Until the morning of Saturday, September 11, 1999, Melita Stedman Norwood led the quietest of lives at her semi-detached home in Bexleyheath on the fringes of South-East London.
Though 87 and widowed for 13 years, she remained a keen gardener, frequently tending her vegetable beds and rose bushes.
But unlike many grandmothers approaching their tenth decade, Norwood also had a paper round — albeit an unusual one.
On the morning of September 11, 1999, Melita Stedman Norwood, 87, gave a statement to the world's media outside her home in Bexleyheath, South-East London after they discovered that she had been a Soviet spy for nearly 40 years. She had passed some of Britain's most sensitive secrets to the Russians, including vital intelligence about the development of the atomic bomb
On Saturday mornings, after finishing drinking tea out of a Che Guevara mug, Norwood would walk around her neighbourhood delivering 32 copies of the Communist Party’s newspaper, The Morning Star.
On that particular Saturday, however, there would be no paper round.
For standing on her drive and spilling onto the road was a huge bustle of reporters, photographers and television crews.
The world’s media had descended on Garden Avenue because of an explosive revelation about Norwood made in one newspaper that morning.
Norwood, it was reported, had been a Soviet spy for nearly 40 years, and had handed over to the Russians some of Britain’s most sensitive secrets, including vital intelligence about the development of the atomic bomb.
In short, Norwood was a traitor, who until then, had, in her own words, ‘got away with it’. And she had got away with a lot.
As leading espionage historian Professor Christopher Andrew stated, Norwood was ‘the most important British female agent in KGB history and longest-serving of all Soviet spies in Britain’.
Such a claim put her up there — or rather perhaps, down there — with the likes of the Cambridge Spies: Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess.
Today, however, Norwood’s treachery has been pushed to the fringes of Britain’s post-Cold War collective memory.
Melita Stedman Norwood, pictured in her thirties, was born in Bournemouth in 1912. She was the most important spy in KGB history and was a devout Communist. Her father, Alexander Sirnis, was a revolutionary socialist who, despite settling in the safety of the United Kingdom in 1903, wanted to overthrow British capitalism
But with a film inspired by her story about to be released, uncomfortable questions need to be asked about the woman who was labelled ‘The Spy who Came In From the Co-op’.
Anyone who watches the forthcoming movie Red Joan — starring Dame Judi Dench as Joan Stanley, a Briton who spied for Russia — should bear that in mind.
Because in this depiction of a dithering old lady unmasked as a KGB agent, Joan Stanley’s motivations for betraying her country in the film are certainly very different to those of Norwood.
In the movie adaptation, Joan, a Cambridge physics graduate working as a secretary for the team developing the British atomic bomb, passes vital secrets to the Soviets because she wants to create nuclear parity between the Americans and the Russians — and, in doing so, make the world a safer place.
In essence, the film absurdly imagines that Joan is single-handedly responsible for the policy of nuclear deterrence.
To MAKE matters even more ridiculous, Joan is also credited with the idea of enriching uranium — a vital part in the process of creating atomic energy — by using a centrifuge, a piece of scientific equipment similar to a washing machine that was first used in the U.S. in the mid-1930s.
In reality, Melita Norwood was neither a brilliant physicist — she dropped out of a Latin and Logic degree course at Southampton University after only a year — nor a heroine who was motivated by a worthy desire to foster nuclear deterrence.
The real reason why Norwood betrayed her country can be found in her copies of the Morning Star.
She was a devout Communist, so much so that her loyalty to that political creed was far greater than that to a country which had provided a home for her and her father, who had fled for his life from Tsarist Russia.
While Red Joan makes it clear that it is only ‘inspired by true events’, anybody watching it with little knowledge of those events would be misled into believing that Melita Norwood was a kindly old dear who just wanted world peace.
In short, the film is preposterously sympathetic to a woman who betrayed Britain’s most precious state secrets to Joseph Stalin, one of the most evil and murderous men who has ever lived.
Norwood’s traitorous actions had been triggered the moment that she was born.
Melita Stedman Norwood, was brought up in a circle of Communists, Socialists and Leninists. She started to spy for the Soviet NKVD — the forerunner of the KGB — in 1934, two years after she started working for the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association. It developed close links with the British top-secret project to develop a nuclear weapon
Her father, Alexander Sirnis, was a revolutionary socialist who, despite settling in the safety of the United Kingdom in 1903, wanted to overthrow British capitalism.
Meanwhile, Norwood’s mother, Gertrude Stedman, supported the Labour Party, and, as the historian Dr David Burke writes in his definitive biography of Norwood, Gertrude’s views ‘were thus no less progressive than her husband’s’.
As well as having two highly Left-wing parents, Norwood, who was born in 1912 in Bournemouth, was brought up in a circle of Communists, Socialists, Leninists — all the different stripes of the Left.
One of the most influential figures within this group was Theodore Rothstein, a writer, journalist and disciple of Lenin who formed the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1920 before being kicked out of the country in the same year.
Norwood would lose her father to tuberculosis when she was just six. Her mother then moved her two daughters and son to Bitterne near Southampton to live with Melita’s aunt.
Gertrude remained very involved in Left-wing politics, which of course strongly influenced her daughter, who joined the CPGB.
