GOOD MORNING FROM LONDON
27 MARCH 2026 CHINA POST #617
CHINA AND THE FOREIGN MEDIA
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CHINA AND JACK PERRY
PART 35
JACK AND MI5 + MI6
MI5 and MI6 are the UK’s primary intelligence agencies, with MI5 (Security Service) focusing on domestic security, counter-terrorism, and counter-espionage within the UK, while MI6 (Secret Intelligence Service) handles foreign intelligence gathering overseas. MI5 is akin to the FBI, and MI6 operates similarly to the CIA.
Jack caught the interest of the two main UK Intelligence services, first, because of his links to the British Communist Party from 1935 and, second, because of his involvement with the People’s Republic of China from 1951. Looking back to these historical moments from the vantage point of 2026 and context is everything.
THE INTER-WAR YEARS
The Inter-War years contained a number of standout issues. 1917 witnessed the Russian Revolution and – for the first time in history – the coming to power of a Marxist inspired Communist Party. This rattled the cages of the European monarchies, the U.S government in the West, Japan in the East and especially China where the Chinese Communist Party was formed in 1921.
The Versailles Treaty of 1919 witnessed a retributive squeeze on Germany “till the pips squeaked” which spurred the creation of a strong right wing reaction within the country that led to the rise of Hitler.
The 1930’s were dominated by the 1929 Wall Street Crash, the subsequent Depression and the struggle of all countries to rebuild their economies after the damage inflicted by the First World War.
Politics were fluid – not stable. Monarchies fell in Russia and Germany and even in the UK the Royal Family worked hard, and successfully, to avoid forcible abdication. The plight of the UK poor was highlighted by the Jarrow Marchers and the short-lived General Strike of 1926. Politics began to fragment as the Centre began to wilt and politics of the Far Right and the Far Left impacted on the margins. It is within this context that Jack’s career took shape.
THE PERISKY FAMILY
As has been previously covered in Parts 1-10 of China and Jack Perry (the current issue is Part 35), Jack came to politics when Oswald Mosley came to the London East End. It was that simple. There was no Left Marxist politics in the Perisky household. Jack Perry was born Israel Perisky. His father was from Poland and his Mother from Russia. They met in London and married in 1903. Jack was the youngest of four children. His father was a tailor who mixed good years with bad in his trade. It was a Labour household – as was most of the Jewish East End – but politics did not feature prominently in the daily life of the Perisky family. – until 1933 when Hitler came to power in Germany.
Times were often bad and money scarce and there were occasions in the 1920’s when the family left their rented premises in the early hours of the morning to escape the clutches of their rent-pursuing landlord. Life eased in the 1930s but Jack’s whole life changed when Mosley and his blackshirts stormed the streets of the East End with their anti-semitic tirades. Jews were on the defensive and looked in vain for leadership from the Rabbis but inspiration was absent. Jews, instinctively, wanted to fight back but the Rabbis urged restraint. Jack fumed. The initiative was seized by the Communist Party who urged front foot street confrontation.
JACK AND THE COMMUNIST PARTY
The political situation on the streets of the East End was one part of Jack’s story. The other part was his stand out personal skills. He was shrewd, intelligent, articulate and rapidly acquiring a left-wing political outlook. His natural home having regard to the Mosley challenge of the moment was the Communist Party and not the less vigorous Labour Party. He was becoming a leader and not just a follower. When he spoke people listened and he was an organiser and had an instinct for the needs of the moment – whether on committees or at public meetings. Jack was a leader.
He quickly came to the attention of the Communist Party leadership – Palme Dutt, George Matthews and especially Harry Pollitt who became a lifelong friend. By agreement with the Party he never became a card carrying member but, nevertheless, played a leading role in its public activities. Party leaders were regular visitors in the post War years to the family home in Finchley.
