Percy Glading

rdf:langString Percy Glading

rdf:langString Percy Glading

rdf:langString Percy Glading

rdf:langString Surrey, England

rdf:langString Wanstead, Essex, England

rdf:langString Windmiller

rdf:langString Worley

rdf:langString Branson

rdf:langString Windmiller

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rdf:langString Percy Glading, 1938 mugshot

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rdf:langString Percy Eded Glading

rdf:langString Percy Glading's 1938 police photographs

rdf:langString Co-founder of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Soviet spy at the Woolwich Arsenal

rdf:langString Codename "Got"

rdf:langString Although Glading was undoubtedly the organiser of this group of Communist sub-agents, he was not free to run the group and recruit agents as he thought fit, but was under control of the foreign resident in Britain, except for a period of two months immediately prior to his arrest.

rdf:langString [Glading] was clever enough to realise that the flat should be rented by someone unknown to MI5. He was clever enough to see that a young woman called Olga Gray, who had been recruited to secret Comintern work from a CPGB front organisation, was the perfect person to help...unfortunately for Glading and the others convicted in 1938 as the 'Woolwich Arsenal spies', he was not clever enough to know that Olga Gray was an MI5 penetration agent.

rdf:langString The Indian masses, imprisoned, butchered and murdered by the Imperialist governments of Tories, Liberals and Labour. These workers repudiated their old leaders, found new class-conscious fighters during the class battles, and have set up new revolutionary working-class unions. These new forces, which have been created on the field of class battle, have now become the driving force in the revolutionary struggle in India.

rdf:langString "[Glading] combined the three leading character traits that Moscow thought promising in a potential undercover source: idealism, vanity and greed".

rdf:langString Should MI5 have discovered the name of a person described by Olga Gray...as 'another man short and rather bumptious in manner' who was working with Glading, they would have had no problem in finding out everything else about Dr Deutsch. But they did have a problem because that bumptious man turned out to be rather careful.

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rdf:langString Diaries, 1939–42

rdf:langString Boris Volodarsky

rdf:langString Roy Berkeley

rdf:langString Richard Davenport-Hines

rdf:langString Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev

rdf:langString Glading, The Growth of the Indian Strike Movement, 1921-1929, 1929.

rdf:langString Message from Gray to Maxwell Knight, discussing Glading and the Stevens'

rdf:langString When interviewed Glading was rather stuffy at first but gradually, under a great deal of flattery, his own conceit got the better of him. The conversation developed on professional lines and in the end, Glading even softened towards "Miss X", when he realised that he had placed her in a very difficult position. His real grievance was with Special Branch in producing the porter at Fawcett Court who swore that Glading had visited Brandes' flat. This he said was a lie. Otherwise, he regarded the whole business as a fair cop. He did not say anything very useful...

rdf:langString Percy Eded Glading ( 29 November 1893 – 15 April 1970) was an English communist and a co-founder of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). He was also a trade union activist, an author, and a spy for the Soviet Union against Britain, an activity for which he was convicted and imprisoned. Glading, who was born in Wanstead and grew up in East London, left school early to find work. Starting with menial jobs such as delivering milk, he found skilled work at the Stratford marshalling yards. Later, he worked as an engineer at the Royal Arsenal, which was then the national production centre for military materiel. Glading spent World War I at the Arsenal, and after the war, he chose to involve himself in working-class politics. He joined the forerunner of the CPGB, which he later founded with his friend Harry Pollitt and others. Glading was a national organiser for the CPGB and acted as its ambassador abroad, particularly to India. He was active in other groups, such as the National Minority Movement, and when he married, his wife, Elizabeth, joined him in his political activity. He was prominent in the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU), but his political activity resulted in dismissal from the Royal Arsenal, a security-sensitive post, as the government regularly dismissed those suspected of subversive activities from its employment. MI5 opened a file on him in 1925 and considered him an extreme communist. The OGPU and its successor, the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) kept in touch with him through a series of handlers (including Arnold Deutsch, who later recruited Kim Philby). Around 1934, Soviet Intelligence recruited Glading as a spy. Although he no longer worked at the Arsenal, he had maintained contact with men of similar sympathies who still did so. The Arsenal was of interest to the Soviets, who knew that Britain was on the verge of creating the biggest naval gun yet. Glading had set up a safe house in Holland Park, West London, where he photographed various sensitive plans and blueprints. Unbeknown to him, the secret service had infiltrated the CPGB in 1931, with an agent known later as "Miss X"—Olga Gray. Glading trusted her and involved her in his espionage activities and lodged her in the Holland Park safe house. He was eventually arrested in January 1938 in the act of exchanging sensitive material from the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. Predominantly due to the testimony of "Miss X", Glading was found guilty and sentenced to six years of hard labour. On his release from prison near the end of World War II, he is reported to have found work in a factory and maintained close links with Pollitt and the CPGB. Glading died in Richmond on 15 April 1970 at 76.

rdf:langString Codename "Got"

rdf:langString Percy Eded Glading