956. C. A. Smith resigned along with Advisory Council members Fothergill, Edwards, Ammon, Professor Arthur Newell and Sydney Walton.(106) This group complained that the organisation had become 'reactionary' and that the promised democratic structure had never materialised. In August 1956 Common Cause Ltd was registered, owned and controlled by the 'reactionary' faction.

The original directors of Common Cause Ltd were:

  • the new chair, Peter Crane, the director of a number of British subsidiaries of American companies, including Collins Radio of England, whose American headquarters had connections with the CIA.(107)
  • David Pelham James - Conservative MP, and Director

of the Catholic publishing house, Hollis and Carter. There were a number of Catholics prominent in the Common Cause network, including the man who ran IRIS for any years, Andy McKeown. This is discussed below.

  • Neil Elles, barrister and later a member of the

European-wide anti-subversion outfit, INTERDOC.(108)

  • Christopher Blackett - a Scottish landowner and

farmer and, I presume, but cannot prove, a relative of Frances Blackett, the original secretary of the British League for European Freedom, discussed above.(109)


IRIS

More or less in parallel with the formation of Common Cause Ltd., an industrial wing, Industrial Research and Information Services (IRIS) Ltd. was formed and set up in the headquarters of the National Union of Seamen, Maritime House. Initially, IRIS Ltd listed three directors:

AEU;

  • William McLaine, General Secretary of the AEU from

1938-47;

  • and Charles Sonnex, the Secretary and Managing Director, and the link with the parent body Common Cause.(110) Also it had a manager, James L. Nash.(111) According to Labour Research (January 1961), Nash left

to join the CIA labour front, the ICFTU.

In an interview with Richard Fletcher in 1979, C. A. Smith, attributed the formation of IRIS to Common Cause's discovery of just how careful they had to be about interfering in union affairs.(112) Another proximate cause for the formation of IRIS is suggested by the comment from the Common Cause Bulletin of January 1956 (pp. 4/5) that 'only a near-miracle can prevent the Executive of the AEU from passing under communist control during 1956.....already there are clear signs of an all-out Communist effort to put Reg Birch in this top trade union job'.

However, another interpretation of the Common Cause split and the formation of IRIS is possible. In April 1955 SIS (MI6) were forced to acknowledge that their networks of 'agents' inside the Soviet Union had all been penetrated. Worse, the Soviets had been running a deception operation with uncomfortable parallels with the 'Trust' deception in the 1920s in which the Soviet intelligence service created and ran a fake resistance group to which the British government gave a lot of money.(113) SIS had been using agents from Bandera's OUN in Ukraine and from NTS.(114) Some time later that year, SIS gave up all its emigre groups and in February 1956 SIS handed over control of NTS to the CIA.(115) What follows is what I surmise happened but for which I have no evidence. Having taken control of the British networks, new people were put in to run things. The NTS support group in the United States was Common Cause Inc. - with its British counterpart. In London, the limited company Common Cause was formed and all the trappings of members and branches were dumped; a CIA officer or agent, under cover, the cut-out to the Agency, was installed. (If this sounds banal, it has to be remembered that in 1956 none of this had ever been made public and there was no reason for them to be anything but banal.) The American assessment of the group's activities was that its most important work had been, and should continue to be, in the British trade union movement. The previous year's attempt to have Common Cause put on the Labour Party's proscription list was noted and a spin-off, trade union subsidiary, was formed. Common Cause would fund it - and act as another layer of insulation between it and the Agency.


IRIS activities to 1963

IRIS published a newsletter and a variety of pamphlets. They formed 'cells' - their word - to combat communists in the trade unions. How many cells, we do not know; nor in how many unions other than the AEU. They intervened in union elections. A member of ASSET, (which became ASTMS and is currently a part of MSF) sued IRIS and won in 1958 after IRIS News called him a communist. In the report of the TUC annual conference in 1960, delegates describe IRIS personnel intervening in the Association of Engineering and Shipbuilding Draughtsmen (AESD) and the Association of Supervisory Staff and Technicians (ASSET). The delegate of the latter describes IRIS News publishing the allegation that a candidate in a union election was a communist. Labour Research alleged an IRIS role in the National Union of Mineworkers and the Foundry Workers (as well as AESD and ASSET).(116) Reporting these events, Labour Research commented on IRIS News that 'the main feature in the paper however is and always has been news and advice about union elections. In most cases the paper reports that certain candidates are "receiving communist support" '. It seems reasonably certain - though unproven - the IRIS was receiving some of its information from IRD.

