Do you know about the John Vassall Affair? Read Alex Grant’s introduction to his new book about Vassall packed with sex, spies and scandal.
Who was John Vassall?
The Vassall case is the forgotten British spy scandal of the early 1960s. Born in 1924, the son of a Church of England vicar, John Vassall worked in quiet obscurity as a junior clerical officer at the Admiralty until he was sensationally exposed as a Soviet spy, prosecuted and imprisoned in 1962.
What exactly happened?
It turned out that Vassall had been photographed in compromising positions while working at the British embassy in Moscow in 1954. For more than seven years he had been blackmailed into handing British defence secrets over to his Soviet handlers, both in Moscow and in London. The scandal led to the resignation of a well-regarded government minister, amid hysterical rumours that Vassall was not a lone operator but part of a large, and secret, homosexual cabal in Westminster and Whitehall.
Why don’t people know about this scandal?
The Vassall case is barely remembered today. The Profumo scandal, which followed fast on its coat-tails, seems to have erased memories of the the Vassall affair, even though it was just as much of a big deal at the time. And remarkably, apart from a homophobic account of Vassall’s espionage, published in 1963, no book has ever been written about it – until now.
How was this story originally reported?
Vassall’s arrest and trial, and a subsequent judicial inquiry by Lord Cyril Radcliffe, dominated the front pages of newspapers for several months in late 1962 and early 1963. The press’s salacious reporting was full of homophobic innuendo and half-truths: arguably Britain’s first modern tabloid witch-hunt.
As a gay man being prosecuted for spying several years before decriminalisation, Vassall was given no quarter. Newspapers, and the judge at his trial, overlooked the ugly truth: that Vassall had not been seduced in Moscow, but had been drugged and gang-raped.
That is not to say that Vassall was blameless. He was a vain and snobbish man, prone to Walter Mitty fantasies about his social status, and he had courted trouble by fraternising with Russian men in Moscow (most of them were probably covert KGB agents). But it is easy to see that he was caught between a rock and a hard place: whether he told the embassy what had happened, or gave into the Russians’ demands to hand over defence secrets, he would eventually be disgraced and prosecuted, either way.
What new information has come to light?
Plenty! Although Vassall died in 1996 I have been lucky to track down several people who knew him from the 1950s onwards, including two women who worked with him in an archive after his release from prison in the 1970s, when he used the alias John Phillips to avoid his past.
Vassall’s defence barrister Jeremy Hutchinson (who died in 2017) had a lengthy correspondence with him, both during his imprisonment and afterwards, which has only recently been donated to an archive. It gives poignant insights into how Vassall struggled to rebuild his life after his conviction.
More importantly, in the autumn of 2022, the National Archives released thousands of documents on MI5’s surveillance of Vassall and their breathtakingly intrusive investigations of everyone he knew socially. MI5’s files confirm for the first time that Vassall had relationships with two Conservative MPs –neither of whom seemed to know anything about his spying –before his arrest.
How would this story be reported differently today?
Firstly, John Vassall might not have been blackmailed at all. Now that homosexuality is fully accepted in the British diplomatic service, a present-day Vassall could probably tell his superiors about his entrapment and survive with his career intact. If the case did come to trial, the homophobic abuse that the media threw at Vassall in the 1960s would be much milder – and the fact that Vassall was a rape victim would be an important mitigation.
What was so intriguing about Dolphin Square in the 1950s and 60s?
Dolphin Square – where Vassall lived from 1959 until his arrest – was a place where he could hide in plain sight. Many gay men, lesbians and even one of Britain’s first trans women lived there happily, free to take some tentative steps out of the closet. Remarkably, Vassall had many MPs, senior civil servants and celebrities –Sidney James, C. P. Snow, Peter Finch and Sarah Churchill (Winston’s actress daughter) –as his neighbours. But no-one ever suspected that he was bringing home Admiralty documents and photographing them in his Dolphin Square flat, almost daily. Although the rent at Dolphin Square was beyond a junior clerk’s budget, no-one realised that Vassall could only afford to live there because of cash from his Soviet handlers.
If you had to be a fly on the wall in any of the scenes in the book, where would it have been and why?
After his conviction Vassall was interviewed in prison dozens of times by Charles Elwell, one of MI5’s legendary spyhunters. A curious friendship developed: Elwell would often bring Vassall gifts of chocolates and Bendicks Bitter Mints. But ultimately, Elwell betrayed Vassall: the information Vassall provided led to several careers being destroyed. An RAF officer and an Australian diplomat were both forced to resign in disgrace, simply because they were suspected of having slept with Vassall, although neither knew anything about his spying.
The Vassall case shows how the British state was still riven with homophobic Cold War paranoia, well into the 1970s. It would have been fascinating to be a fly on the wall at Elwell’s meetings with Vassall in Wormwood Scrubs, where Vassall thought he was merely being helpful in tying up “loose ends”. Little did Vassall know that he was being press-ganged into a witch-hunt.
Sex, Spies and Scandal: The John Vassall Affair by Alex Grant is out now.
For more stories on LGBT stories look at:
- I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Jonny Oates
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