Tom Driberg - Allegations of Treachery

Allegations of Treachery

After the publication of his relatively sympathetic portrait of Burgess in 1956, Driberg had been denounced as a "dupe of Moscow" by some elements of the press. Two years after Driberg's death, the veteran investigative reporter Chapman Pincher alleged that he had been "a Kremlin agent of sympathy" and a supporter of Communist front organisations. In 1979 Andrew Boyle published The Climate of Treason, which exposed Anthony Blunt and led to a period of "spy mania" in Britain. Boyle's exhaustive account of the Burgess–Maclean–Philby–Blunt circle mentioned Driberg as a friend of Burgess, "of much the same background, tastes and views", but made no allegations that he was part of any espionage ring.

In this atmosphere, Pincher published Their Trade is Treachery (1981), in which he maintained that Driberg had been recruited by MI5 to spy on the Communist Party while still a schoolboy at Lancing, and that he was later "in the KGB's pay as a double agent". Other writers added further details; the former British Intelligence officer Peter Wright, in Spycatcher (1987), alleged that Driberg had been "providing material to a Czech controller for money". The former Kremlin archivist Vasili Mitrokhin asserted that the Soviets had blackmailed Driberg into working for the KGB by threatening to expose his homosexuality.

The weight of information, and its constant repetition, made an apparently strong case against Driberg, and former friends such as Mervyn Stockwood, the Bishop of Southwark, became convinced that he had indeed betrayed his country. Other friends and colleagues were more sceptical. According to ex-Labour MP Reginald Paget, not even the security services were "lunatic enough to recruit a man like Driberg", who was famously indiscreet and could never keep a secret. Mitrokhin's "blackmail" story is questioned by historian Jeff Sharlet, on the grounds that by the 1950s and 1960s Driberg's homosexuality had been an open secret in British political circles for many years; he frequently boasted of his "rough trade" conquests to his colleagues. The journalist A. N. Wilson quotes Churchill commenting years before that "Tom Driberg is the sort of person who gives sodomy a bad name". Pincher, however, argued that as homosexual acts were criminal offences in Britain until 1967, Driberg was still vulnerable to blackmail, although he also asserted that the MI5 connection secured Driberg a lifelong immunity from prosecution. Driberg's colleague Michael Foot denied Pincher's claim that Margaret Thatcher, when prime minister, had made a secret agreement with Foot to protect Driberg if Foot, in turn, would remain silent about the supposed treachery of Roger Hollis, another of Pincher's recently dead targets.

Wheen asserts that Pincher was not an objective commentator; the Labour Party, and its supposed infiltration by Communist agents, had been his target over many years. Pincher's verdict on Driberg is that "in journalism, in politics and intelligence ... eventually he betrayed everybody". Wheen argues that Driberg's greatest vice was indiscretion; he gossiped about everyone, but "indiscretion is not synonymous with betrayal". Driberg's Labour Party colleague, Leo Abse, offers a more complex explanation: Driberg was an adventurer who loved taking risks and played many parts. "Driberg could have played the part of the spy with superb skill, and if the officers of MI5 were indeed inept enough to have attempted to recruit him, then, in turn, Tom Driberg would have gained special pleasure in fooling and betraying them".