James Klugmann

James Klugmann

James Klugmann, the third son and fourth child of Samuel Klugmann, a wealthy Jewish rope and twine merchant, and his wife, Anna Rosenheim, was born in Hampstead, London on 27th February, 1912. (1)

Klugmann was educated at Gresham's School. In October 1931 went to Trinity College to study modern languages. He joined the Cambridge University Socialist Society (CUSS) and most of his new friends held radical political views. This included Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby and Guy Burgess.

Klugmann and Maclean joined the Communist Party of Great Britain: "They spent much of their time working for the part, organizing study groups, and trying to get Marxism accepted as a philosophy in the university curriculum... They kept lists of fellow-travellers and sympathizers and devoted a lot of effort to recruiting. They attacked the CUSS for being weak-kneed, screaming and shouting at political debates in a manner Cambridge had never seen before but which the students tolerated because of their obvious conviction." (2) He also worked closely with YCL leader, Dave Springhall.

James Klugmann - Marxist

Anthony Blunt has claimed that Klugmann played an important role in converting him to Marxism: "So I became fully convinced in the correctness of the Marxist approach to history and to the special subject in which I was interested. Naturally when I was becoming acquainted with the Marxist approach to different subjects, I also listened to various discussions on political topics of the contemporary situation and gradually became convinced that the Marxist point of view in the given matter made sense." (3)

Francis Beckett, the author of Enemy Within: The Rise and Fall of the British Communist Party (1995) has pointed out: "By 1933, when he (Klugmann) took a first-class degree in French and German, he was Cambridge University's best-known Communist and was building the Party carefully under the watchful eye of YCL leader Dave Springhall." (4) In 1935, Klugmann gave up his promising academic career to become secretary of the International Students' Organization against War and Fascism. The group was very active in promoting the cause of the Popular Front government that was drawn into the Spanish Civil War.

Arnold Deutsch

In 1936 Klugmann met Arnold Deutsch, the head of recruitment for NKVD agents based in England. His network at this time included Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess. Deutsch's main objective was to get Klugmann to help recruit John Cairncross as a spy. Klugmann became an important figure in the network. However, as he was known to the police as an active member of the Communist Party of Great Britain meant that he was not used as a spy. However, he was given the codename Mayor and was used to compile reports on other agents.

In April 1937 Deutsch reported: "Mayor (James Klugmann) is a party functionary who devotes himself entirely to the party. He is a quiet and thoughtful man. Modest, conscientious, industrious and serious. Everybody who knows him likes him and respects him. He exercises great influence over people. As a person he is honest and beyond reproach. Responsive and attentive to comrades. Ready to bring any offer for the sake of the party. A good organizer. Very careful with money. Never takes anything for himself. Outwardly shy and reserved. Strict in respect of women. Pays no attention to his appearance. He can do much for us if we are recommended to him by Harry Pollitt or Tores. He is known to the British police as an active communist. He is used to legal work and therefore incautious. But if his attention is drawn to this he will act as required." (5)

Klugmann provided reports on agents recruited by Deutsch such as Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess: "At one time he (Donald Maclean) was a party member but since he joined the diplomatic service two years ago he has broken off all relations with the party and even avoids old comrades as if he were ashamed of the fact that he has gone over to the bourgeoisie. It would not be without risk to approach him and tell him that the party counts on him... He (Guy Burgess) is the most clever and capable of them all. He has distanced himself from us, because his family relations have enabled him to move in high society: ministers, lords, bankers. He is friends with such people as Victor Rothschild. Without wanting to he still thinks on Marxist lines. It would be worthwhile to capture him because if he became an enemy he would be a dangerous enemy." (6)

Arnold Deutsch was eventually replaced by Anatoly Gorsky. James Klugmann continued to work closely with John Cairncross and on 10th March 1939, supplied Moscow with some Foreign Office papers: "In August - September 1938, LISZT (Cairncross) worked in the special 'crisis' group of the Foreign Office and had free access to documents on Munich. When he heard about his transfer to the Treasury, he took these documents with him and passed them at once on to us. In September 1938, LISZT saw in the Foreign Office a report from a British agent in the USSR on the unpreparedness of the USSR to render military assistance to Czechoslovakia. Among those in the Foreign Office who advocated an agreement with Hitler were (a) the Ambassador in Berlin, Henderson, and (b) the Ambassador in Paris, Phipps." (7)

