This is an accepted version of this page
125-530: William John Christopher Vassall (20 September 1924 – 18 November 1996) was a British civil servant who spied for the Soviet Union , allegedly under pressure of blackmail , from 1954 until his arrest in 1962. Although operating only at a junior level, he was able to provide details of naval technology which were crucial to the modernising of the Soviet Navy . He was sentenced to eighteen years' imprisonment, and
250-529: A British Day to celebrate. One of the central issues identified at the Fabian Society conference was how the English identity fits within the framework of a devolved United Kingdom. An expression of Her Majesty's Government 's initiative to promote Britishness was the inaugural Veterans' Day which was first held on 27 June 2006. As well as celebrating the achievements of armed forces veterans, Brown's speech at
375-483: A House of Commons debate, saying: "It stretches credulity to its absolute bounds to think that suddenly, overnight, all those who were Communists will suddenly adopt a new philosophy and belief, with the result that everything will be different. I use this opportunity to warn the House and the country that that is not the truth"; and: "Every time the House approves one of these collective agreements, not least treaties agreed by
500-463: A Treaty of Union was agreed in 1706 and was then ratified by the parliaments of both countries with the passing of the Acts of Union 1707 . With effect from 1 May 1707, this created a new sovereign state called the " Kingdom of Great Britain ". This kingdom "began as a hostile merger", but led to a "full partnership in the most powerful going concern in the world"; historian Simon Schama stated that "it
625-593: A Welsh nationalist politician active in the late 20th century, rebuffed Britishness as "a political synonym for Englishness which extends English culture over the Scots, Welsh and the Irish". In 2004, Sir Bernard Crick , political theorist and democratic socialist tasked with developing the life in the United Kingdom test said: Britishness, to me, is an overarching political and legal concept: it signifies allegiance to
750-552: A "marked change in attitudes" in Great Britain towards Catholics and Catholicism. A "significant" example of this was the collaboration between Augustus Welby Pugin , an "ardent Roman Catholic" and son of a Frenchman, and Sir Charles Barry , "a confirmed Protestant", in redesigning the Palace of Westminster —"the building that most enshrines ... Britain's national and imperial pre-tensions". Protestantism gave way to imperialism as
875-517: A "particular sense of nationhood and belonging" in Great Britain; Britishness became "superimposed on much older identities", of English , Scots and Welsh cultures, whose distinctiveness still resists notions of a homogenised British identity. Because of longstanding ethno-sectarian divisions, British identity in Northern Ireland is controversial, but it is held with strong conviction by Unionists . Modern Britons are descended mainly from
1000-687: A Golitsyn-discrediting putative KGB officer who had defected "in place" to the CIA in 1962 in Geneva , returned there, once again as the ostensible security officer of a Soviet arms control delegation, and, as promised, recontacted his CIA case officers, Tennent H. Bagley and Russian-born George Kisevalter . Nosenko proceeded to them that he now wanted to physically defect to the US (and leave his previously beloved wife and two daughters behind in Moscow) because he allegedly feared that
1125-601: A book entitled The Perestroika Deception containing purported memoranda attributed to Golitsyn claiming: In his book Wedge: The Secret War between the FBI and CIA (Knopf, 1994), Mark Riebling stated that of 194 predictions made in New Lies For Old , 139 had been fulfilled by 1993, 9 seemed 'clearly wrong', and the other 46 were 'not soon falsifiable '. According to Russian political scientist Yevgenia Albats , Golitsyn's book New Lies for Old claimed that "as early as 1959,
1250-690: A clerical officer, to the staff of the Naval Attaché at the British embassy in Moscow . There, he said later, he found himself socially isolated by the snobberies and class hierarchies of diplomatic life, his loneliness further exacerbated by his homosexuality , which was still illegal in both Britain and the Soviet Union. He became acquainted with a Pole named Michalski, who worked for the Embassy, and who introduced him to
1375-632: A combination of disease, Spanish hostility, Scottish mismanagement and opposition to the scheme by the East India Company and the English government (who did not want to provoke the Spanish into war) this imperial venture ended in "catastrophic failure", with an estimated "25% of Scotland's total liquid capital" lost. The events of the Darien Scheme, and the passing by the English Parliament of
SECTION 10
#17328583286211500-471: A distant relative. On 12 September 1962, Vassall was arrested and charged with spying. He made a full confession, and directed detectives to the cameras and films concealed in his flat. The documents that he admitted to stealing did not account for everything believed to have been taken, however, which led to speculation that there was another spy still operating in the Admiralty. Some have suggested that Vassall
1625-587: A long-term deception strategy of seeming retreat from hard-line Communism designed to lull the West into a false sense of security, and finally economically cripple and diplomatically isolate the United States. Among other things, Golitsyn stated: The "liberalization" would be spectacular and impressive. Formal pronouncements might be made about a reduction in the communist party's role: its monopoly would be apparently curtailed. An ostensible separation of powers between
1750-600: A major triumph for the KGB. He provided information of the highest value to the Soviet defence chiefs in their successful drive to expand and modernise the Red Navy ." Rebecca West , in her book The New Meaning of Treason (1964) demurred from the notion that Vassall was "a weak and silly little man ... This was unlikely to be the correct view of a man who for seven years had carried on an occupation [espionage] demanding unremitting industry in
1875-499: A memoir, published in 1975 as Vassall: the autobiography of a spy . He described it as "a kind of self-justification, not as regards my espionage activities, but as regards my position as a human being, and, perhaps, my ability to make and keep friends in all walks of life". Rex Winsbury called the book "[a] cross between Jennifer's Diary [the society column of Queen magazine] and James Bond , ... bewildering both for Vassall's own transparent naivety and social snobbism, ... and for
2000-521: A minimal diet, and interrogations that were frequent and intensive. Nosenko spent an additional four months in a ten-foot by ten-foot concrete bunker in Camp Peary , and was allegedly told that this arrangement would continue for 25 years unless he confessed to being a Soviet spy. During the three years Nosenko was detained and interrogated by the CIA, he was given three polygraph tests. According to Gerald Posner (who befriended Nosenko in 1993), he failed
