21.05.2026

A perfect spy

BBC bosses and the securocracy continue with their campaign to denigrate Michael Bettaney and therefore hide the murderous criminality of the British state in the Six Counties and the sheer incompetence of MI5. Jack Conrad puts the record straight

Billed as the “true story of MI5 traitor Michael Bettaney” the BBC Radio 4 play ‘Bettaney’ is, in fact, the tired old story concocted by the securocracy back in the 1980s to cover its crimes in the Six Counties during the troubles. That and its sheer incompetence.

All one needs do is read the “authorized history of MI5” written by Christopher Andrew, “Britain’s leading historian of intelligence” and emeritus professor of modern and contemporary history at Cambridge.¹ This, plus a good dollop of artistic licence, is where Rossa McPhillips MBE, the writer of ‘Bettaney’, gets his ‘truth’ from. It should be added that while McPhillips has many screen plays, audio dramas and TV episodes to his credit, he is himself a former military intelligence operative. Hence the gong.

That should immediately set alarm bells ringing when it comes to telling the “true story” about anything, let alone Michael Bettaney. MI5 has, after all, a long and thoroughly dishonourable record of lying. Eg, the notorious forgery - the ‘Zinoviev letter’ which triggered the overthrow of the Ramsay MacDonald Labour government in 1924.

Basically McPhillips portrays Michael Bettaney as the “worst spy ever”. Supposedly here was a MI5 middle ranker who early in his career ran a whole string of agents in the IRA and then, for entirely inexplicable reasons, attempted to become a double agent for the Soviet Union. Of course, so the “true story” goes, Michael Bettaney was so inept, so useless, so befuddled, that he instantly got discovered and quickly landed himself in jail, on remand, awaiting his treason trial.

A drunk, a sad loner, a weakling, he is half-befriended, half-bullied into naming the names of the IRA turncoats while attending the prison’s Catholic mass. Who half-befriends him? Who half-bullies him? This is where artistic licence comes in (as far as I know). It is none other than Brian Keenan.

Who he?

Brian Keenan was the IRA’s quartermaster - the organiser of overseas finances, arms supplies, bomb making equipment and their distribution to the fighting units. That meant the German Democratic Republic, Lebanon, Libya and Syria. Having been arrested in 1979 Brian Keenan was serving an 18-year sentence for his role in the armed struggle. Later he went on to play a crucial role in winning the IRA rank and file over to the peace process. Keenan was highly regarded and considered beyond reproach. When he died, in May 2008, Gerry Adams paid him a fulsome tribute.

However, comrade Keenan considered himself a Marxist, a communist and an internationalist. So an equivocal or conditional ally of the Adams leadership. Never an unalloyed enthusiast for the peace process, let alone a constitutional nationalist. Some have even compared him to James Connolly, Vo Nguyen Giap, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, and Joe Slovo. Not just because of his exceptional role in reorganising and shaping the IRA’s armed struggle, but his lifelong commitment to the working class.

Keenan discovered communism through the ‘official’ CPGB. To begin with at least, his communism was therefore an anti-Stalin Stalinism. Basically, he accepted what passed for the Soviet state’s global strategy: ie, a grand alliance between the so-called socialist countries, the workers’ movement in the west and the forces of national liberation.

As a young man Keenan lived and worked in Luton, then Northampton. This was during the early 1960s. He became an active trade unionist and met industrial militants from the ‘official’ CPGB’s South East Midlands district. Of lasting importance was the fact that they introduced him to the writings of Desmond Greaves, crucially his influential book The life and times of James Connolly (1961).

Throughout the rest of Keenan’s life Connolly served as something of a role model. Without the struggle for national freedom, socialism was impossible. Without socialism, national freedom was worthless. In other words, for Connolly - and Keenan - the two struggles had to be combined.

When he joined the IRA Keenan found himself regarded rather coolly at first. The rumour amongst the Provos was that he was still a card-carrying member of the ‘official’ CPGB. Mistrust soon became its opposite, however. Keenan earned an unmatched reputation as a brave fighter and strategic thinker. Living the life of the professional revolutionary, constantly on the move, single-mindedly working for the cause, he steadily rose up the ranks of the IRA to the highest levels.

Conceivably, it might be true that Michael Bettaney gave names to Brian Keenan. Frankly I do not know. But names were named … and the IRA began to systematically take out its traitors one after another. In the McPhillips story MI5 goes into a panic. Surely the case. The spooks cannot work out how the IRA is fingering its agents. Till the penny finally drops … it must be that drunk, that sad loner, that weakling Michael Bettaney.

