Foreign News: Communist Comes Clean

The whole affair was very British. Sandy-haired Malcolm W. McGrath at 36 was a dependable member of the British civil service, climbing from second in command of the Admiralty’s South African arms depot in World War II to his high job as senior armaments officer at the Admiralty’s main base at Bath. In his private life, in tweed jacket and corduroy slacks at his trailer home outside Bath, McGrath made a kind of progression too: from Socialism to Communism, and to Linguaphone records to learn Russian. Then he got worried about his double life: “I felt I was in a false position in the Admiralty in supplying arms for use against the Chinese. Furthermore, there was a strong possibility I should have to assist in rearming Germany and Japan, to which I am bitterly opposed.”

One day, in the British, not the Communist way, he approached his superior, calmly divulged that he had joined the Communist Party a few months before. Said McGrath: “I did this in fairness to him and to obviate suspicion that Communists in defense positions were concealing their views.” The shocked civil service promptly suspended McGrath while it investigated.

Last week, when the news leaked out, neither 10 Downing Street nor the Admiralty would talk. The government didn’t appear to know what to say, or what to do. The man in the pub seemed to feel a grudging admiration for a fellow who would come clean. Said one: “McGrath is the only popular Communist in England.”