Tales of espionage in four ports: Portsmouth, Portland, Porthmadog, Portmeirion. Part 1.

October 12, 2022

Tales of espionage in four ports: Portsmouth, Portland, Porthmadog, Portmeirion. Part 1.

A potted history. Portsmouth and Portland.

Harry Houghton (1905–1985) was a Chief Petty Officer in the Royal Navy in 1945, and by 1951 a naval attaché in Warsaw. After involvement in the Black Market and heavy drinking, he was sent home in 1952 and then worked for the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment (AUWE) in Portland. There he met Ethel ("Bunty") Gee, a clerk at the base.

Houghton had access to restricted papers. By 1956 he was passing secrets contained therein to the Soviets via Polish contacts. He persuaded Gee to help him access documents for which he had no clearance. Houghton would go to London and exchange packages with a Gordon Lonsdale (really Konon Molody who posed as a Canadian businessman, but really a KGB agent). Lonsdale was described as the mastermind of the Portland Spy Ring.

They met at the Toby Jug pub in Tolworth/Surbiton. Later (1972), the pub was to see Ziggy Stardust first introduced by Bowie: gigs by others included Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Fleetwood Mac, The Stranglers, Status Quo, King Crimson and Genesis. It was demolished in 2000.

In 1956 Navy diver Commander Lionel "Buster" Crabb dived into Portsmouth Harbour supposedly to investigate the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze while Khrushchev was on a goodwill trip to Britain. He was never seen again, but some sources cite Houghton as leaking the plan [Kruschev also appears in Pt 2 in N Wales].

Houghton was by the late 1950s with Ethel Gee in Hambro Road, Fortuneswell, Portland, and living beyond his means, which brought him under suspicion from MI5. They placed him under surveillance and found other members of the Portland Spy Ring. Houghton and Gee were arrested with Lonsdale by the Special Branch in 1961 near the Old Vic Theatre, London, along with other contacts.

Files released in 2019 indicate that they could have been arrested as early as 1957, but MI5 ignored warnings from Houghton's then wife. She had advised the Admiralty in 1956 that "her husband was divulging secret information to people who ought not to get it". The Security Service finally acted only after a tip-off from a CIA agent in Polish intelligence.

In 1961, Houghton and Gee were sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Released in 1970, they married in 1971. Houghton wrote Operation Portland: The Autobiography of a Spy.

My father worked in Portsmouth Dockyard from 1939 until 1985, with occasional secondments to Portland AUWE and to Faslane Nuclear Submarine base. At some point he became a friend of Harry Houghton, and maybe a little in awe of this colleague twenty years older. A regular connection to Weymouth and Portland was through visiting my Great Aunt who lived there.

I allegedly "met" Houghton in Weymouth in1956/7, during the height of his activities, as attested in my mother's diaries: "met Harry Houghton outside the Golden Lion" [outside maybe, as babies would not have been allowed inside in those days]. In his autobiography, Houghton describes sites in and around Portland where he welcomed a group of Russians ashore, such as Church Ope Cove. He took them to Bovington Tank Museum. My brother and I were later taken to the same locations, little knowing the connections.

Was my father involved? How much did he know? Was he too under investigation? There is an arcane history of early Communism in the Royal Navy and in the Royal Dockyards of Portsmouth and Chatham. Britain ran a programme of covert surveillance of civil-servants suspected of being communist from the 1920s onwards.

A tangible connection however is in the wedding present from Harry Houghton to my parents in the early 1950s. I still have the two pink Toby Jugs. Were these a coded message about that Tolworth pub? I haven't yet checked them for microdots.

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Tales of espionage in four ports: Portsmouth, Portland, Porthmadog, Portmeirion. Part 1.

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