2125-517: A national 'tradition'". The First World War "reinforced the sense of Britishness" and patriotism in the early 20th century. Through war service (including conscription in Great Britain), "the English, Welsh, Scots and Irish fought as British". The aftermath of the war institutionalised British national commemoration through Remembrance Sunday and the Poppy Appeal . The Second World War had
2250-812: A numerical minority, these Britons "exercised a dominant influence" upon the culture and politics of those lands. In Australia, Canada and New Zealand , "people of British origin came to constitute the majority of the population", contributing to these states becoming integral to the Anglosphere . The United Kingdom Census 1861 estimated the size of the overseas British to be around 2.5 million, but concluded that most of these were "not conventional settlers" but rather "travellers, merchants, professionals, and military personnel". By 1890, there were over 1.5 million further UK-born people living in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa . A 2006 publication from
2375-477: A portion of the British Empire , provided they be made so in reality and not in name alone; they are ready to become a kind of West Briton if made so in benefits and justice; but if not, we are Irishmen again. Ireland, from 1801 to 1923 , was marked by a succession of economic and political mismanagement and neglect, which marginalised the Irish, and advanced Irish nationalism . In the forty years that followed
2500-483: A senior civil servant detecting sexual innuendo in such conventional pleasantries as the salutation "My Dear Vassall" at the beginning of a letter. In 1980 the BBC broadcast a docudrama about the affair, in which Vassall was played by John Normington as "weak, vain and keen to be thought a gentleman". British people Modern ethnicities British people or Britons , also known colloquially as Brits , are
2625-431: A senior member of the KGB, defected to the United States in 1961. The KGB, worried that Vassall would be exposed, ordered him to cease operations until further notice. Another defector, Yuri Nosenko , added to the case against Vassall, but doubts about the evidence provided by both Golitsyn and Nosenko persisted. Documents and microdots provided by the 1960 Polish defector Michal Goleniewski may also have contributed to
SECTION 20
#17328583286212750-475: A similar unifying effect upon the British people, however, its outcome was to recondition Britishness on a basis of democratic values and its marked contrast to Europeanism . Notions that the British "constituted an Island race, and that it stood for democracy were reinforced during the war and they were circulated in the country through Winston Churchill 's speeches, history books and newspapers". At its international zenith, "Britishness joined peoples around
2875-471: A skilled craft carried on in clandestine conditions, an endless capacity for dissimulation, and sustained contempt for personal danger." West termed him, rather, "a professional spy, working within the conventions of his profession, [who] had no more been blackmailed into the exercise of his profession than any lawyer". West suggested that the claim of blackmail was "putting up a smoke-screen to conceal what he had done." Observing that Vassall had been well paid by
3000-406: A telegram from Moscow ordering him to return immediately ( NSA later said that no such telegram had been sent). After being flown to Frankfurt and interviewed there by Soviet Russia Division chief David Murphy , Nosenko was allowed to physically defect to the US, but only because he claimed to have been privy to Oswald's KGB file both before and after the assassination. Judging it improbable that
3125-624: A voyage of exploration around the British Isles . Although none of his own writings remain, writers during the time of the Roman Empire made much reference to them. Pytheas called the islands collectively αἱ Βρεττανίαι ( hai Brettaniai ), which has been translated as the Brittanic Isles , and the peoples of what are today England , Wales , Scotland and the Isle of Man of Prettanike were called
3250-513: Is known as the Matter of Britain . The Matter of Britain, a national myth , was retold or reinterpreted in works by Gerald of Wales , a Cambro-Norman chronicler who, in the 12th and 13th centuries, used the term "British" to refer to the people later known as the Welsh. The indigenous people of the British Isles have a combination of Celtic , Anglo-Saxon , Norse and Norman ancestry. Between
3375-688: The Etymologicum Genuinum , a 9th-century lexical encyclopaedia, mention a mythical character Bretannus (the Latinised form of the Ancient Greek : Βρεττανός , Brettanós ) as the father of Celtine , mother of Celtus, the eponymous ancestor of the Celts . By 50 BC, Greek geographers were using equivalents of Prettanikē as a collective name for the British Isles . However, with the Roman conquest of Britain ,
3500-558: The Act of Settlement 1701 asserting the right to choose the order of succession for English, Scottish and Irish thrones, escalated political hostilities between England and Scotland and neutralised calls for a united British people. The Parliament of Scotland responded by passing the Act of Security 1704 , allowing it to appoint a different monarch to succeed to the Scottish crown from that of England if it so wished. The English political perspective
3625-967: The Admiralty , where he worked first in the Naval Intelligence Division , and then, as the clerical officer assistant to the Private Secretary, in the Private Office of Tam Galbraith , a Conservative Party politician and Civil Lord of the Admiralty . At the time of his arrest he was working in Military Branch II. During his espionage career, Vassall provided the Soviets with several thousand classified documents, including information on British radar , torpedoes , and anti-submarine equipment. His obituary-writer in The Times commented that "Vassall
3750-527: The Age of Discovery gave new-found imperial power and wealth to the English and Welsh at the end of the 17th century, Scotland suffered from a long-standing weak economy. In response, the Scottish kingdom, in opposition to William II of Scotland (III of England) , commenced the Darien Scheme , an attempt to establish a Scottish imperial outlet—the colony of New Caledonia—on the isthmus of Panama . However, through
3875-536: The Age of Discovery , the British were one of the earliest and largest communities to emigrate out of Europe , and the British Empire's expansion during the first half of the 19th century triggered an "extraordinary dispersion of the British people", resulting in particular concentrations "in Australasia and North America ". The British Empire was "built on waves of migration overseas by British people", who left
John Vassall - Misplaced Pages Continue