Now, the fact of the matter is that I knew both Brian Keenan and Michael Bettaney.

My correspondence with Brian Keenan began during the late 1980s when there seemed a real prospect, to me at least, of forging a Communist Party in Ireland out of the leftwing of the republican movement. We briefly exerted a real influence over the Irish Republican Socialist Party. There were two joint schools in Belfast and we helped the comrades relaunch and write Starry Plough. Then there were the various Marxist strands within and around Sinn Fein/IRA, not least Brian Keenan himself.²

Backstory

What about Michael Bettaney? After an Old Bailey trial in April 1984, mainly held in camera, he was convicted under section 1 of the Official Secrets Act for attempting to pass damaging information on to the Soviet Union. Lord Lane handed him a 23-year sentence (apparently there were those in government pressing for an even longer stretch).

This was during the miners’ Great Strike … and the ongoing armed struggle in the Six Counties. There were hundreds of political prisoners. Our organisation had a policy of sending them books, copies of The Leninist and exchanging letters. Various comrades were assigned to, or volunteered, for this work, one of them being Marion Johnstone. She entered into a mammoth correspondence with Michael and eventually began visiting him in Swaleside prison on the Isle of Sheppey. Being something of a diarist, she recorded exactly 444 such visits - two a week.

It is more than worth giving Michael Bettaney’s backstory. Born in 1950 to working class parents in Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent, with their unstinting help and encouragement he excelled at school and won himself a place at Oxford University. He attended Pembroke College and studied English.

Michael had an enduring passion for languages. He mastered German, French, Latin and Old English. In prison he taught himself Russian - mainly by listening to Radio Moscow. Later in life he learnt more than a smattering of Polish. He wanted to make the migrant bus drivers feel welcome in his adopted home town of Ware in Hertfordshire (incidentally another connection, myself and group of Young Communist League comrades established a commune in nearby Castlebury Farm from where we took over the Ware and Hertford branch of the CPGB - recruiting local convenors and shop stewards - and rewon the South East Midlands district of the YCL from the Eurocommunists).

At university Michael seems to have aped the politics and drinking habits of his more boorish upper class peers. According to the official account, he affected an admiration for Adolf Hitler and sung the ‘Horst Wessel song’ in college bars and local pubs. There was much throwing of food and breaking of glass. Think Black Cygnets, Piers Gaveston Society, Bullingdon Club and Oxford University Conservative Association.

The secret services have long had a record of recruiting suitably reactionary Oxbridge toffs. However, what they were looking for in the early 1970s were agents with a working class background who could mix with the hoi polloi … and be fast-tracked up the chain of command. Michael Bettaney fitted the bill perfectly. Having undergone a thorough vetting, he was given an MI5 job-offer.

After spending a year in West Germany, MI5 assigned him to the Six Counties. There he ran his clutch of well-placed MI5 informants. Michael told how he had to watch in silence, hidden in a cupboard, while one of his grasses was kneecapped by an IRA punishment squad. He also survived a car bomb. But Ireland changed him, and for the better.

The republican hunger strike of 1981 and the election of Bobby Sands as MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone could only but have a seismic effect. It proved beyond doubt that the IRA were not just a bunch of isolated terrorists with no support in the wider population. On the contrary they stood at the head of a people risen. Michael was also more than aware of MI5 fronts such as the Force Research Unit. It directed agents in Loyalist terror gangs and selected targets for extra-judicial killing. MI5 effectively ran the Ulster Defence Association, which murdered Catholics simply because they were Catholics. Then there was the shoot-to-kill policy, and the MI5-organised cover-up of crimes, such as the Kincora Boy’s Home. A Catholic from his young teens, the ‘dirty war’ must have been the cause of inner turmoil for Michael Bettaney.

Promoted, his next assignment was at a desk in MI5’s department F. That involved counterespionage - basically monitoring KGB agents … and their assets, real and imagined, in the Labour Party, the trade unions, CND and, of course, the ‘official’ CPGB.

Department F recorded each and every donation made to the Morning Star, instructed agents, blackmailed and secretly raided CPGB district offices (where membership details were held). Other leftwing organisations were watched, but did not rate of much importance.

