Poet laureate was on MI5's 'black list' of Communists

Newly released files show Day-Lewis was considered the most dangerous revolutionary of 1930s writers

Cecil Day-Lewis was kept under close surveillance for nearly a decade after he was judged by MI5 to be the most dangerous literary Communist of his generation.

In the 1930s, the intelligence service kept a "black list" of prominent poets considered to be potential security threats because of their membership of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). Documents released today at the National Archives in Kew, west London, show that Day-Lewis, the father of the Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis, was considered by MI5 to be the most "practical" of the Communist writers on its list, which also included his friends W H Auden and Stephen Spender.

But, in an early case of secret intelligence not quite matching reality, it was not an opinion shared by the poets' political masters. According to MI5's sources in the CPGB, its leadership considered Day- Lewis and his friends to be worth "less than nothing" as potential revolutionaries.

The intelligence service's personal file on Day-Lewis - who in 1968 was made Poet Laureate - shows that letters sent by him to the party were routinely intercepted by MI5, starting in 1933 with his first £5 donation to its election fund. Officers continued to watch the poet's activities as he rose from a schoolteacher in Cheltenham to become a full-time writer and member of London's intellectual glitterati.

A memo written by one MI5 official in September 1938 said of Day-Lewis: "An author of some reputation. Like his close associates, Stephen Spender and W H Auden, he is an intellectual Communist but of the three he is definitely the most convinced and practical party man; the others, as you know, being Communists of a highly idealistic and literary brand."

But MI5's opinion of Day- Lewis's political talents was not shared by the CPGB leaders. The document shows that Harry Pollitt, the party's bullish general secretary, had little time for the high-brow talents of his trio of poetic agitators. Indicating that MI5 had so successfully penetrated the group that it knew the inner thoughts of its most senior member, the memo added: "Harry Pollitt incidentally thinks less than nothing of their value to the party."

The poet himself seemed to share at least some of Pollitt's coolness about his usefulness as a political activist. In an intercepted reply to a letter from the Cheltenham branch of the CPGB looking for guest speakers, Day-Lewis wrote: "I'm a writer and no speaker. I can lecture, take part in discussions, that kind of thing, but I've no experience of straight propaganda speaking; nor the voice for open air work."

The budding poet was also watched in 1934 by Special Branch officers, who reported in disapproving tones that he seldom wore a hat and was "not altogether of smart appearance". They added that he was a "'hale fellow well met' type" and "a good singer".

Agents later discovered that Day-Lewis, who supplemented his income from poetry by writing crime novels under a pseudonym, became estranged from the CPGB after objecting to the Soviet Union's invasion of Finland in 1939.

The split was reluctantly viewed with favour by MI5, which referred to its roll call of Communists and sympathisers in the Day-Lewis file as the "black list".

When Day-Lewis applied to work as publications editor for the Ministry of Information early in the Second World War, his unnamed MI5 case officer begrudgingly accepted the appointment on the condition that the surveillance continued.

The officer wrote: "While we raise no objection to his employment, we advise that the ministry should keep a close watch on him and that he should be dismissed in the event of his showing any sign of preaching views which are harmful to the war effort."

But by the middle of the war, the security services appear to have concluded Day-Lewis probably no longer posed a threat to British democracy and, with Auden and Spender, could be consigned to the ranks of acceptable Communists. A note on the file of Day- Lewis, who became poet laureate four years before his death, said: "This man has been a member of the CPGB. As an intellectual he was probably activated by his hatred of social inequality rather than revolutionary desire."