4000-683: The British Records Association , and for a firm of solicitors in Gray's Inn . He died after suffering a heart attack on a London bus in November 1996: it was not until nearly three weeks later that the press became aware of his death. The suggestion of an improper relationship between Vassall and Tam Galbraith inspired a memorable sketch on the satirical BBC programme That Was the Week That Was , broadcast in 1963, in which Lance Percival played
4125-563: The Chartered Institute of Housing , Amnesty International , University of Oxford 's social geographer Danny Dorling , and other public figures. The earliest migrations of Britons date from the 5th and 6th centuries AD, when Brittonic Celts fleeing the Anglo-Saxon invasions migrated what is today northern France and north western Spain and forged the colonies of Brittany and Britonia . Brittany remained independent of France until
4250-638: The Commonwealth of Nations during the mid-20th century. Since the British Nationality Act 1948 and the subsequent mass immigration to the United Kingdom from the Commonwealth and elsewhere in the world, "the expression and experience of cultural life in Britain has become fragmented and reshaped by the influences of gender, ethnicity, class and region". Furthermore, the United Kingdom's membership of
4375-484: The European Economic Community in 1973 eroded the concept of Britishness as distinct from continental Europe . As such, since the 1970s "there has been a sense of crisis about what it has meant to be British", exacerbated by growing demands for greater political autonomy for Northern Ireland , Scotland , and Wales . The late 20th century saw major changes to the politics of the United Kingdom with
4500-645: The Immigration Act 1971 . Having faced removal, or been deported, many British people of African Caribbean heritage suffered with loss of home, livelihood, and health. As a result of the political scandal, many institutions and elected politicians publicly affirmed that these individuals, while not legally holding British citizenship or nationality, were, in fact, British people. These included British Prime Minister Theresa May , London Mayor Sadiq Khan , Her Majesty's CPS Inspectorate Wendy Williams and her House of Commons -ordered Windrush Lessons Learned Review ,
4625-483: The Institute for Public Policy Research estimated 5.6 million Britons lived outside of the United Kingdom. Outside of the United Kingdom and its Overseas Territories , up to 76% of Australians , 70% of New Zealanders , 48% of Canadians , 33% of Americans , 4% of Chileans and 3% of South Africans have ancestry from the British Isles . Hong Kong has the highest proportion of British nationals outside of
4750-563: The Iron Age , whose descendants formed the major part of the modern Welsh people , Cornish people , Bretons and considerable proportions of English people . It also refers to citizens of the former British Empire , who settled in the country prior to 1973, and hold neither UK citizenship nor nationality. Though early assertions of being British date from the Late Middle Ages , the Union of
4875-624: The Napoleonic Wars with the First French Empire advanced, "the English and Scottish learned to define themselves as similar primarily by virtue of not being French or Catholic". In combination with sea power and empire, the notion of Britishness became more "closely bound up with Protestantism", a cultural commonality through which the English, Scots and Welsh became "fused together, and remain[ed] so, despite their many cultural divergences". The neo-classical monuments that proliferated at
5000-516: The Second World War he worked as a photographer for the Royal Air Force . After the war, in 1948, he became a clerk (clerical officer) at the Admiralty . Although his father was an Anglican priest, his mother converted to Roman Catholicism , a decision that led to tensions within their marriage. Vassall himself converted to Catholicism in 1953. In 1952, Vassall was appointed, still as
5125-500: The Windrush scandal illustrated complex developments in British peoplehood, when it was revealed hundreds of Britons had been wrongfully deported. With roots in the break-up of the empire, and post-war rebuilding; the Windrush generation had arrived as CUKC citizens in the 1950s and 1960s. Born in former British colonies , they settled in the UK before 1973, and were granted "right of abode" by
John Vassall - Misplaced Pages Continue
5250-539: The federation of Australia was achieved on 1 January 1901. Its history of British dominance meant that Australia was "grounded in British culture and political traditions that had been transported to the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century and become part of colonial culture and politics". Australia maintains the Westminster system of parliamentary government and Charles III as King of Australia . Until 1987,
5375-523: The import of Scottish products into England and its colonies (about half of Scotland's trade). However, the Act contained a provision that it would be suspended if the Parliament of Scotland entered into negotiations regarding the creation of a unified Parliament of Great Britain , which in turn would refund Scottish financial losses on the Darien Scheme. Despite opposition from within both Scotland and England,
5500-621: The style "King of Great Britain", though this title was rejected by both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland and thus had no basis in either English law or Scots law . Despite centuries of military and religious conflict, the Kingdoms of England and Scotland had been "drawing increasingly together" since the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century and the Union of
5625-569: The Πρεττανοί ( Prettanoi ), Priteni , Pritani or Pretani . The group included Ireland , which was referred to as Ierne ( Insula sacra "sacred island" as the Greeks interpreted it) "inhabited by the different race of Hiberni " ( gens hibernorum ), and Britain as insula Albionum , "island of the Albions". The term Pritani may have reached Pytheas from the Gauls , who possibly used it as their term for
5750-688: The 8th and 11th centuries, "three major cultural divisions" emerged in Great Britain: the English , the Scots and the Welsh . The earlier Brittonic Celtic polities in what are today England and Scotland were absorbed into Anglo-Saxon England and Gaelic Scotland by the early 11th century. The English had been unified under a single nation state in 937 by King Athelstan of Wessex after the Battle of Brunanburh . Before then,
5875-408: The Anglo-Saxon invasions. However, the term "Britannia" persisted as the Latin name for the island. The Historia Brittonum claimed legendary origins as a prestigious genealogy for Brittonic kings , followed by the Historia Regum Britanniae , which popularised this pseudo-history to support the claims of the Kings of England . During the Middle Ages , and particularly in the Tudor period ,
