Revealed: Labour MP was used by Communist spies to 'give a KGB propaganda speech' to 'discredit' Margaret Thatcher's fight against the Soviet's nuclear threat | Retrui News | Retrui
Revealed: Labour MP was used by Communist spies to 'give a KGB propaganda speech' to 'discredit' Margaret Thatcher's fight against the Soviet's nuclear threat
SOURCE:Daily Mail
Frank Cook spoke at a CND event in 1987 to spread Russian disinformation branding Britain as a secret warmonger, files say.
A Labour MP was used by Communist spies to give a KGB propaganda speech to ‘discredit’ Margaret Thatcher's government and damage its defence policies.
Frank Cook, a shadow minister and later member of the Defence Select Committee, spoke at a Scottish CND event in 1987 to spread Russian disinformation branding Britain as a secret warmonger at a crucial time in nuclear disarmament talks, according to declassified Cold War archive files unearthed by the Mail.
Delighted Red spymasters hailed the operation a success after the MP later boasted he had given a ‘very sharp speech’ based on the lines fed to him by their agents and shared the falsehoods with delegates from major Western powers who he said happily accepted them.
The Mail can reveal that Cook was one many leading figures involved in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament who helped or provided information to spies from the feared Czechoslovak StB agency who were using diplomatic cover to operate in the UK during the height of the Cold War.
Four serving and future CND General Secretaries – including one of its most recent leaders - were targeted in operations during the 1980s that helped the communist agents glean information about missile movements, arms exports and ‘confidential’ reports about chemical weapons, according to files in the Czech state Security Service archives.
Communist spies even plotted to use ‘peace activists’ as part of a propaganda campaign to provoke nationwide anti-Thatcher protests by comparing her to Hitler.
It came at a time when CND had over 100,000 members and was a powerful left-wing force in British politics, exerting influence on the Labour party and regularly holding huge marches to demand unilateral nuclear disarmament and call for the UK to leave Nato.
Its activists also played a key role in the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp that protested against US cruise missiles being held at the Berkshire RAF base.
Frank Cook (pictured), a shadow minister and later member of the Defence Select Committee, spoke at a Scottish CND event in 1987 to spread Russian disinformation branding Britain as a secret warmonger at a crucial time in nuclear disarmament talks, according to declassified Cold War archive files unearthed by the Mail
It came at a time when CND had over 100,000 members and was a powerful left-wing force in British politics, exerting influence on the Labour party and regularly holding huge marches to demand unilateral nuclear disarmament and call for the UK to leave Nato. Pictured: A CND march
Communist spies also plotted a propaganda campaign to provoke nationwide anti-Thatcher protests by comparing her military spending policies to Hitler’s
Communist spies planned propaganda campaign comparing Thatcher to Hitler
Communist spies plotted a propaganda campaign to provoke nationwide anti-Thatcher protests by comparing her military spending policies to Hitler’s.
In 1981, when Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government was struggling with one million unemployed and soaring inflation, Czech spies deployed in the UK proposed an extraordinary plan to pounce on the unpopularity of its March budget.
The disinformation blueprint outlined in the files said the British public were ‘alarmed’ by the ‘drastic reduction of funding for school dinners and healthcare’ while the military had been allocated increased funding.
It stated: ‘The objective: to encourage the public's outrage against the government, to initiate demonstrations.’
The method involved circulating a pamphlet among trade unions and peace campaigners to highlight how extra cash for the armed forces was coming from cuts to health and social care and hikes in tobacco, alcohol and fuel duty. This would be contrasted with ‘peace proposals’ involving reducing nuclear weapons recently floated by the Soviet leadership.
It even suggested using headlines such as a notorious World War Two Nazi rearmament slogan, "canons instead of butter", which would ‘draw parallels between the Tory government and that of Hitler’, the files said.
The plan, which ultimately did not go ahead, suggested this would ‘prove that by accepting the Soviet peace proposals and spending part of the armed forces budget on the social sector, the standard of living of the British working classes would increase’.
The Czech spies had wooed MP Cook for two years and listed him as an official ‘contact’ who had provided ‘good results’ when in June 1987 they proposed using him in an ‘active measure’ as part of a long-term propaganda operation to undermine Nato.
The MP’s handler, agent Lt. Vlastimil Hnizdil, wrote to his spymasters back in Prague: ‘The aim is to discredit and damage the Conservative Party and British government in respect of their disarmament and defence policies.’
Cook would be used to promote a line ‘requested by the USSR intelligence agency’ that Mrs Thatcher was cynically publicly claiming to support the ongoing nuclear disarmament talks between the US and Soviet Union while actually planning a major upgrading of the UK’s nuclear capability and US military basis in Britain.
The MP would be asked to cite alleged evidence of this secret plan and argue they amounted ‘clear proof that that Britain is not interested in disarmament, which was a mere pre-election ploy, but rather in gaining military supremacy (with the USA) over the USSR and the Warsaw Pact.’
