Melita, or Letty, Norwood was a committed Communist who
spied for the Soviet Union throughout her working life, starting in the 1930s.
Letty was born ‘Melita Sirnis’ in 1912 to an English mother
and a Latvian father, Peter Sirnis, a translator of Tolstoy. Both parents were
Communists, and when Letty was young the family lived in a commune of sorts at
Tuckton House in Sussex. They subsequently moved to the Hampstead area and had
strong links to the Russian émigré community there, including the residents of Isokon
Flats, a modernist building whose residents later included Agatha Christie.
The Sirnis family, and many of their friends, regularly attended meetings of
the Friends of the Soviet Union (FSU).
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| From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/801623.stm |
Melita started a degree in Latin at Southampton University
but left after the first year and obtained an administrative post at a major
London bakery. The technical know-how she picked up there helped her get a secretarial
job at the research organisation British Non-Ferrous Metals (BNF) near Euston.
She soon realised that her work would give her access to information useful to
the USSR, and in 1934 she approached Andrew Rothstein, a key FSU member, who
put her in touch with the Soviet agents in the UK. She was soon passing documents
and photographs to Russia, though she probably didn’t think of herself as a spy.
In her mind she was just correcting an imbalance of knowledge. She was soon to
marry Hilary Nussbaum, a Maths teacher and stamp collector of Russian origin. He
changed his name to ‘Norwood’ before they married, and the couple lived in
Bexleyheath near the school where he taught. Letty had a daughter in the early
1940s but by the end of the war she was back with BMP and elevated to the role
of personal assistant to the director, G.L. Bailey.
Melita – agent ‘Hola’ - was controlled by a succession of Soviet
agents including Percy Gladding, Ursula
Beurton and Gordon Lonsdale. Before and during WW2, the secrets she sent
to Russia related mostly to the use of metals in ships, tanks and weapons.
During the subsequent Cold War period, the focus shifted to the development of
the atomic bomb. It is thought that Letty’s information helped Russia develop an
atomic weapon four years earlier than they otherwise would have. The Soviets
rewarded her work with the ‘Order of the Red Banner’, and in 1979 Letty, now
retired, travelled to Moscow to pick up the award under the cover of a stamp
collecting event (Hilary was a key figure in the British Philately Society).
Though she was vetted several times over her career, the
truth about her was not fully realised until the defection of Vasili Mitrokhin in
1992. Her role in espionage over four decades was revealed in an article in the
Times of Saturday, 11th September, 1999, and there was an announcement
about her in Parliament the following week. Letty was not prosecuted because of
her advanced age. She died six years later, aged 93.
Letty Norwood is one of the two main characters in ParallelShadows, a novel which provides a reasonably faithful portrayal of
her life history. She was also the inspiration for Red Joan by Jennie
Rooney which was made into a film, though ‘Joan’ was not much like the real Melita
Norwood.
References
Andrew, C. (2009) The Defence of the Realm: The
authorised history of MI5. Allen Lane, London.
Burke, D. (2008) The Spy who came in from the Co-op.
Boydell Press, Suffolk.
Burke, D. (2014) The Lawn Road Flats. Boydell Press,
Suffolk
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