6000-403: The Board of Trade in the late 1940s, Wilson had been on trade missions to Russia and cultivated a friendship with Anastas Mikoyan and Vyacheslav Molotov . He continued these relationships when Labour went into Opposition, and according to material from the Mitrokhin Archive , his insights into British politics were passed to and highly rated by the KGB. An "agent development file" was opened in
6125-426: The Crowns in 1603 and the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 triggered a sense of British national identity. The notion of Britishness and a shared British identity was forged during the 18th century and early 19th century when Britain engaged in several global conflicts with France, and developed further during the Victorian era . The complex history of the formation of the United Kingdom created
6250-415: The Crowns in 1603. A broadly shared language, island, monarch, religion and Bible (the Authorized King James Version ) further contributed to a growing cultural alliance between the two sovereign realms and their peoples. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 resulted in a pair of Acts of the English and Scottish legislatures—the Bill of Rights 1689 and Claim of Right Act 1689 respectively—that ensured that
6375-403: The English (known then in Old English as the Anglecynn ) were under the governance of independent Anglo-Saxon petty kingdoms , which gradually coalesced into a Heptarchy of seven powerful states, the most powerful of which were Mercia and Wessex . Scottish historian and archaeologist Neil Oliver said that the Battle of Brunanburh would "define the shape of Britain into the modern era"; it
SECTION 50
#17328583286216500-508: The Great 's victory against the Vikings performed to Frederick, Prince of Wales in 1740 to commemorate the accession of George I and the birthday of Princess Augusta . " Rule, Britannia! " was the climactic piece of the opera and quickly became a " jingoistic " British patriotic song celebrating "Britain's supremacy offshore". An island country with a series of victories for the Royal Navy associated empire and naval warfare "inextricably with ideals of Britishness and Britain's place in
6625-562: The KGB had not, as Nosenko claimed, interviewed former Marine radar operator Oswald, and faced with further challenges to Nosenko's credibility (e.g., his originally telling Bagley that he was a major, then in January 1964 boasting -- with a KGB travel document that stated as much -- that he had recently been promoted to lieutenant-colonel, and eventually confessing to having been only a captain), Angleton did not object when Murphy and Bagley detained Nosenko in April of 1964. This confinement lasted sixteen months and involved austere living conditions,
6750-410: The KGB leadership. He was born in Pyriatyn , USSR . He provided "a wide range of intelligence to the CIA on the operations of most of the 'Lines' (departments) at the Helsinki and other residencies, as well as KGB methods of recruiting and running agents." He became an American citizen by 1984. Golitsyn worked in the strategic planning department of the KGB in the rank of Major. In 1961 under
6875-479: The KGB sent instructions to Rezidentura throughout the world on the actions required to minimize the damage. All meetings with important agents were to be suspended. In November 1962, KGB head Vladimir Semichastny approved a plan for the assassination of Golitsyn and other "particularly dangerous traitors" including Igor Gouzenko , Nikolay Khokhlov , and Bogdan Stashinsky . The KGB made significant efforts to discredit Golitsyn by promoting disinformation that he
7000-463: The KGB was aware of his treason. Bagley, having read Golitsyn's CIA file shortly after his and Kisevalter's June 1962 meetings with him, knew that what Nosenko had told them about KGB penetrations of Western intelligence services overlapped (and contradicted) what Golitsyn had told the CIA. Bagley had thought this strange, because Nosenko and Golitsyn had worked in different parts of the highly compartmentalized KGB and therefore would not have been privy to
7125-406: The KGB was working up a perestroika -type plot to manipulate foreign public opinion on a global scale. The plan was in a way inspired by the teachings of the 6th-century BC. Chinese theoretician and military commander Sun Tsu , who said, "I will force the enemy to take our strength for weakness, and our weakness for strength, and thus will turn his strength into weakness." Albats argued that the KGB
7250-413: The Latin term Britannia was used for the island of Great Britain, and later Roman-occupied Britain south of Caledonia (modern day Scotland north of the rivers Forth and Clyde), although the people of Caledonia and the north were also the selfsame Britons during the Roman period, the Gaels not arriving until four centuries later. Following the end of Roman rule in Britain , the island of Great Britain
7375-438: The Scots and the English respectively, with the former gaining some preference in Scotland, particularly by the economists and philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment . Indeed, it was the "Scots [who] played key roles in shaping the contours of British identity"; "their scepticism about the Union allowed the Scots the space and time in which to dominate the construction of Britishness in its early crucial years", drawing upon
7500-471: The Second World War, people from the United Kingdom made up a large majority of people coming to Australia, meaning that many people born in Australia can trace their origins to Britain. The colony of New South Wales , founded on 26 January 1788, was part of the eastern half of Australia claimed by the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1770, and initially settled by Britons through penal transportation . Together with another five largely self-governing Crown Colonies,
7625-448: The Soviet Union to witness the reforms in action. Angleton and Golitsyn reportedly sought the assistance of William F. Buckley, Jr. (who once worked for the CIA) in writing New Lies for Old . Buckley refused but later went on to write a novel about Angleton, Spytime: The Undoing of James Jesus Angleton . New Lies for Old received a first edition in Portuguese in 2018. In 1995, Anatoliy Golitsyn and Christopher Story published
SECTION 60
#17328583286217750-430: The Soviet and KGB strategy are questionable. In particular, he disputed the Golitsyn claim that the " Sino-Soviet split was a charade to deceive the West". Golitsyn said that Harold Wilson (then prime minister of the United Kingdom ) was a KGB informer and an agent of influence . This encouraged pre-existing conspiracy theories within the British security services concerning Wilson. During his time as president of
7875-401: The Soviets for his spying, West wrote: "The drunken party may have taken place, but it was probably engineered so that Vassall might refer to it should his treachery ever be discovered ... Only a very stupid and helpless man would have succumbed [to a blackmail threat], and Vassall was not stupid; he was extremely resourceful." Vassall was identified as a potential spy after Anatoliy Golitsyn ,
