The subject of my new book A Faithful Spy , the late MI6 and MI5 officer Walter Bell was at the heart of the US/UK WW2 and Cold War intel relationship. His hitherto undisclosed private papers , on which the book draws , also covers his posting to Kenya 1949-1952 , to Delhi in 1952-57, West Indies in 1958-1960 , Kenya again in 1961-1967 where he was involved operationally, as British intelligence monitored soviet influence on anti-colonial leaders and played a crucial role in the passing of political power while maintaining a covert advisory role with newly independent states.
In Kenya , Bell’s first posting had him suffering at the hands of a dysfunctional colonial administration that failed to heed intelligence warnings of mounting political and social unrest that eventually led to the Mau Mau rising and its subsequent brutal repression of Africans by the UK authorities.
At odds with his colonial masters who dismissed African nationalist leader Jomo Kenyatta as a terrorist, Bell was eventually invited back to Kenya by Kenyatta himself ,once he had become president, as part of an agreement with MI5, that had the British advising the Kenyan government on security matters including identifying alleged Russian-backed communist plots.
In post-independence India, Bell developed close ties with key figures in Nehru’s administration such the head of Indian intelligence B.N.Mullik and the army chief General Jayanto Chaudhuri that kept him informed on Indian policy towards the Soviet Union and regional tensions beyond India’s borders.
In the Caribbean, Bell’s played a covert diplomatic role, as a secret intermediary with key political figures in the British colonies as part of an attempt to create a Federation as an alternative to direct colonial rule. Bell’s contacts included the well-connected Jamaican property tycoon John Pringle, the influential Trinidadian socialist, author and journalist C.L.R. James, and the Conservative Minister Julian Amery, son in law of the British prime-minister Harold Macmillan with whom he shared intelligence on alleged clandestine Russian support for the Marxist Guyanese political leader Cheddi Jagan .