Jack came to the attention of MI5 because of his involvement with the Party. He played an active part at Cable Street in 1936 because the Party assumed a leading role in the fight to stop Mosley’s blackshirts from marching through the East End. There were fisticuffs on the day as groups of Jews went after the blackshirts in the back streets of Hackney and Stoke Newington. Mosley’s March was stopped. His blackshirts took a beating and the anti-fascists won the day. But MI5 were making notes. Jack’s activities were being recorded in an MI5 file
THREE SOURCES OF INFORMATION
- Lord Clinton-Davis
As to the specifics of Jack’s involvement with MI5, there are three sources of information. The first came to my attention when in 1974 I responded to an advert in the Law Society Gazette, the Solicitor’s newspaper – “Radical East End Lawyer Wanted”. The firm was Clinton-Davis & Co, a Hackney based firm of Solicitors. A vacancy had arisen because the Senior Partner, Stanley Clinton-Davis, the MP for the Hackney constituency had been appointed Minister of Trade in Harold Wilson’s Government following the General Election of 1974. He had to end his active association with the firm. I applied, successfully, for the job and went to work in Mare Street. I came to know Stanley well as we executed a handover of current files. We became friends and he revealed to me that he had been informed about Jack’s political links and he mentioned a file he had viewed which had been opened in Jack’s name which recorded his business activities in China and his political association with the Communist Party.
- A University Friend
A similar account was mentioned to me by a University friend. He was studying Maths but cherished an ambition to work in the Foreign Office. He switched to History and obtained a Class 1 degree. Post Cambridge we drifted but met up again in Beijing in 1978. He was a Third Secretary at the British Embassy in Beijing. I made contact and he invited me to the diplomatic compound for dinner with his family. It was a very pleasant occasion. He was now quite straight-laced – none of the casual undergraduate chatter. He was in the Foreign Office with aspirations to be an Ambassador. He drove me back to the Beijing Hotel. He relaxed and became, again, the friend I knew at Cambridge. He allowed himself an indiscretion and told me that he had read the files on my father and reeled off names of people in the party with whom Jack was closely associated including Reuben Ferber, Sam Russell, Jack Klugman and Ted Bramley. Sadly, he died of cancer before he reached high office. His name was John Stern.
- Richard Davenport-Hines
The third source of information was a historian and journalist, Richard Davenport-Hines. He had been asked by the family of the Oxford historian, Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre) to write up the diaries of the Professor who had made a 1965 controversial visit to China with SACU – the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding – an organisation composed of people who were positive about China.
In the diaries Trevor-Roper had referred to meeting with me in Beijing. I remembered the encounter and was able to assist Davenport-Hines with the lengthy narrative that he wrote. He had done his homework about the Perry past and was aware of Jack’s political links with the Communist Party. He had been given access to the files of MI5 including the notes of a meeting between two MI5 officers and Jack, which Davenport-Hines warned me correctly, contained unflattering and anti-semitic references to Jack. The book contains a footnote identifying the document and goes onto place Jack firmly in a pro-Beijing political setting. Davenport-Hines recorded his appreciation in the acknowledgement section for the information I provided.
In my discussions with Davenport-Hines I was aware that I was putting into the public arena information about Jack and his activities in two key areas – first, the Communist Party and, second, China. The story deserved to be told and I was pleased to be the source of information. There is pride not shame. And Jack made clear to me that he wanted his story to become public knowledge – a decent interval after his death. He died in 1996.
Why the interval? Jack was clear. In discussions with senior Party officials at King Street, Jack joined the Party and accepted the discipline of the Party even when he disagreed with policy as with the pre-War Doctor’s Trial in Moscow, the riots in East Poznan in 1953 and the Hungarian uprising in 1956 – differences that made him critical of Party policy but which never provoked his resignation.
It was agreed that he would work in the Public Front arena chiefly among Left sympathisers who baulked at Communist Party membership. He wanted to be in a position to speak publicly on key issues – anti-Mosley, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and domestic issues such as economic policy free of a public association with the Party. He stood a better chance of winning listeners to his position if he spoke without the complication of being identified as a Party member. Jack worked with the “70 per centers”. People who identified with many of the policies of the Party but who struggled to go further and join the Party.