8000-409: The Soviets to ensure Kekkonen's re-election. Golitsyn further said that Kekkonen had been a KGB agent codenamed "Timo" since 1947. Most Finnish historians believe that Kekkonen was closely connected with the KGB, but the matter remains controversial. Golitsyn had said from the very beginning that the KGB would send a false defector to the US to try to discredit him. In January of 1964, Yuri Nosenko ,
8125-421: The UK, the British diaspora totals around 200 million with higher concentrations in the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, with smaller concentrations in the Republic of Ireland, Chile, South Africa, and parts of the Caribbean. The earliest known reference to the inhabitants of Great Britain may have come from 4th century BC records of the voyage of Pytheas , a Greek geographer who made
8250-428: The US, Bagley, who was Nosenko's primary case officer from the beginning, stalled and suggested to him that he wait a few days while headquarters prepared for him, and Nosenko agreed. Two developments, however, hastened the process: Nosenko told Bagley and Kisevalter during that same meeting that he had been Lee Harvey Oswald 's case officer in the USSR, and a few days later he excitedly told them that he had just received
8375-410: The Union, successive British governments grappled with the problems of governing a country which had as Benjamin Disraeli , a staunch anti-Irish and anti-Catholic member of the Conservative party with a virulent racial and religious prejudice towards Ireland put it in 1844, "a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and in addition the weakest executive in the world". Although
8500-548: The United Kingdom by people from what is now the Republic of Ireland , the Commonwealth , mainland Europe and elsewhere; they and their descendants are mostly British citizens, with some assuming a British, dual or hyphenated identity. This includes the groups Black British and Asian British people , which together constitute around 10% of the British population. The British are a diverse, multinational , multicultural and multilingual people, with "strong regional accents, expressions and identities". The social structure of
8625-440: The United Kingdom has changed radically since the 19th century, with a decline in religious observance, enlargement of the middle class , and increased ethnic diversity , particularly since the 1950s, when citizens of the British Empire were encouraged to immigrate to Britain to work as part of the recovery from World War II. The population of the UK stands at around 67 million, with 50 million being ethnic British. Outside of
8750-599: The United Kingdom and "reached across the globe and permanently affected population structures in three continents". As a result of the British colonisation of the Americas , what became the United States was "easily the greatest single destination of emigrant British", but in Australia the British experienced a birth rate higher than "anything seen before", resulting in the displacement of indigenous Australians . In colonies such as Southern Rhodesia , British East Africa and Cape Colony , permanently resident British communities were established and, whilst never more than
8875-428: The United Kingdom and its Overseas Territories, with 47% of Hong Kong residents holding a British National (Overseas) status or a British citizenship. The next highest concentrations of British citizens outside of the United Kingdom and its Overseas Territories are located in Barbados (10%), the Republic of Ireland (7%), Australia (6%) and New Zealand (5%). From the beginning of Australia's colonial period until after
9000-476: The case against him. Vassall soon resumed his work. It had become obvious to his colleagues that Vassall had some other source of income, for he moved to an expensive flat in Dolphin Square , took foreign holidays, and was said to own 36 Savile Row suits . His annual expenditure was later estimated at £3,000, when his official salary was £750; he explained the discrepancy by stating that he had an inheritance from
9125-473: The census Bureau has stated that most of these are of Anglo-Celtic colonial stock. All six states of Australia retain the Union Jack in the canton of their respective flags. Anatoliy Golitsyn Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn CBE ( Russian : Анатолий Михайлович Голицын; 25 August 1926 – 29 December 2008) was a Soviet KGB defector and author of two books about the long-term deception strategy of
9250-688: The citizens of the United Kingdom , the British Overseas Territories , and the Crown dependencies . British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, which can be acquired, for instance, by descent from British nationals. When used in a historical context, "British" or "Britons" can refer to the Ancient Britons , the Celtic -speaking inhabitants of Great Britain during
9375-580: The claims. The scandal caused the Macmillan government considerable embarrassment, erupting as it did at the height of the Cold War , only a year before the still-more dramatic revelations of the Profumo affair . The Vassall Tribunal was held to inquire into whether the failure to detect Vassall earlier amounted to a failure of intelligence, as many British newspapers had claimed. It also investigated suggestions that
9500-531: The close relations between Vassall and Tam Galbraith had been improper. However, in its conclusions the tribunal found no evidence for impropriety, and largely exonerated the government. Vassall served ten years of his sentence, in Wormwood Scrubs , Maidstone and Durham prisons. He was befriended in prison by social reformer Lord Longford . He was eventually released on parole in October 1972. He then wrote
9625-638: The collective of the European Union , it contributes to the furtherance of the Russian strategy." According to Daniel Pipes , Golitsyn's publications "had some impact on rightist thinking in the United States". Golitsyn's views are echoed by Czech dissident and politician Petr Cibulka , who has alleged that the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia was staged by the communist StB secret police. The 1996 American film Mission: Impossible featured
9750-451: The counsel of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset , advocated a union with the Kingdom of Scotland , joining England, Wales and Scotland in a united Protestant Great Britain. The Duke of Somerset supported the unification of the English, Welsh and Scots under the "indifferent old name of Britons" on the basis that their monarchies "both derived from a Pre-Roman British monarchy". Following
9875-482: The death of Elizabeth I of England in 1603, the throne of England was inherited by James VI, King of Scots, so that the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland were united in a personal union under James VI of Scotland and I of England , an event referred to as the Union of the Crowns . King James advocated full political union between England and Scotland, and on 20 October 1604 proclaimed his assumption of
