Queer Places:
University of Cambridge, 4 Mill Ln, Cambridge CB2 1RZ
Donald Duart Maclean (25 May 1913 – 6 March 1983) was a British diplomat and member of the
Cambridge Five who acted as spies for the Soviet Union. The item on
‘Homosexuality’ in Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen’s generally reliable
Encyclopedia of Espionage (1998) names just nine homosexual men and one
bisexual: Alfred Redl,
Guy Burgess, the bisexual
Donald Maclean,
Anthony Blunt,
Alan Turing,
James A. Mintkenbaugh,
William Martin,
Bernon Mitchell,
John Vassall and
Maurice Oldfield. The
last-named had to resign his position as co-ordinator of UK security and
intelligence in Northern Ireland after he was found to be homosexual; there
was no suggestion that in his previous incarnation as Director General of MI6
he ever spied for anyone but his own Whitehall masters.
As an undergraduate, Maclean openly proclaimed his
left-wing views, and was recruited into the Russian intelligence service
(NKVD). However, he gained entry to the
Civil Service by claiming to have foresworn
Marxism.
In 1938 he was made
Third Secretary at the Paris embassy, where he kept the Soviets informed
about
Anglo-German diplomacy. He then served in
Washington, D.C. from 1944 to 1948, achieving promotion to First
Secretary. Here he became Moscow's main source of information about US energy
policy, greatly helping the Russians to evaluate the relative strength of
their own nuclear arsenal.
By the time he was appointed head of the American Department in the
Foreign Office, Maclean was widely suspected of being a spy, and the
Russians persuaded him to defect in 1951. In Moscow, he worked as a specialist
on British policy and relations between the Soviet Union and NATO. He was
reported to have died there on March 6, 1983.
Born in
Marylebone, London,[1]
Donald Duart Maclean was the son of
Sir Donald Maclean and Gwendolen Margaret Devitt. His father was chosen as
chairman of the rump of the 23 independent MPs who backed
H.
H. Asquith in the
Liberal Party in the
House of Commons whilst the bulk of the Liberal MPs had followed
David Lloyd George into the
Coalition Liberal party in the November 1918 election. As the
Labour Party had no leader and
Sinn Féin
did not attend, he became titular
Leader of the Opposition. Maclean's parents had houses in London (later in
Buckinghamshire) as well as in the
Scottish Borders, where his father represented
Peebles and Southern Midlothian, but the family lived mostly in and around
London. He grew up in a very political household, in which world affairs were
constantly discussed. In 1931 his father entered the Coalition Cabinet as
President of the
Board of Education.
Maclean's education began as a boarder at
St Ronan's School,
Worthing.
At the age of 13, he was sent to
Gresham's School in Norfolk,[2]
where he remained from 1926 until 1931, when he was 18. At Gresham's, some of
his contemporaries were
Lord Simon of Glaisdale,
James Klugmann (1912–77),
Roger Simon (1913–2002),
Benjamin Britten (1913–76) and the scientist and
Nobel laureate
Sir Alan Lloyd Hodgkin.
Gresham's was then looked on as both liberal and progressive. It had
already produced
Tom Wintringham (1898–1949) a
Marxist
military historian, journalist, and author.
James Klugmann and
Roger Simon both went with Maclean to
Cambridge and joined the
Communist Party at around the same time. Klugmann became the official
historian of the British Communist Party, while Simon was later a very
left-wing Labour peer.
When Maclean was sixteen, his father was elected for the
North Cornwall constituency, and he spent some time in
Cornwall
during school holidays.
From Gresham's, Maclean won a place at
Trinity Hall, Cambridge, arriving in 1931 to read
modern languages. Even before the end of his first year he began to throw
off parental restraints and engage openly in communist
agitprop.[3]
He also played
rugby
for his college through the winter of 1932–33.[4]
Eventually his ambitions would lead to him joining the Communist Party. In his
second year at Cambridge, his father died, afterwards marking a period of
parental relaxation. Maclean's political views grew much more apparent in the
following years in light of "his admiring, if sometimes puzzled, mother".[5]
In his final years Maclean had become a campus figure with most knowing he
was a communist. In the winter of 1933–34 he wrote a book review for
Cambridge Left, to which other leading communists contributed, such as
John Cornford,
Charles Madge and the Irish scientist,
J. D. Bernal. Donald reviewed "Contemporary Literature and Social
Revolution" by J. D. Charques, praising the book in slightly patronizing terms
for its readiness "to hint at a Marxist conception of literature". In 1934 he
became the editor of the Silver Crescent, the Trinity Hall students'
magazine. His editorials stressed the decline in world trade, rearmament and
arms trafficking. In one article, he insisted: "England is in the throes of a
capitalist crisis...If the analysis in the Editorial is correct, there is an
excellent reason why everyone of military age should start thinking about
politics...".[6]
His Marxist views pervaded all aspects of his public life, often citing the
flaws in the university administration. In a letter to
Granta
he ascribed the demand for a democratically elected student council, equality
for female students and rights to use college premises for political meetings.[7]
In his last year, 1934, he became an agent of the
NKVD, being
recruited by
Theodore "Teddy" Maly. He was then instructed to give up political
activity and enter the
Diplomatic Service, where at the right moment he would best be able to
serve the cause.[8]
He graduated with a First in Modern Languages and slowly abandoned his earlier
ideas of teaching English in the Soviet Union. After spending a year preparing
for the Civil Service examinations, Maclean passed with first class honours.[9]
At the Final Board, Maclean was asked by one of the panel interviewing him,
whether he had favoured communism whilst a university student, ostensibly
because the panel knew of a trip he had taken to Moscow in his second year at
Cambridge. Maclean replied, "At Cambridge, I was initially favourable to it
but I am little by little getting disenchanted with it." His apparent
sincerity satisfied members of the panel, which included a family friend,
Lady Violet Bonham Carter.
The Macleans had three surviving children: Fergus, born in 1944, Donald, in
1946, and Melinda, in 1951.[41]
The Maclean marriage came under pressure in Moscow as Donald Maclean continued
to drink heavily until the mid-1960s, becoming violent when drunk. Kim Philby
and Melinda Maclean became lovers during a ski trip in 1964, while Eleanor
Philby, Philby's American wife, was on an extended visit to the US. Maclean
found out and broke with Philby. Eleanor Philby discovered the affair on her
return and left Moscow, for good. Melinda moved in with Philby in 1966, but
within three years tired of him and left. She returned to her husband, and
remained with him until she left Moscow for good in 1979.[27]
Melinda returned to the West to be with her mother and sisters; her children
soon followed her. She died in New York in 2010 without saying a single word
to the media.[42][43]
The three Maclean children all married Russians, but left Moscow to live in
London and the U.S, as they still had the right to British or American
passports. Fergus, the eldest son, enrolled at
University College London in 1974, prompting a question in Parliament.[44]
Donald's son, Donald, married firstly Lucy, daughter of George Hanna, an
English man who worked for the BBC and friend of the family.[45]
They had a son, Donald Duart Maclean's only grandson (who was born in 1970),[45]
who resides in the UK.
Maclean was reported seriously ill with pneumonia in December 1982,[46]
and was housebound after his recovery.[47]
The
Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Maclean's
workplace, reported his death at the age of 69 on 6 March 1983.[48]
He was cremated and his ashes were scattered on his parents' grave in the
churchyard of Holy Trinity Church,
Penn, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom. Twenty years previously, Guy
Burgess's ashes had also been scattered on his family grave in England.[49]
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