On the night, everyone expected Herbert to produce his 'secret letter'. In fact, he only produced three letters from unnamed individuals who alleged that other unnamed persons whom they had met were connected with the Oxford Group and had made remarks not unfavourable to Hitler. The debate was scrappy and angry. Trivial issues prevented any intelligent discussion of the basic question of whether one set of Christians should be treated differently from all others and what, in fact, is 'national service'. Bevin rode out the storm, implying among other things that the men were all conscientious objectors. None, in fact, was.

In his biography of Herbert, Reginald Pound writes: 'APH was comforted in his opposition by a letter marked "Secret" from an intelligence department in Whitehall: "You will be interested to know that everybody I have seen who has had opportunity of watching Buchman, in this country, on the Continent and in the United States, is of the opinion that he is working for Germany. A A number believe that he has been subsidised by Dr Goebbels. At the moment proof is lacking."’10 This may have been the 'secret letter' which Herbert sent to Bevin. It could also have been the source of Bracken's suspicions and Lyttelton's suggestion on behalf of the Government. It may or may not be relevant that Driberg was at this time working on supplying information on people and movements for a branch of MI5.*

(*.Chapman Pincher states that Driberg was enlisted by MI5 while a schoolboy and instructed to infultrate the Communist Party, from which he was expelled in 1941 when Harry Pollitt, the Party's General Secretary, discovered his duplicity. After his election as MP for Maldon, Essex, in 1942, however, Pollitt approached him to work for the KGB. For the rest of his life he worked for both organisations, to the knowledge of both. His job was, in each case, to provide information and misinformation and report on the private lives of leading politicians, including close friends, and of any others of interest. Inquiries after his death, writes Pincher, 'convinced MI5 that he had been controlled primarily by the KGB since the end of the war'. It was, according to Pincher, Driberg's 'long relationship with MI5' which 'solves the mystery of why such a notorious homosexual, who was repeatedly caught in the act publicly by the police, was never successfully prosecuted'. (Their Trade Is Treachery, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1981, pp. 198-206.) See also Dictionary of Espionage by Christopher Dobson and Ronald Payne (Harrap, 1985, p. 40), where he is described as, 'a double agent working on behalf of both MI5 and the KGB'. 'The KGB’, they add, 'always had it in reserve to produce pictures of his homosexual affairs...and threaten to shatter his public career if he failed to do their bidding.' See also The Man Who Was by Anthony Masters (Blackwell, 1984). pp. 168-79.)

302