10000-457: The dominant component of the British Isles in terms of size, population and power"; Magna Carta , common law and hostility to continental Europe were English factors that influenced British sensibilities. The political union in 1800 of the predominantly Catholic Kingdom of Ireland with Great Britain, coupled with the outbreak of peace with France in the early 19th century, challenged
10125-422: The early 16th century and still retains a distinct Brittonic culture and language, whilst Britonia in modern Galicia was absorbed into Spanish states by the end of the 9th century AD. Britons – people with British citizenship or of British descent – have a significant presence in a number of countries other than the United Kingdom, and in particular in those with historic connections to the British Empire . After
10250-526: The end of the 18th century and the start of the 19th century, such as The Kymin at Monmouth , were attempts to meld the concepts of Britishness with the Greco-Roman empires of classical antiquity . The new and expanding British Empire provided "unprecedented opportunities for upward mobility and the accumulations of wealth", and so the "Scottish, Welsh and Irish populations were prepared to suppress nationalist issues on pragmatic grounds". The British Empire
10375-586: The equally transparent naivety of the British Foreign Office and security forces". Hungarian émigré George Mikes similarly concluded that it was Vassall's "vanity, his childish snobbery, his devouring ambition and complete lack of humour that pushed him so deep into the quagmire". Peter Martland describes the book as "self-serving". Vassall subsequently changed his surname to Phillips, settled in St John's Wood , London, and worked quietly as an administrator at
10500-521: The establishment of devolved national administrations for Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales following pre-legislative referendums . Calls for greater autonomy for the four countries of the United Kingdom had existed since their original union with each other, but gathered pace in the 1960s and 1970s. Devolution has led to "increasingly assertive Scottish, Welsh and Irish national identities", resulting in more diverse cultural expressions of Britishness, or else its outright rejection: Gwynfor Evans ,
10625-416: The first event for the celebration said: Scots and people from the rest of the UK share the purpose that Britain has something to say to the rest of the world about the values of freedom, democracy and the dignity of the people that you stand up for. So at a time when people can talk about football and devolution and money, it is important that we also remember the values that we share in common. In 2018,
10750-494: The first two (1964 and 1966) while under great duress, but passed the third one in 1968, which was "monitored by several Agency departments." However, Nosenko's long-term CIA case officer, Tennent H. Bagley , says in his 2007 book Spy Wars that Bruce Solie of the Office of Security (whom Professor John M. Newman believes was a KGB mole ) "coached" Nosenko through the easy third test, and polygraph expert Richard D. Arthur said that of
10875-493: The government or allowed to teach abroad. The creative arts and cultural and scientific organizations, such as the writers' unions and Academy of Sciences, would become apparently more independent, as would the trade unions. Political clubs would be opened to nonmembers of the communist party. Leading dissidents might form one or more alternative political parties. There would be greater freedom for Soviet citizens to travel. Western and United Nations observers would be invited to
11000-655: The homosexual underworld of Moscow. In 1954, he was invited to a party, where he was encouraged to become extremely drunk, and where he was photographed in compromising positions with several men. The party, arranged by the KGB , had been a classic " honeytrap ". The Soviets used the photographs to blackmail Vassall into working for them as a spy, initially in the Moscow embassy, and later in London, following his return there in June 1956. He returned to
11125-537: The hope of recruiting Wilson, and the codename "OLDING" was given to him. However "the development did not come to fruition," according to the KGB file records. Golitsyn also accused the KGB of poisoning Hugh Gaitskell , Wilson's predecessor as leader of the Labour Party , in order for Wilson to take over the party. Gaitskell died after a sudden attack of lupus erythematosus , an autoimmune disorder , in 1963. Golitsyn's claims about Wilson were believed in particular by
11250-590: The inhabitants of the islands. Greek and Roman writers, in the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD, name the inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland as the Priteni , the origin of the Latin word Britanni . It has been suggested that this name derives from a Gaulish description translated as "people of the forms", referring to the custom of tattooing or painting their bodies with blue woad made from Isatis tinctoria . Parthenius , an Ancient Greek grammarian, and
11375-491: The laws, government and broad moral and political concepts—like tolerance and freedom of expression—that hold the United Kingdom together. Gordon Brown initiated a debate on British identity in 2006. Brown's speech to the Fabian Society 's Britishness Conference proposed that British values demand a new constitutional settlement and symbols to represent a modern patriotism, including a new youth community service scheme and
11500-489: The leading element of British national identity during the Victorian and Edwardian eras , and as such, a series of royal, imperial and national celebrations were introduced to the British people to assert imperial British culture and give themselves a sense of uniqueness, superiority and national consciousness. Empire Day and jubilees of Queen Victoria were introduced to the British middle class , but quickly "merged into
11625-460: The legislative, the executive, and the judiciary might be introduced. The Supreme Soviet would be given greater apparent power, and the president of the Soviet Union and the first secretary of the party might well be separated. The KGB would be "reformed." Dissidents at home would be amnestied; those in exile abroad would be allowed to return, and some would take up positions of leadership in government. Sakharov might be included in some capacity in
11750-483: The lineal descendants of the ancient Britons – a word that was still used to refer exclusively to the Welsh". For the English, however, by the Victorian era their enthusiastic adoption of Britishness had meant that, for them, Britishness "meant the same as 'Englishness'", so much so that "Englishness and Britishness" and "'England' and 'Britain' were used interchangeably in a variety of contexts". England has "always been
