'Red List' by David Caute
Despite British cultural historian David Caute’s attempt to minimize Soviet efforts to influence the British left, Red List is a lucidly written account of MI5’s surveillance of his country’s intelligentsia. Roughly corresponding to the FBI in its scope of operations, MI5 is fascinating—the stuff of spy lore—for its adamant refusal to officially admit its own existence (until the 1980s). Of great interest is that, when compared to the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, “the legal climate in which MI5 operated was more respectful of civil liberties, more restrained in its penalties, than the often-punitive crusade pursued by its close transatlantic ally across the Atlantic.” Even during the Cold War, only a miniscule number of Brits were blacklisted or penalized for suspected “subversion” than in the U.S.