Jack was courageous in the face of Mosley anti-semitism and in the face of Foreign Office opposition to his key role in initiating trade and business links with China. His story is a small part of the bigger geo-political narrative of the 20th and 21st centuries – the rise of China
SIR ANTHONY EDEN
Following his 1953 Icebreaker first visit to China Jack was summoned to the Foreign Office where he was confronted by an angry Foreign Secretary – Sir Anthony Eden. Eden spoke in straightforward and uncomplicated language. He made it clear that the Conservative Government disapproved of the Icebreaker visit. The Korean War was too close in memory. The time was not right to establish trade and economic links between Britain and China. Eden was clear and straightforward and even thumped his desk with his fist to add emphasis. But Jack was imperturbable. He was never a blushing violet. He was looking beyond the Korean War to the second half of the 20th Century. China was at the beginning of a long journey that would convert the “Sick Man of Asia” into the largest economy in the world. China was on the move – a new Long March was underway – and Jack was determined that the UK should play a leading role.
Eden’s mood changed. His antagonism gave way to enquiry and he peppered Jack with questions about who he had met? what matters had been discussed? Jack’s assessment of the status of Mao Tsetung’s Communist Party and Jack’s views about the long-term stability of the new Beijing regime. This approach was repeated after each of Jack’s annual visits. The British Government was keen to maintain close links with developments in China. They maintained their own diplomatic channels but the Eden and the Government knew that Jack’s judgment was balanced and informed. They could not embrace him because he was on “the other side” but they respected Jack as evidenced by his later close relationship with Edward Heath who recognised that Jack spoke about China with knowledge and judgment.
In the early 1950s the UK Government, however, was looking at China from two quite different perspectives. On the one hand under the influence of John Foster Dulles at the State Department and Herbert Hoover at the FBI, the U.S. pressed the UK Conservative Government led by Churchill and later by Eden and, from 1957, Harold Macmillan to refrain from any embrace of China. At the same time there existed a preference within the UK business community for contact, dialogue and exchange with the New China. Tensions remained during the period of acute confrontation in the 1960’s between China and the USSR and, later, during the Cultural Revolution when the political leadership of China yielded to the Left leadership of the Gang of Four. China has always been a challenge.
A PERSPECTIVE
The narrative is unusual because the historical backdrop is unusual. First, the Jewish Story and, second, the China Story. Both claim the attention of historians, politicians and interested members of the public. The world continues to grapple with both Stories.
Jews down the centuries have featured in the unravelling of world history – especially and sadly because of the Holocaust. Simply to record that six million people died for one reason – they were Jewish – shakes the emotional and intellectual foundations to the core. Regardless of conflicting views about Israel today and Gaza, it is necessary on a daily basis to remember that six million people walked into the gas chamber to die clutching their children close. It does not make other human catastrophes less deserving of attention but we are what we are and some moments in history strike a greater personal chord than other moments.
Then there is the world shaking consequence of the rise of China. Regardless of your personal views about the society that China is building – and I recognise that I am more in tune with its rise than some readers – China’s influence has only started to be felt. For the rest of this Century the effect of China’s growing contribution to world development is going to rebound across the continents. It is not an interrupted linear progression to plentiful. Life is not like that especially when your population is 1.4 billion but in 2030 Travelex has predicted 200 million Chinese tourists will travel overseas for their vacations. What number in 2040? And 2080?
There is more to write about Jack and China especially the letters he wrote recording his contemporary views and impressions. There are also more questions about Jack The Capitalist and Jack The Communist. Now that is very interesting. So more to come. But in writing about Jack I remain aware that he was the Junior Partner. Jack’s story (1915-1996) is interesting but China’s story (1921-?) is fascinating.
GRAHAM PERRY