11875-551: The lives of legendary kings of the Britons in a narrative spanning 2000 years, beginning with the Trojans founding the ancient British nation and continuing until the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 7th century forced the Britons to the west, i.e. Wales and Cornwall , and north, i.e. Cumbria , Strathclyde and northern Scotland. This legendary Celtic history of Great Britain
12000-595: The name "Ivan Klimov" he was assigned to the Soviet embassy in Helsinki, Finland , as vice counsel and attaché. He defected with his wife and daughter to the Central Intelligence Agency via Helsinki on 15 December 1961. They flew "with a CIA escort from Finland to Sweden and thence to the United States via Frankfurt am Main, Germany, arriving on 18 December 1961". He was interviewed by James Jesus Angleton , CIA counter-intelligence director. In January 1962,
12125-570: The national status of Australian citizens was formally described as "British Subject: Citizen of Australia". Britons continue to make up a substantial proportion of immigrants. By 1947, Australia was fundamentally British in origin with 7,524,129 or 99.3% of the population declaring themselves as European. In the 2016 census , a large proportion of Australians self-identified with British ancestral origins, including 36.1% or 7,852,224 as English and 9.3% (2,023,474) as Scottish alone. A substantial proportion —33.5%— chose to identify as 'Australian',
12250-476: The north, the demonym "Briton" became restricted to the Brittonic-speaking inhabitants of what would later be called Wales , Cornwall , North West England ( Cumbria ), and a southern part of Scotland ( Strathclyde ). In addition, the term was also applied to Brittany in what is today France and Britonia in north west Spain , both regions having been colonised in the 5th century by Britons fleeing
12375-527: The notion of a shared "spirit of liberty common to both Saxon and Celt ... against the usurpation of the Church of Rome". James Thomson was a poet and playwright born to a Church of Scotland minister in the Scottish Lowlands in 1700 who was interested in forging a common British culture and national identity in this way. In collaboration with Thomas Arne , they wrote Alfred , an opera about Alfred
12500-694: The previous century's concept of militant Protestant Britishness. The new, expanded United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland meant that the state had to re-evaluate its position on the civil rights of Catholics, and extend its definition of Britishness to the Irish people . Like the terms that had been invented at the time of the Acts of Union 1707, " West Briton " was introduced for the Irish after 1800. In 1832 Daniel O'Connell , an Irish politician who campaigned for Catholic Emancipation , stated in Britain's House of Commons : The people of Ireland are ready to become
12625-638: The process that definitively confirmed Philby as a Soviet mole. Golitsyn was a figure of significant controversy in the Western intelligence community. The military writer General Sir John Hackett and former CIA counter-intelligence director James Angleton identified Golitsyn as "the most valuable defector ever to reach the West". However, the official historian for MI5 , Christopher Andrew , described him as an "unreliable conspiracy theorist". Andrew believes that although intelligence data provided by Golitsyn were reliable, some of his global political assessments of
12750-422: The rise of the British Empire led to a very specific drive in artistic technique, taste and sensibility for Britishness. In 1887, Frederic Harrison wrote: Morally, we Britons plant the British flag on every peak and pass; and wherever the Union Jack floats there we place the cardinal British institutions—tea, tubs, sanitary appliances, lawn tennis, and churches. The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 reflected
12875-466: The same information. Bagley also did not believe that the KGB would have allowed Nosenko to travel to Geneva in 1964 if it suspected him of spying for the CIA. For these and other reasons Bagley came to believe that Nosenko was a false defector, originally sent to the CIA in Geneva to discredit and deflect what Golitsyn had told it. When Nosenko told Kisevalter and Bagley that he wanted to physically defect to
13000-486: The senior MI5 counterintelligence officer Peter Wright . Although Wilson was repeatedly investigated by MI5 and cleared of this accusation, individuals within the service continued to believe that he was an agent of the KGB, and this belief played a part in coup plots against him. Golitsyn said after his defection that the Note Crisis of 1961 was an operation masterminded by Finnish president Urho Kekkonen together with
13125-443: The shared constitutional monarchy of England and Scotland was held only by Protestants. Despite this, although popular with the monarchy and much of the aristocracy, attempts to unite the two states by Acts of Parliament were unsuccessful in 1606, 1667 and 1689; increased political management of Scottish affairs from England had led to "criticism" and had strained Anglo-Scottish relations. While English maritime explorations during
13250-532: The term "British" was used to refer to the Welsh people and Cornish people . At that time, it was "the long held belief that these were the remaining descendants of the Britons and that they spoke ' the British tongue ' ". This notion was supported by texts such as the Historia Regum Britanniae , a pseudohistorical account of ancient British history, written in the mid-12th century by Geoffrey of Monmouth . The Historia Regum Britanniae chronicled
13375-444: The three tests, the second one (which Nosenko had failed) was by far the most reliable one. In October of 1968, Nosenko was virtually cleared by Bruce Solie via the aforementioned polygraph test and a report he had written, and a few years later the CIA declared Nosenko to be a true defector and hired him to teach counterintelligence to its new recruits. In 1984, Golitsyn published the book New Lies For Old , wherein he warned about
13500-523: The varied ethnic groups that settled in Great Britain in and before the 11th century: Prehistoric , Brittonic, Roman , Anglo-Saxon , Norse , and Normans . The progressive political unification of the British Isles facilitated migration, cultural and linguistic exchange, and intermarriage between the peoples of England, Scotland and Wales during the late Middle Ages, early modern period and beyond. Since 1922 and earlier, there has been immigration to
13625-560: The vast majority of Unionists in Ireland proclaimed themselves "simultaneously Irish and British", even for them there was a strain upon the adoption of Britishness after the Great Famine . War continued to be a unifying factor for the people of Great Britain: British jingoism re-emerged during the Boer Wars in southern Africa . The experience of military, political and economic power from