Michael had to study Marxism - the motto in department F being ‘know your enemy’. Unlike most of his colleagues he did not find this a crashing bore. The British road to socialism, the programme of the ‘official’ CPGB, had him laughing. However, the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin - they were a different matter entirely. Profound, gripping and persuasive. He began to think of himself as a Marxist.

Given Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and the ratcheting up of cold war nuclear missile rhetoric, it is, I suppose, no surprise that Michael decided to follow in the footsteps of Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess. There were, though, few illusions in the Soviet Union of Leonard Brezhnev. Michael knew all about the stagnating growth rates, the corruption, the endemic lies and cliches that passed for ‘Marxism’. But Michael believed he could help the cause of world peace … if he became a double agent.

Incidentally, it is worth adding that later Michael developed a considerable admiration for Hillel Ticktin and his work on the Soviet Union. He kept a framed picture of him in his ‘Marxist corner’ at his Ware home. For Hillel’s part, he remembers being impressed by Michael’s wit, learning and intelligence when they met at Communist University.

Michael secretly photographed a wide range of highly compromising documents at MI5’s London HQ. Meanwhile, he delivered a suitably cryptic message to the Soviet embassy’s KGB staff. It required them to make contact with him using standard spycraft techniques: pins placed on London underground escalator handrails, numbered steps, etc, etc.

The story of Michael behaving completely incompetently, being hopelessly drunk and stuffing MI5 documents through the letterbox of the Soviet embassy, is, needless to say, pure invention. The same goes for the story of a confused general, Arkady Gouk - first secretary at the Soviet embassy and head of the KGB’s British section - going round to MI5 and handing back the documents. Obvious fabrication, impossible to take seriously.

British intelligence had their double agent in the KGB and they did not want to blow his cover. It was Oleg Gordievsky. He informed MI6 that there was yet another British mole. Michael found himself under immediate investigation.

He told me that he was presented with a stark choice: ‘either we put a bullet through your brains here and now or you give us a full confession’. Over a bottle of whisky he owned up. Not the story as told by Christopher Andrew, of course. Supposedly, Michael was free to leave MI5’s HQ anytime he wanted ... but did not realise it. Another piece of fiction.

Before his trial, on remand, Michael sought out IRA prisoners to tell them about the MI5 agents in their movement. There were no treats, no arm twisting. He passed on similar information to Arthur Scargill and the National Union of Mineworkers. Names were given (via whom, I don’t know). But evidently, in this case, to no effect.

The NUM had, of course, been infiltrated by Stella Rimington’s F2 branch in preparation for the 1984-85 strategic confrontation. Not only were the phones of Arthur Scargill and Mick McGahey tapped. Former NUM chief executive, Roger Windsor, was widely rumoured to have acted under MI5 instructions in order to sabotage the union and destroy Scargill’s credibility. There were others besides.

Category A

Once sentenced, Michael was always category A. Initially that meant solitary confinement … and no TV, no radio, no writing paper. His exercise yard was covered with overhead wire mesh to prevent a helicopter rescue. His toilet paper was of the soft kind - other prisoners had to make do with the old-fashioned, shiny rolls. No surreptitious messages were to be ferreted out.

Doubtless, he expected to be exchanged for a British spy held in the Soviet Union. He saw himself giving well-informed lectures to aspiring KGB officers in the Lubyanka and living in a comfortable little Moscow flat - apparently, the view of the British secret services too. But, of course, with Mikhail Gorbachev, and then Boris Yeltsin, the Soviet Union tumbled towards a chaotic collapse. Michael had to adjust to serving a long, long sentence.

That prospect did not particularly worry him. Although Michael was extraordinarily sociable, he could easily cope with solitude. He was part monk, part communist militant. The prison authorities noted how determined he was to remain mentally and physically fit. Michael studied hard and exercised hard too. The pictures that I have seen of him from those years - taken covertly, of course - show him lean, confident and thoroughly self-possessed.

Over time the prison regime relaxed somewhat. Writing material, a radio, Christmas vodka … the latter courtesy of a sympathetic prison governor. He even got a cellmate (one, a none-too-intelligent guardsman, was sent in to spy on the spy - Michael fed him nonsense and he was soon transferred out).

Because of Marion Johnston’s letters, because of The Leninist, because of the collapse of bureaucratic socialism in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, Michael came towards our point of view. He wrote for our press under his chosen name, ‘Michael Malkin’. His articles, letters and reviews were always very well written … and cutting. Eg, he had absolutely no time for former government minister and latter-day left reformist saint, Tony Benn.

