See Notes on Chapter 16
17
I Thought it Would Be You
Flora Solomon had lived a life that stretched, rather bizarrely, from the Russian Revolution to the British High Street: after an early affair with a Bolshevik revolutionary and marriage to a British soldier, she had been widowed young, raised her son Peter alone (who by 1961 had founded Amnesty International) and then created the welfare department at Marks and Spencer. A pillar of Anglo-Jewish society, she continued to hold regular salons in her Mayfair home, just as she had in the 1930s. Solomon remained Russian in accent, British in manner, and a committed Zionist in her politics. ‘Russian soul, Jewish heart, British passport’ was how she described herself. By 1962, her main passion in life was the state of Israel, which she defended and supported, in word, deed and funds, at every opportunity.
It was Flora Solomon’s commitment to Israel that brought Kim Philby back into her life. Every week, she read the Observer, paying particular attention to coverage of the Middle East, and found herself becoming increasingly irritated by Philby’s articles. ‘To anyone with eyes to see they were permeated with anti-Israel bias. They accepted the Soviet view of Middle East politics,’ she wrote. In the simplistic divisions imposed by the Cold War, while Israel was supported by Washington, Moscow curried favour among the Arab states, and in Solomon’s subjective opinion, Philby was churning out Soviet propaganda designed to weaken her beloved Israel. (This was not actually true: Philby was instinctively pro-Arab, but he was far too canny to reveal any overt pro-Soviet bias in his journalism.) During the 1950s she had assumed that the accusations against Philby were merely McCarthyite smears. Now she was not so sure. She remembered his remarks about ‘the cause’ back in 1935, and the rather clumsy attempt to recruit her. ‘The thought occurred to me that Philby had, after all, remained a communist, notwithstanding his clearance by MI5 of possible complicity in the Burgess-Maclean scandal.’
In August 1962, Flora Solomon visited Israel, as she had done many times before, to attend a conference at the Chaim Weizmann Institute, the science research centre in Rehovot founded by Israel’s first President and endowed by Baron Sieff, the chairman of Marks and Spencer. At a party in Weizmann’s home, she encountered Victor, Lord Rothschild, another patron of the institute. A distinguished scientist himself, Rothschild had headed MI5’s sabotage and explosives section during the war and won the George Medal for ‘dangerous work in hazardous circumstances’. A regular at the Harris soirées and a Cambridge contemporary of Burgess and Blunt, Rothschild would later be accused, quite unfairly, of being a Soviet spy himself. In fact, though a left-winger in his youth, like Flora Solomon he had no truck with communism, and retained close links with MI5. Rothschild and Solomon had known each other since the 1930s, and their conversation naturally drifted towards their mutual acquaintance, Kim Philby.
‘How is it the Observer uses a man like Kim? Don’t they know he’s a communist?’ observed Solomon.
Rothschild was startled by the certainty in her voice. Solomon went on to describe how, back in 1935, Philby had told her, with pride, that he was doing a ‘very dangerous job for peace’, and attempted to enlist her as a communist spy. Rothschild was now listening intently. He had followed the Philby case closely, and knew that despite an array of circumstantial evidence against a man who had once been his friend, no one had come forward to link Philby directly with Soviet intelligence. He began to quiz her about Philby and the wartime circle of friends they had shared. She replied that she had always suspected that Tommy Harris might be a Soviet spy, based on an ‘intuitive feeling that Harris was more than just a friend’ to Kim Philby.
Flora Solomon later maintained that her motives in exposing Philby were strictly politicaclass="underline" he was writing anti-Israeli articles, and she wanted him sacked from the Observer. But her reasons were also personal. Solomon had introduced Philby to Aileen back in 1939, and felt partly responsible for the saga that ensued, ending in Aileen’s sad and lonely death. Solomon had tried to put the tragedy out of her mind, but she remained furious with Philby for ‘the terrible way he treated his women’. The ghost of Aileen Furse was about to exact revenge.
‘You must do something,’ Flora Solomon told Rothschild, in her imperious way.
‘I will think about it,’ he told her.
Victor Rothschild was a veteran string-puller. He did more than think. On his return to London, he immediately reported the conversation to MI5, sparking jubilation among the small group of officers still determined to bring Philby to justice. Here, at last, was a ‘major breakthrough’. With difficulty, Flora Solomon was persuaded to come to an interview with MI5 officers in Rothschild’s flat, which was bugged for the occasion. There she repeated her account of the conversation with Philby from three decades earlier. The investigators found her ‘a strange, rather untrustworthy woman’, and suspected she had been more deeply implicated in left-wing radicalism than she was admitting. The interview was recorded by MI5 investigator Peter Wright. Writing many years later in his explosive book Spycatcher, Wright wondered if she and Philby had been lovers, and whether her belated revelation was motivated by spite: ‘She clearly had a grudge against him.’
Flora Solomon was now getting cold feet, alarmed that if she testified against Philby she might invite the attentions of a KGB assassination squad. ‘I will never give public evidence,’ she told MI5. ‘There is too much risk.’ The more MI5 pressed her to make a formal legal statement, the more anxious she became: ‘It will leak, I know it will leak, and then what will my family do?’ She did, however, agree to speak to officers from Mossad, although offended by the implication that she would be more forthcoming with Israeli intelligence officials than British ones.
Solomon’s revelation finally provided evidence that Philby had been an active Soviet spy, a recruiter for the communist cause who had deliberately covered up his past and lied repeatedly under interrogation. It was the ammunition that Buster Milmo had lacked, and the evidence of guilt that Philby’s supporters had always demanded. ‘Why didn’t she tell us ten years ago?’ said White, when told of Solomon’s revelation. She had a ready answer for that question: ‘I had not volunteered information as every public statement had pointed to his innocence.’ The fault was not hers, she insisted, but theirs: Philby’s escape from justice was proof of ‘how clubmanship and the old school tie could protect their own’.
That protection was now at an end; MI5 prepared to strike. The officer who had worked on the Philby case since 1951, Arthur Martin, would administer the coup de grâce. For more than a decade, Martin had tried to pierce Philby’s armour. No one knew the case better. With Solomon’s evidence, and the corroborative testimony from Golitsyn, the other elements of suspicion slotted into place. An intense debate now began over how to bring Philby to account, a task that still presented major problems, politically, legally and practically. Even if Solomon could somehow be persuaded to testify, her evidence was hearsay. George Blake had been convicted by his own testimony, but Philby would probably deny everything, as he always had, and without a confession there was no guarantee of a conviction. Any trial would be embarrassing, particularly if it emerged that Philby was still in the pay of MI6; but a trial that failed to secure a conviction would be disastrous. For Harold Macmillan, now Prime Minister, the issue was particularly sensitive: as Foreign Secretary, he had personally cleared Philby; another espionage trial could bring down the Conservative government. Philby might be tricked into returning to England, perhaps by a summons from his editors, and then forced into a confession. But Philby knew very well how Blake had been trapped, and was adjudged ‘far too wily’ to fall for the same ruse; a summons to London would merely alert him. There were even more radical alternatives: Philby could be abducted from Beirut, or even killed. But given the rising Cold War tension, the murder or kidnapping of a Soviet spy might set off an ugly retaliation, with untold consequences. Besides, since the Crabb affair there had been little appetite for dramatic adventures. Only Philby knew the full extent of his own espionage; alive, he might be persuaded to reveal other Soviet spies lurking inside the British establishment.