REVELATIONS: The National Archives in Kew
THE Morning Star can reveal that MI5 declined to censor a book about its bugging of the British communists’ HQ, partly for fear of drawing the Soviet Union’s attention to the Security Service’s “sensitivity on the subject.”
In a letter — dated February 1968 and made public today by the National Archives — to Michael Stewart, the then Labour government’s first secretary of state, MI5 said it had “covertly” obtained a typescript copy of double agent Kim Philby’s memoirs.
It pointed out that, according to Philby, Roger Hollis — head of MI5’s F division, which monitored political groups — had the Communist Party of Great Britain’s (CPGB) office in central London under constant state surveillance.
![Meirian Jump with MML archivist Matt Dunne [Pic: Marx Memorial Library]](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2026-07/image.png.webp?itok=EO4HHX_7)
The Marx Memorial Library’s Spanish Collection remains a powerful tool for the working-class movement today, writes MML director MEIRIAN JUMP
Newly revealed documents reveal that MI5 taught Brazilian secret police the techniques deployed by the 1964-85 military dictatorship in horrific prisons like Rio de Janeiro’s House of Death. SARA VIVACQUA reports
In part II of a serialisation of his new book, JOHN McINALLY explores how witch-hunting drives took hold in the Civil Service as the cold war emerged in the wake of WWII
JOHN GREEN has doubts about the efficacy of the Freedom of Information Act, once trumpeted by Tony Blair