In putting out information - its monthly magazine and pamphlets - and telling its readers who to vote for and not vote for in union elections, IRIS behaved as an exact mirror image of the groups on the left: start a paper and put out a 'line'. The late Ernie Roberts MP, for many years the only left-winger in the senior ranks of the AEU - the union from whence came two of the IRIS directors in 1956 - describes how the left in the union and IRIS/and 'the Club' spent their time infiltrating and reporting on each other's meetings.(117)

In February 1966 the left-wing magazine Voice of the Unions, part of the opposition to IRIS within the AEU, asked where the IRIS money was coming from and commented, 'At one time we are told IRIS employed an office staff of six to ten.' Almost thirty years later we learned that some of the money had come from the British government after Lord Shawcross had contacted Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and asked for funding for IRIS.(118)

Shawcross had approached Macmillan at the right time, for 'Supermac' had become infected with the fear of the 'communist threat'. The Radcliffe Tribunal had reported in 1962, devoting a whole section to the Civil Service staff associations and trade unions, expressing concern at the number of communists and communist sympathisers holding positions in the unions;(119) and his administration was being afflicted by the espionage scandals of George Blake and Vassell - and the Profumo Affair which Macmillan apparently believed was part of a communist conspiracy the bring him down.(120)


Catholic Action?

There is a distinct Catholic tinge to Common Cause and IRIS. Hollis and Carter, the company which published the Common Cause Bulletin, was a Catholic publishing house. Catholics among the leading figures in Common Cause included chairs David Pelham James(121) and Peter Crane, Brigadier George Taylor, a director of Common Cause circa 1958,(122) and Sir Tom O'Brien. Catholics among the AEU/IRIS network include AEU President Bill Carron and Jim Conway, IRIS's Cecil Hallett, and the man who ran IRIS for nearly twenty years, Andy McKeown.(123) So was there, as some on the British Left believed,(124) a national Catholic Action organisation operating in Britain, as it had in other countries, such as Australia? Joan Keating investigated this belief in the course of her doctoral thesis, and though she found quite a thriving Association of Catholic Trade unionists - the Catholic Worker was selling 25,000 copies in 1956 - she found no evidence at all of any national, co-ordinated organisation.(125)