At a meeting the following month to ‘activate’ the operation, Cook was said to be ‘spontaneously positive’ when asked to push the Communist backed propaganda to ‘discredit the Conservative government's two-faced politics.’
‘[Cook] interrupted me saying he would do that for sure and it is altogether in line with his inner beliefs.’
He said he would be attending the CND's Scottish branch's Congress as one of the ‘main speakers’ and ‘would use our ideas in his speech.’
He also promised to promote the lines to representatives from delegates attending a conference running in the Shetland Islands to discuss nuclear energy which was supported by many CND members, the files say.
Lt Hnizdil later reported that Cook had told him: ‘He delivered "a very sharp speech" (in his own words) at the Scottish CND's Congress in which he used all of the arguments we had discussed at our meeting in June.’
He had also put forward arguments ‘supporting the USSR's and other socialist countries' peace policies and to discredit of the British government's intentions regarding nuclear weapons’ when talking to the other attendees and received ‘positive reactions.’
Delighted Red spymasters hailed the operation a success after the MP later boasted he had given a ‘very sharp speech’ based on the lines fed to him by their agents and shared the falsehoods with delegates from major Western powers who he said happily accepted them
The following year the spies sent back articles published in ‘British peace periodicals in the second half of 1987’ showing ‘reaction’ to Cook’s propaganda. Spymasters in Prague officially rated the operation’s outcome as ‘effective.’
Cook, who died in 2012, remained a valuable contact of the spies and in 1988 introduced his handler to future Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam and later, in hushed tones during a lunch at a House of Commons, briefed him about plans by then Labour leader Neil Kinnock to abandon the party’s policy unilateral nuclear disarmament.
Professor Anthony Glees, a security and intelligence expert at the University of Buckingham, said: ‘These files are very important finds, providing hard evidence of the extent to which the KGB and its surrogates in the Czech secret service tried to manipulate the British political system.
‘We have long suspected that CND was the handmaiden of Soviet foreign policy and these documents indicate this.
‘The useful idiots of CND who jumped about saying they wanted peace were actually helping the Soviet’s interests.
‘It also shows the continuity between Soviet foreign policy and Putin’s foreign policy – hatred of Nato is in the Russian DNA because it stops its Western expansion.’
CND did not respond to requests for comment.
Red spies repeatedly targeted leading CND activists during Cold War
By Tom Kelly
Red spies repeatedly targeted leading CND figures during the Cold War and were rewarded with information about missile movements, arms exports and chemical weapons, according to the Czech Security Service archives.
Agents using the cover of diplomats believed that those involved in a group which wanted the UK to unilaterally abandon its nuclear deterrent would be more sympathetic to communist causes and might provide information that could be used against the West.
Bruce Kent, then General Secretary of CND, held an October 1983 meeting with Lt Colonel Josef Houzvicka - codename 'Hradil' - the most senior Czech spy in London at the time.
The pair discussed a 'confidential' report into ‘American plans to resume chemical weapon production’, according to the agent’s secret cable sent back to Prague.
Kent also described CND’s fight to stop deployment of US Pershing II and cruise missiles in the UK – something the agent told his spymasters they should utilise as an ‘active measure’ as part of a long-term plot to undermine Nato.
Filles recounting an earlier meeting with another spy in October 1980 described how Kent ‘considers the USA and the USSR equally dangerous’.
In 1988, current CND vice president Kate Hudson, who was General Secretary from 2010 to 2024, met with a spy - although there is no suggestion that Ms Hudson knew he was a spy - who was using his diplomatic role as the Czechoslovak cultural attaché to cover his true identity.
At the time she was a member of the British Communist Party meaning – as per an agreement with Moscow – the Czechs were unable to recruit her, so the agent instead used her as ‘a cover contact and also to gain more useful information’, the files say.
She offered to put the agent in touch with leaders of ‘nationalist freedom movements’ from third world countries headquartered in London one of whom, an activist in the Chile Solidarity Campaign, gave the spy a detailed breakdown of the British export of weapons to Chile from 1980 – 8.
Rebecca Johnson, now a vice-president of CND, extended a ‘very warm welcome’ to an agent also posing as a Czech diplomat during a 1988 meeting and ‘shared a lot of information’ with him, the files say.
The spy’s report said: 'Among other things, Johnson offered to provide advanced information on American missiles leaving military bases, which she has access to up to 10 days in advance, as well as general situation at American bases.
‘She said she was happy to come to the Czechoslovak Consulate.'
Meg Beresford, then CND deputy chair and another future General Secretary, is listed briefly in the files as a 'cover contact' with ‘big ...opportunities mainly in relation to the peace movement’.
Another senior CND activist who went on to become its General Secretary offered to help spy on the organisation itself for the reds.
The files say on June 13, 1986 an agent met him when he was helping to organise a Czechoslovak Peace Council visit to the UK.
The agent reported the activist was 'happy’ to supply 'almost guaranteed' information about CND - both 'good and bad', where he has 'lots of friends'.
The agent requested he be given a 'personal number and a codename' and would be used as a 'registered contact' to 'fulfil a variety of one-off tasks of an informational nature’.