The Politics of Complacency in the West

British Prime Minister Harold McMillan and to some extent Alec Douglas Hume in the early 1960s regarded the spy world as a sort of rather grubby vulgar world. Phil B. Burgess McLean and the famous Cambridge Five went undetected for so long because they didn't really want to know the truth. It was an element of just class bias in the sense of they couldn't believe that upper class English gentleman could betray their country but I think they preferred to keep it secret. If you catch a spy you don't put him on trial you basically put him under your control and you use him privately and secretly. That's why I think Anthony Blunt was not exposed in the early 60s