Agent Hola, as Norwood was called by her Soviet handlers, did not retire until 1972. She had got away with it, despite the astonishing fact that she had been investigated seven times from 1938 to 1965 by the British Security Service. According to one theory they only left her in her post in order not to compromise other investigations, despite having been tipped off about her
After leaving school, Norwood won a place at Southampton University, but dropped out and spent some time in Germany, where she witnessed the rise of the Nazis at first hand.
In 1932, Norwood, aged 20, began working in the clerical department of a metallurgy research group — the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association (BN-FMRA) — where she remained until her retirement in 1972.
Her appointment had fateful consequences during the forthcoming nuclear age, as BN-FMRA soon developed close links with the British top-secret project to develop a nuclear weapon codenamed ‘Tube Alloys’. Two years later, Norwood started to spy for the Soviet NKVD — the forerunner of the KGB.
The man who recruited her? None other than Andrew Rothstein, the son of Theodore — the founder of the CPGB.
Tellingly, as Norwood would later admit to her biographer, David Burke, in 2000, it was she who approached the Russians, and not the other way round.
‘I must have thought if any of the work the BN-FMRA was doing, not secret stuff, might be useful,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t immediately think of pinching it. I made the approach.’
So began almost four decades of treachery, motivated by what Professor Christopher Andrew accurately describes as a ‘myth-image of the Soviet Union which bore little relationship to the brutal reality of Stalinist rule’.
Outwardly, Norwood exuded middle-class rectitude. She married chemistry teacher Hilary Norwood (formerly named Nussbaum), also a Communist, in 1935, and two years later they bought the house on Garden Avenue where she would live for the next 65 years. The couple had one child, Anita, who was born in 1943.
It was during her time as a new mother that ‘Agent Hola’ — as she was christened by her Soviet handlers — would pass over valuable material about the ‘Tube Alloys’ programme.
Norwood removed items from her boss’s safe, photographed them and sent the copies to the Soviets through a succession of contacts.
‘Sometimes, if I was typing something, I typed an extra copy,’ she later confessed. ‘I typed up the minutes of meetings.
I passed on copies by arrangement, left them somewhere pre-arranged or met somebody and handed them over.’
Red Joan, starring Judi Dench, is preposterously sympathetic to a woman who betrayed Britain’s most precious state secrets to Joseph Stalin, one of the most evil and murderous men who has ever lived
Her KGB file was unsurprisingly glowing. ‘She was a committed, reliable and disciplined agent, striving to be of the utmost assistance,’ it stated.
‘She handed over a very large number of documents of a scientific and technical nature, and these found practical application.’
While spies such as art historian Anthony Blunt later claimed they gave Stalin secrets only when he was on Britain’s side, Norwood had no such qualms. And she continued to pass material to Moscow after the war.
There can be little doubt the information provided by her was vital to the Soviets.
Building nuclear reactors to refine bomb-grade plutonium is not easy. One issue the Russians faced was how to prevent corrosion in the aluminium alloy ‘canning’, which encased radioactive rods when they were cooled in water.
Their scientists needed help on how to solve this crucial problem, and for that they turned to Norwood.
As Norwood’s handler, Pavel Sudoplatov of the Russian Ministry of State Security, later admitted, by 1946 intelligence about such problems would come from ‘sources in Great Britain’. That, of course, meant Norwood.
By supplying this knowledge, Norwood was instrumental in helping the Soviets detonate their first atomic bomb in 1949 — four years earlier than anticipated.
Even more chillingly, her loyalty towards the USSR went above and beyond her acts of textbook espionage.
She also recruited spies for the Communist state.
In 1967, for example, she turned a British civil servant codenamed ‘Hunt’, who went on to provide intelligence on British arms sales for 14 years.
Asked about his recruitment in 2002, Norwood admitted: ‘I am not going to deny it . . . I take complete responsibility and blame.’
Hunt’s true identity still remains unknown, at least to the public.
In 1972, Agent Hola eventually retired, both from her job as a secretary and as a Soviet spy. She had got away with it, despite the astonishing fact that she had been investigated seven times from 1938 to 1965.
The British Security Service had been explicitly tipped off that she was a security risk in 1965, but — according to one theory — left her in her post in order not to compromise other investigations.
It was not until the publication in 1999 of a vast archive of KGB material smuggled into the West by defector Vasili Mitrokhin that Agent Hola would be unmasked.
Naturally, the government and Security Service were hugely embarrassed by the revelation, and insisted that Norwood’s importance was only ‘marginal’.
Worse still, Norwood escaped prosecution because, in the words of then Labour Solicitor General, Ross Cranston, ‘it was clear that any prosecution would fail’.
Norwood died in June 2005, having never been made to atone for her treachery.
And now, instead of punishment, she has been rewarded in the shape of a hagiographical film with national treasure Dame Judi Dench in the starring role.
In death as in life, the myth of Melita Norwood still triumphs.
The Spy Who Came In From The Co-op: Melita Norwood And The Ending Of Cold War Espionage by David Burke (Boydell Press, £14.99). Red Joan is in cinemas from April 19.
photo link
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News Photo Suburban widow and Soviet spy Melita Stedman Norwood gave Russia the keys to the atom bomb
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