After serving two-thirds of his sentence - 15 years and six months - Michael was released on parole. This is when I first met him in person. We worked together collating and posting out the Weekly Worker, we drank a few beers together, on a Thursday, then on a Sunday (ie, after doing the paper, then after our weekly seminar). We even contemplated writing Fantastic reality - my book on religion - as a joint effort.

That never happened. Nonetheless, as I say in the introduction, chapter one, ‘Sigh of the oppressed creature’, owes more than a little to Michael Bettaney. Basically it deals with the views of young Marx when it came to religion and how he subsequently continued to view religion as a two-sided phenomenon: ie, not merely the ‘opium of the people’.

Enigma

Not that I ever really knew Michael Bettaney. While I always liked and admired him, I have to admit that I always found him totally enigmatic.

He was a social chameleon. Michael could talk to anyone, in any way, at any time. Within 10 to 15 minutes he would know someone’s life story. That is what made him a perfect spy. Having adapted to the high society Oxford bigots of his youth, he could just as easily charm prison wardens, the cleaners at Communist University … and myself. Nonetheless, serving 15 years and six months surely speaks for itself. He had the steel of conviction.

Upon his release in 1998, Michael moved in with Marion Johnston. Both an odd couple and ideal partners - some day a playwright or a novelist will do justice to their wonderful but unlikely tale. Michael certainly deserves better, much better than Rossa McPhillips MBE.

Despite writing for the Weekly Worker, Michael became a thoroughgoing localist. He worked at the corner newsagent, did some maths tutoring, helped out the old and infirm and got to know all and sundry. Michael even became a beater for the local pheasant shoot on major Page-Croft’s old estate. I reacquainted myself with the gamekeeper at Michael’s wake and gave him a big hug. The last time we had met is when he had a double-barrelled shotgun directly pointed at me - that was at Castleberry Farm (I was fishing with permission on the bank of our little pond and politely told him to fuck off).

Michael Bettaney proudly proclaimed himself a Marxist until his death, yet he was a committed Catholic too. A circle which is surely impossible to square, though Connolly seemed to have managed it. So maybe Michael too. Nonetheless, I freely admit, it is beyond me. From my earliest days I have been a member of the League of the Militant Godless.

We parted company over ... who knows what. He clearly wanted to leave our ranks. Nonetheless, looking back I still regard Michael as a dear friend and a good comrade.

He died on August 16 2018 … sadly of alcohol intoxication. What drove him to drink to such excess is hard to tell … but at a guess it was probably a coping mechanism. Being an exceedingly bright working class kid from Stoke, suddenly finding himself having to live in an utterly alien environment must have been the cause of immense mental strain: first Oxford University, then Northern Ireland during the troubles, then Gower Street and department F. Adding to which was his growing conviction that the whole British establishment was built on lies, murder and the preparation for nuclear war.

In his last years Michael’s Catholicism became far more important than his Marxism. He regularly confessed his sins and attended mass where he ate the bread and drank the wine. In return came the promise of forgiveness and salvation.

Father John, the good-natured Catholic priest officiating at his funeral service at Ware’s Sacred Heart church, assured us all that we would meet Michael in heaven - along with John Paul II and all the other Catholic bishops and saints.

For my part, as I have said, if the Christian doctrine is true, “I hope to meet Michael in the fiery circles of hell - the company is so much better there”.³.

1. C Andrew The defence of the realm: the authorized history of MI5 London 2009. Micheal Bettaney is referenced on pages 557, 558, 564, 714-22, 723-4, 732, 754 and 756.↩︎

2. For my obituary of Brian Keenan see ‘Prisoner B26380’s dilemma’ Weekly Worker July 30 2008. Here the reader will also find some brief extracts from our correspondence in the late 1980s. We put the lot of it up on the website - some 40,000 words in all. Apart from correcting punctuation, spellings, etc, we present the letters unexpurgated. I have added explanations here and there, when I think they are needed. Where particular words are undecipherable because of Brian’s awful handwriting, this is indicated. The hope is that serious historians and partisans of communism and Irish republicanism alike will find the material useful.↩︎

3. Quoting another obituary, this time for Micheal Malkin (Micheal Bettaney) ‘A man of contradictions’ Weekly Worker September 9 2018.↩︎