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PERSON FILE · 25 July 1913 – 8 October 1995

John Cairncross

Scottish civil servant recruited at Cambridge who passed Soviet intelligence material from the Cabinet Office, Bletchley Park and SIS, confessed in part in 1964, and was publicly named only later.

1913–1995

3 min read · 5 sources

John Cairncross served in more parts of the British state than any other member of the Cambridge group. MI5's catalogue entry lists them in order: the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Government Code and Cypher School (the forerunner of GCHQ), SIS, the Treasury again and the Ministry of Supply.1 He was also the last of the five to be publicly identified.

A scholarship boy

Cairncross was born at Lesmahagow in Lanarkshire on 25 July 1913, the youngest of eight children of an ironmongery manager and a schoolteacher; one brother became the economist Sir Alec Cairncross. He studied at Glasgow and the Sorbonne before going to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took first-class honours in French and German in 1936.4 According to MI5's file, he was recruited by Soviet intelligence while a student at Cambridge in the 1930s and joined the civil service in 1936.1

What he could see

From the Foreign Office he moved to the Treasury and then to the Cabinet Office as private secretary to Lord Hankey, a minister without portfolio who sat on scientific and defense committees, including those dealing with atomic research.4 In 1942 and 1943 he worked at Bletchley Park in Hut 3, which turned decrypted German traffic into intelligence (see Ultra and the breaking of Enigma). In June 1943 he moved to SIS, where he worked in the counter-intelligence section.4

Cairncross himself said he stopped spying when he joined the Treasury at the end of the war. Soviet-side accounts, and the circumstances of 1951, suggest contact continued.4

Suspicion, resignation and confession

The break came after Guy Burgess fled in May 1951. MI5 found material in Cairncross's handwriting in Burgess's flat.1 He was questioned in 1951 and again in 1952; the interviews did not produce evidence on which a charge could be based.4 He resigned from government service and moved abroad, teaching in the United States and later working in Rome, including as a translator for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.1,4

After Philby's flight in 1963, MI5 reopened the hunt for further members of the ring. In 1964 Cairncross, then teaching in Cleveland, Ohio, confessed to the MI5 interrogator Arthur Martin.4 A Cabinet Office file is titled "John Cairncross, former member of the Foreign Service: confession to spying" and dates from that year.2 MI5's own summary is more cautious about how much he told them: "He made a partial confession in 1964 but never revealed the whole truth about his role for the RIS."1 He was not prosecuted; the confession was not made under caution and would not have been admissible.4

Becoming public

In December 1979, in the weeks after Blunt was named, Cairncross gave a limited admission to Sunday Times journalists. His identification as the "fifth man" of the The Cambridge Five was confirmed publicly by the KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky around 1990.4,5 The Home Office kept a file on him from 1952 until the year he died.3

Cairncross was also a serious literary scholar, translating Racine, Corneille and La Fontaine and writing on Molière. He lived in the south of France from 1970, returned to Britain in 1995 and died that year, on 8 October, after a stroke. His autobiography, The Enigma Spy, appeared in 1997.4

Key dates

  1. 1936 Enters the civil service, starting in the Foreign Office.
  2. 1942 Begins work at the Government Code and Cypher School, Bletchley Park.
  3. June 1943 Leaves Bletchley Park for SIS.
  4. 1951 Comes under suspicion after notes in his handwriting are found in Burgess's flat.
  5. 1952 Resigns from government service and moves abroad.
  6. 1964 Makes a partial confession to MI5.

Sources

  1. Other KV 2/4678: John CAIRNCROSS (catalogue description), The National Archives (UK), Discovery catalogue (1939–1951).
  2. Other CAB 301/270: John Cairncross, former member of the Foreign Service: confession to spying, The National Archives (UK), Discovery catalogue (1964).
  3. Other HO 532/4: Espionage activities by individuals: John Cairncross, The National Archives (UK), Discovery catalogue (1952–1995).
  4. Wikipedia John Cairncross, Wikipedia.
  5. Wikipedia Cambridge Five, Wikipedia.
  6. Wikipedia English Wikipedia article (used for cross-checking).

Elsewhere in the files

Read next

1934 – 23 January 1963 The Cambridge Five Five Cambridge graduates recruited by Soviet intelligence in the 1930s reached MI6, MI5, the Foreign Office and Bletchley Park, and were exposed one by one between 1951 and 1990. December 1932 – May 1945 Ultra and the breaking of Enigma How Polish mathematicians first broke the German Enigma machine, and how Britain's codebreakers at Bletchley Park turned that start into Ultra, the most closely guarded intelligence source of the Second World War. September 1941 – June 1950 Soviet atomic espionage (Enormoz) How Soviet intelligence penetrated the Manhattan Project under the codename ENORMOZ, who its sources were, how Venona and confessions exposed them, and what the stolen secrets were worth. United Kingdom · 1919 GC&CS and GCHQ Britain's codebreaking agency: founded in 1919 as the Government Code and Cypher School, it broke Enigma at Bletchley Park, became GCHQ in 1946 and anchored the UKUSA signals partnership with the United States.