Notes

79. Though there is a hint that such activities may have been continued abroad. In Coleman's book on the Congress for Cultural Freedom (discussed below) there is a reference to an Indian anti-communist politician, Minoo Misani, who in the early post-war years, founded the Democratic Research Service and published a magazine called..... Freedom First. Coleman p. 150. 80. Wigham, p. 128 81. Minkin p. 180 82. Ibid. 83. Ibid. 84. Roberts pp. 124/5 85. Hatch, p. 187 86. The Times 25 February, 1952 87. Details on Smith from J.C. Banks, Editor of the Common Wealth Journal. In the obituary of Smith in the The Libertarian, the Common Wealth journal, no. 25, Summer 1985, Smith is said to have formed Common Cause. I believe this to be mistaken. 88. The Imperial Policy Group was largely the work of Kenneth de Courcy. De Courcy edited and published the Review of World Affairs during the Second World War. The IPG and de Courcy in particular were much disliked by the Soviet government of the time. Since then de Courcy has published the newsletters Intelligence Digest and Special Office Brief. De Courcy had some influence on the right of the Tory Party into the 1960s. See index references in Highams on De Courcy. 89. This information from John Hope who has had access to the Right Club's membership list. It is possible Stokes had joined for reasons other than agreement with the Club's aims. 90. Duchess of Atholl p. 252 91. Ibid. 92. Loftus p. 204 93. Simpson p. 222 94. Ibid p. 223 95. Ibid. p. 222. 'Christopher Emmet is a classic example of those who ran the British Intelligence fronts before and during World War II and who, having proven themselves faithful and competent, went on to run the CIA/MI6 fronts of the Cold War.' Mahl, thesis, p. 198. 96. Details of the WACL meeting is in Charles Goldman's 'World Anti-Communist League', adapted from Under Dackke, ed. Frik Krensen and Petter Sommerfelt (Demos, Copenhagen, 1978). I am unsure of the source of this Goldman article but it appears to be an early edition of Counterspy. Dallas' career, with some of the later associations glossed over, is described by his son in the Dictionary of Labour Biography eds. Saville and Bellamy, vol. 4 1977. 97. On ICFTU and the CIA see the comments of former CIA officers Joseph Smith (p. 138) and Philip Agee (CIA Diary) (p. 611). For a more general discussion see Winslow Peck. The rival but much less significant World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) was, of course, funded and run by the Soviet Union. 98. Hancock had been Chief Woman Officer of the TUC. 99. Edwards had been chair of the ILP. During 1948 the Chemical Workers Union had been involved in protracted proceedings over alleged forged ballot papers by communists. 100. In 1945, as Chief of the Defence Staff he had threatened Attlee with resignation over proposed defence cuts. 101. Scott Lucas and Morris p. 101. 102. For which, perhaps, read 'our friends fixed the agenda'. 103. Shaw p. 58 104. Ibid. pp. 58 and 9 Shaw notes in footnote 44 p. 314 that 'at least one NAD official was approached by a member of the Special Branch [and brother of a future International Secretary] offering "assistance".' 105. Mikardo p. 131. 106. The Times, April 6, 1957 107. Collins Radio was first linked with CIA operations by Peter Dale Scott in his unpublished manuscript, The Dallas Conspiracy, ch. 11 p. 3. More recently, 'Collins Radio' by Bill Kelly, in Back Channels, (USA) Vol. 1, Number 4, lists a number of links between the company and the CIA-controlled anti-Castro milieu of the early 1960s 108. On INTERDOC see Crozier pp. 49 and 81. 109. Frances Blackett in Duchess of Atholl, p. 250. 110. The Times, 6 April 1957 111. IRIS News, vol. 1, no 1, 1956. According to Anthony Carew, Nash was also a member of the AEU. 112. Fletcher's notes of the conversation say that that 'wealthy people got at [Common Cause executive member Charles] Sonnex (without telling CAS) asked him to lead IRIS. S.[onnex] remained on CC exec. Rich people attached more importance to IRIS.' 113. See Tom Bower's Red Web on the SIS post-war operations and chapter 8, in particular, on the dawning realisation that they had been taken for a ride - again. On 'the Trust' see Andrew, Secret Service pp. 445-8 114. Ibid p. 165 115. Yakovlev p. 105. Soviet publications in this field are not famously accurate, but this account has since been confirmed by Tom Bower's biography of SIS chief Dick White The Perfect English Spy, pp. 206 and 7. Yakovlev quotes from what purports to be an SIS document, 'A Proposed Statement to the NTS Leadership', which, presuming it to be genuine, may have been given to the Soviets by Kim Philby or George Blake. Bower quotes a brief section from the same document. 116. Labour Research, January 1961, p. 10 117. See Roberts pp. 101, 122-4, 131 157, 203. The left-wing Engineering Voice, Christmas 1966, reported having received 'an anonymous and undated document purporting to describe the proceedings of a secret meeting recently convened by supporters of the present leadership of the AEU.' The document referred to a 'National Group meeting' and said attending it had been fourteen full-time officers of the AEU. 118. Guardian, 2 January 1995, based on papers released under the 30 year rule. See also 'Anti-red and alive' in New Statesman, 10 February 1995. 119. Pincher, Inside Story p. 335 120. On Macmillan's paranoia about the 'communist conspiracy' see Bower, Perfect English Spy pp. 308-9. 121. A director of Hollis and Carter 122. Keating, PhD thesis, p. 350 123. Ferris, p. 85. Engineering Voice, March 1969, reported a two-day conference of the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists, at which were H.E. Matthews, a director of Cable and Wireless and some time director of IRIS, and Andy McKeown of IRIS. Keating quotes McKeown as suggesting that originally IRIS was anti-Catholic because 'Freemasonry' had a 'strong hold' on the organisation, and claiming that the man who initially ran IRIS, Charles Sonnex, was a Mason! 124. One of those who believes there was a national Catholic Action is former President of the Trades Union Congress, Clive Jenkins. Conversation with the author, 1995. 125. Keating thesis, p. 335.

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