13750-525: The war against the French, and of several spectacular victories, the spear was replaced by a trident... The navy had come to be seen...as the very bulwark of British liberty and the essence of what it was to be British. From the Union of 1707 through to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, Great Britain was "involved in successive, very dangerous wars with Catholic France", but which "all brought enough military and naval victories ... to flatter British pride". As
13875-524: The whole idea of turning the European common market into a federal state was agreed between the left-wing parties of Europe and Moscow as a joint project which Gorbachev in 1988–89 called our 'common European home'." (interview by The Brussels Journal , February 23, 2006). On 8 June 1995 the British Conservative Member of Parliament Christopher Gill quoted The Perestroika Deception during
14000-467: The world in shared traditions and common loyalties that were strenuously maintained". But following the two world wars, the British Empire experienced rapid decolonisation . The secession of the Irish Free State from the United Kingdom meant that Britishness had lost "its Irish dimension" in 1922, and the shrinking empire supplanted by independence movements dwindled the appeal of British identity in
14125-459: The world". Britannia , the new national personification of Great Britain, was established in the 1750s as a representation of "nation and empire rather than any single national hero". On Britannia and British identity, historian Peter Borsay wrote: Up until 1797 Britannia was conventionally depicted holding a spear, but as a consequence of the increasingly prominent role of the Royal Navy in
14250-429: Was "crucial to the idea of a British identity and to the self-image of Britishness". Indeed, the Scottish welcomed Britishness during the 19th century "for it offered a context within which they could hold on to their own identity whilst participating in, and benefiting from, the expansion of the [British] Empire". Similarly, the "new emphasis of Britishness was broadly welcomed by the Welsh who considered themselves to be
14375-470: Was "responsible for provoking the peoples of Britain into an awareness of their nationhood" in the 13th century. Schama hypothesised that Scottish national identity , "a complex amalgam" of Gaelic , Brittonic , Pictish , Norsemen and Anglo-Norman origins, was not finally forged until the Wars of Scottish Independence against the Kingdom of England in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Though Wales
14500-404: Was a "showdown for two very different ethnic identities – a Norse Celtic alliance versus Anglo Saxon. It aimed to settle once and for all whether Britain would be controlled by a single imperial power or remain several separate independent kingdoms, a split in perceptions which is still very much with us today". However, historian Simon Schama suggested that it was Edward I of England who solely
14625-597: Was conquered by England, and its legal system replaced by that of the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542 , the Welsh endured as a nation distinct from the English ; and to some degree the Cornish people , although conquered into England by the 11th century, also retained a distinct Brittonic identity and language. Later, with both an English Reformation and a Scottish Reformation , Edward VI of England , under
14750-519: Was deliberately sacrificed by the KGB in an attempt to protect the other (possibly more senior) spy. In October, Vassall was sentenced to 18 years in jail. While in Wormwood Scrubs prison, Vassall became acquainted with neo-Nazi Colin Jordan who later wrote to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan claiming that, courtesy of Vassall, he had evidence of "a network of homosexual politicians". The Security Service MI5 interviewed both Vassall and Jordan and dismissed
14875-511: Was involved in illegal smuggling operations. Golitsyn provided information about many famous Soviet agents including Kim Philby , Donald Maclean , Guy Burgess , John Vassall , double agent Aleksander Kopatzky who worked in Germany, and others. While unable to identify some agents like Philby specifically by name, Golitsyn provided sufficient information that SIS was able to determine the culprits. Thus, Golitsyn's defection in 1961 set in motion
15000-570: Was left open to invasion by pagan , seafaring warriors such as Germanic -speaking Anglo-Saxons and Jutes from Continental Europe , who gained control in areas around the south east, and to Middle Irish -speaking people migrating from the north of Ireland to the north of Great Britain, founding Gaelic kingdoms such as Dál Riata and Alba , which would eventually subsume the native Brittonic and Pictish kingdoms and become Scotland. In this sub-Roman Britain , as Anglo-Saxon culture spread across southern and eastern Britain and Gaelic through much of
15125-402: Was never more than a low-level functionary, but there was nothing low-level about the damage he was able to inflict". Similarly, Chapman Pincher regarded Vassall as "the classic example of the spy who, while of lowly rank, can inflict enormous damage because of the excellence of his access to secret information". Pincher continued: "I am in no doubt that the recruitment and running of Vassall was
15250-427: Was one of the most astonishing transformations in European history". After 1707, a British national identity began to develop, though it was initially resisted, particularly by the English. The peoples of Great Britain had by the 1750s begun to assume a "layered identity": to think of themselves as simultaneously British and also Scottish, English, or Welsh. The terms North Briton and South Briton were devised for
15375-425: Was released in 1972, after having served ten. The Vassall scandal greatly embarrassed the Macmillan government, but was soon eclipsed by the more dramatic Profumo affair . Born in 1924 and known throughout his life as John Vassall, he was the son of William Vassall, chaplain at St Bartholomew's Hospital , London, and Mabel Andrea Sellicks, a nurse at the same hospital. He was educated at Monmouth School . During
15500-712: Was that the appointment of a Jacobite monarchy in Scotland opened up the possibility of a Franco-Scottish military conquest of England during the Second Hundred Years' War and War of the Spanish Succession . The Parliament of England passed the Alien Act 1705 , which provided that Scottish nationals in England were to be treated as aliens and estates held by Scots would be treated as alien property, whilst also restricting
15625-689: Was the major beneficiary of political changes in Russia, and perhaps indeed directed Gorbachev. According to her, "one thing is certain: perestroika opened the way for the KGB to advance toward the very heart of power" in Russia. It has been said that Mikhail Gorbachev justified his new policies as a necessary step to "hug Europe to death", and to "evict the United States from Europe". According to Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky , "In 1992 I had unprecedented access to Politburo and Central Committee secret documents which have been classified, and still are even now, for 30 years. These documents show very clearly that
#620379