Look up Charles Moore (agreed he's one of mine). It was common knowledge that Tribune, always short of funds, received money from Moscow. Back in the forties and fifties the USSR was rather a hero to the British left. Many trade union leaders were communist, either openly (Mick McGahey of the miners' union is one late exampl)e, or covertly, Jack Jones, who was indeed a spy for Moscow, lead the biggest and most powerful Trade Union i the 70s. The eminence grise, incidentally, of the SNP, the poet Hugh MacDiarmid (Doctor C. M. Grieve) was solidly behind the USSR in its crushing of bourgeois revolution in Hungary. I met him when he addressed our school genial and quite barking.,

I can't understand, Michael, why any of you waste your time with the clown, Donald Trump. He is an obvious idiot, just look at the hair, except at making money in very dodgy ways. Jeremy Corbyn, soon to be leader of the Labour Party, is not an idiot. He is a sincere and grovellingly poor (by American standards) man who thinks the USA is the fount of all evil, a view held by many over here. Though not by me. I am solidly pro USA, even including people like you and the redoubtable Quincy, the fellow-traveller, in my remit.

I'd already read this piece by Moore on Foot, but he seemed to have nothing to add, just more Gordievsky stuff, which as he himself points out is "hard to corroborate ... without the benefit of KGB and MI6 files" -- by which I take it he means that Gordievsky's assertions remain uncorroborated.

So, I'd say hearsay ("it was common knowledge"), and guilt by association (other people were) is all you have to add here, John. This still leaves us with nothing that would stand up in court, and were he still alive, anyone making the same allegations in print would presumably still be forced to withdraw them again pretty sharpish and at great cost.

It seems to me that all that can reasonably at this stage is that allegations have been made, and that you believe them. Perhaps at some point you'll be proven right, perhaps not.

best,

Matt

There were always rumors about the CIA and MS magazine, but Gloria Steinem claimed to know nothing about it.