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DETAILS about how a Morning Star supporter spied for the Soviet Union are included in files released today by the British national archive.
Notes made by KGB major Vasili Mitrokhin about Melita Norwood are being made public for the first time after being stored in Cambridge for more than two decades.
The major handed over the files, which detail the spying activities of 200 British socialists over 30 years, when he defected from the collapsing Soviet Union in 1992.
Ms Norwood, who delivered copies of the Morning Star to neighbours in south-east London until her death in 2005, is described as a “loyal, trustworthy, disciplined agent” by the major.
Ms Norwood was first named as a spy in 1999 when historian Christopher Andrew studied the files for MI5.
The then-87-year-old, who was not charged with any crime, told press who turned up on her doorstep that “I never considered myself a spy, but it’s for others to judge.”
Communist Party general secretary Rob Griffiths said the files appear to reveal little that is not already public.
And he warned: “The media will no doubt go into a frenzy. This just appears to be another opportunity to dredge up and recycle anti-socialist, anti-communist propaganda.”
Mr Griffiths compared the state’s willingness to name Soviet spies to its refusal to release files that would reveal how British intelligence have spied on and disrupted “perfectly reasonable trade union and political organisations in Britain on a massive scale.”
“The thousands of files held on British citizens should now be opened,” he added.
Mr Griffiths made the call after former MI5 agent-turned-whistleblower Annie Machon gave chilling details of British surveillance in a speech on Friday.
Speaking at a protest outside a US military base in Yorkshire, she lifted the lid on how trade union members were labelled “domestic extremists” and “terrorists” by spooks.
Ms Machon, who quit MI5 in 1996, said: “Counter-subversion was really counter-activist.
“They spied on people like us. They have hundreds of thousands of files on citizens.”
