Nevertheless, despite his significance (which, following provision of a confession to MI5 in 1964, was covered up by the British state), it was not until 1990 that he was publicly accused, by the KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky, as being the so-called ‘fifth man’ of the Cambridge Spy-ring.Ĭairncross still remains the least known about and most enigmatic of the Cambridge spies. It has also been alleged that Cairncross was the first mole in the West to provide the Soviet Union evidence that the Allies were developing atomic weapons technology. Acknowledged by the Soviet Union as one of its most important spies, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. With his Cambridge degree in hand, as well as connections to NKVD recruiters, he went on to forge a career in the Civil Service, having joined the Foreign Office in 1937, from where he leaked vast quantities of secret information to Moscow.īesides the Foreign Office, over the course of his civil service career, which ended in 1952, Cairncross also infiltrated the Treasury, the Cabinet Office, the Second World War code-breaking bureau at Bletchley Park, MI6 and the Ministry of Supply. Prior to that time, he had also studied at the University of Glasgow and the Sorbonne, Paris. Like the other four, Cairncross had attended Cambridge in the 1930s, where he too was radicalised. Though these embarrassing, and highly visible, revelations shook the British establishment, unbeknownst the public, another man, John Cairncross (1913-1995), had also been working for the Soviet Union in secret. Over the following decades, MI5 would slowly catch up with the other two – Philby also fled to Moscow in 1963 and Blunt was publicly exposed as a spy in 1979. It was not until 1951, when trans-Atlantic counter-espionage efforts threatened to expose the ring, one of its members, that Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess sensationally disappeared, only to later re-emerge having absconded to Moscow. Each of these men would rise to important positions within the British state, infiltrating MI5, MI6, the Special Operations Executive, and the Foreign Office, all the while feeding highly secret information to their Soviet handlers. Soon enough, they had made contact with, and agreed to work for, the Soviet Union’s shadowy intelligence agency – the NKVD. Few students, however, were as effected by Cambridge’s inter-war politics as these young men. Large numbers of students drawn towards radical Communist politics.

The Great Depression was a period economic and political turbulence, this, combined with the rise of far-right extremism, had a considerable impact at the University of Cambridge.

These were Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby and Donald Maclean. In the 1930s, a group of bright young men met at Cambridge University. Research funded by the Society provided vital insights into the early life of this Soviet agent. A Scottish Spy: John Cairncross and the Cambridge Spy-ring

Soviet spy network