Communists ‘tried to infiltrate British school system’ Post WW2
MI5 believed a hardcore of around 750 teachers was attempting to spread communist propaganda in British schools in the wake of the second world war, documents released today show.
A secret MI5 memo written in August 1949, released by the National Archives at Kew, west London, charts apparent efforts to recruit teachers and infiltrate the leadership of the National Union of Teachers.
The document, which traces a Soviet-backed drive to free worldwide education from capitalist “enslavement” back to 1920, also reports attempts to penetrate teaching in British colonies in the early post-war period.
The report was written against a backdrop of positive vetting by Clement Atlee’s government to identify communists in the British civil service and military.
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