Second World War

Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War he joined the Royal Army Service Corps as a private. His natural flair for languages meant that by 1942 he was transferred to the Special Operations Executive. In 1943 was promoted to the rank of captain. According to his biographer, T. E. B. Howarth: "His pre-war knowledge of Yugoslavia and of its youthful anti-Fascists enabled him to make a widely praised contribution to the briefing and organization of Special Operations Executive agents. During his wartime career in Cairo, which culminated in his promotion to the rank of major, he was much respected and liked for his intelligence and warm, good-humoured manner." (8)

Klugmann arranged for Frank Thompson, a former colleague in the Communist Party of Great Britain, to lead a mission into Bulgaria. In January 1944, Thompson parachuted into occupied Macedonia to help the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Macedonia led by Mihajlo Apostolski. In May he was caught, brutally interrogated, and, following a show trial in which he defended himself in Bulgarian and pronounced himself a communist, he was executed by firing squad alongside twelve captured partisans on about 10 June 1944 (sources conflict as to the precise date). Together they died giving the clenched fist salute. (9)

James Klugmann
James Klugmann

In April 1945 Klugmann was appointed to work with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration mission to Yugoslavia. He returned in July 1946 and continued to work for the Communist Party of Great Britain. In June 1948 the CPGB was instructed by Joseph Stalin to denounce Marshal Josip Tito. As someone who knew the country well, Klugmann was the obvious choice "to write the hatchet job which the new circumstances demanded". (10)

From Trotsky to Tito was published in 1951. His friends say that he had a high personal regard for Tito and did not enjoy the task, but considered it his duty. Klugmann was head of the party's education department from 1950 to 1960, and a member of its executive committee from 1952 and later of its political committee, until compelled to resign in 1963 owing to chronic asthma. At the inception of the monthly Marxism Today in 1957 he became assistant editor to John Gollan, succeeding in 1963 to the editorship, which he retained for the next fourteen years. (11)

James Klugmann died of a heart attack in Stockwell Hospital, London, on 14th September 1977.

Primary Sources

(1) Arnold Deutsch, report on James Klugmann (April 1937)

James is a party functionary who devotes himself entirely to the party. He is a quiet and thoughtful man. Modest, conscientious, industrious and serious. Everybody who knows him likes him and respects him. He exercises great influence over people. As a person he is honest and beyond reproach. Responsive and attentive to comrades. Ready to bring any offer for the sake of the party. A good organizer. Very careful with money. Never takes anything for himself. Outwardly shy and reserved. Strict in respect of women. Pays no attention to his appearance. He can do much for us if we are recommended to him by Harry Pollitt or Tores. He is known to the British police as an active communist. He is used to legal work and therefore incautious. But if his attention is drawn to this he will act as required.

(2) Theodore Maly, report to Moscow (9th April 1937)

We have already recruited Cairncross. We shall call him MOLIERE. We have been able to manage things in such a way that neither MADCHEN (Burgess) nor TONY(Blunt) was endangered. For this Klugmann was used who came over from Paris twice. MOLIERE went to Paris once. He gave Klugmann his agreement to work, but knows, of course, only half of what we want from him. So far his only contact is Klugmann. We shall take him over from him by the end of May.

(3) James Klugmann, report to NKVD on Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess (May, 1937)

At one time he (Donald Maclean) was a party member but since he joined the diplomatic service two years ago he has broken off all relations with the party and even avoids old comrades as if he were ashamed of the fact that he has gone over to the bourgeoisie. It would not be without risk to approach him and tell him that the party counts on him...

He (Guy Burgess) is the most clever and capable of them all. He has distanced himself from us, because his family relations have enabled him to move in high society: ministers, lords, bankers. He is friends with such people as Victor Rothschild. Without wanting to he still thinks on Marxist lines. It would be worthwhile to capture him because if he became an enemy he would be a dangerous enemy.

(4) Theodore Maly, report to Moscow (9th June 1937)

We made direct contact. MOLIERE (Cairncross) was very glad that he could make contact with us and not feel himself cut off from the party... He knows from his Cambridge days that WEISE (Donald Maclean) also was a Party member and he says that although WEISE had become a complete snob, he nevertheless maintains a "healthy line" in his work which shows that he has retained Marxist principles in his subconscious. What is more, he is of the opinion that WEISE has the best brains in the Foreign Office.

(5) Arnold Deutsch, report to Moscow (19th June 1937)

I have met him once. Before I met him his convictions were of a politically deeply pessimistic nature since he was politically completely cut off and very dissatisfied with his work. Hatred for his social environment which behaved very untactfully towards him. He drew the following conclusions for himself: they won't keep him for long and that soon he will have to start looking for another profession. He was very happy that we had established contact with him and was ready to start working for us at once... He (Cairncross) is no doubt very intelligent, proud and ideologically on our side. His opposition towards his environment clearly has its origin in his convictions. This feeling of opposition puts him outside the ranks of his environment.

(6) NKVD report supplied by James Klugmann and John Cairncross (10th March 1939)

In August - September 1938, LISZT (Cairncross) worked in the special "crisis" group of the Foreign Office and had free access to documents on Munich. When he heard about his transfer to the Treasury, he took these documents with him and passed them at once on to us. In September 1938, LISZT saw in the Foreign Office a report from a British agent in the USSR on the unpreparedness of the USSR to render military assistance to Czechoslovakia. Among those in the Foreign Office who advocated an agreement with Hitler were (a) the Ambassador in Berlin, Henderson, and (b) the Ambassador in Paris, Phipps.

(7) Francis Beckett, Enemy Within: The Rise and Fall of the British Communist Party (1995)

Klugmann had been at school with Maclean at Gresham's in Norfolk, and took him under his wing when Maclean arrived at Cambridge, carefully nurturing his less intelligent protégé's political opinions. Klugmann came from a prosperous Jewish family in Hampstead. Unlike the others, Klugmann's Communism was never a secret. By 1933, when he took a first-class degree in French and German, he was Cambridge University's best-known Communist and was building the Party carefully under the watchful eye of YCL leader Dave Springhall.

Klugmann willingly sacrificed his excellent chance of a Cambridge fellowship by his uncompromising allegiance. Years later he explained: "My commitment to the cause was for life, and it was an exhilarating moment to be alive and young. We simply knew, all of us, that the revolution was at hand." He visited a mining village in South Wales and wrote that the Soviet Union would never tolerate "empty houses furnished with bits of wood and orange boxes, children without shoes, rickets everywhere, small shopkeepers ruined because their customers couldn't afford to buy, tuberculosis and emigration." An outstanding academic, he both felt and thought his way to Communism. It was - or it seemed to be - a time of simple choices. There was good and there was evil. "No later generation" writes Healey "has enjoyed the same political certainty." Today people tend to focus their idealism on single issues: "It seems easier to save the whale than to save the world." Anthony Blunt, after being named as a spy in 1979, said that when he came back after a sabbatical in 1934 to complete his degree, "all my friends and almost all the intelligent, bright undergraduates had suddenly become Marxists."

It was Klugmann who provided the Cambridge link with King Street, and Dave Springhall who guided Klugmann. Springhall visited the University regularly, took the membership lists, and discussed in detail the character and potential of all new recruits. In the late 1930s Klugmann helped organize aid for Spain. Denis Healey remembers a summer holiday in France, when he passed Klugmann a mysterious package on his way through Paris. Thus Springhall and Klugmann helped nurture the spy network which was to cause the British government so much embarrassment years later; but MI5 was looking for subversive activities elsewhere.



References

(1) T. E. B. Howarth, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)

(2) Phillip Knightley, Philby: KGB Masterspy (1988) page 32

(3) Venona File 83895 page 240

(4) Francis Beckett, Enemy Within: The Rise and Fall of the British Communist Party (1995) page 85

(5) James Klugmann, report to NKVD on Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess (May, 1937)

(6) Arnold Deutsch, report on James Klugmann (April 1937)

(7) NKVD report supplied by James Klugmann and John Cairncross (10th March 1939)

(8) T. E. B. Howarth, James Klugmann: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)

(9) Roderick Bailey, Frank Thompson : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (3rd January, 2008)

(10) Francis Beckett, Enemy Within: The Rise and Fall of the British Communist Party (1995) page 116

(11) T. E. B. Howarth, James Klugmann: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-2014)