Nicholas Theocarakis mentions the disputed notion that Arthur Pigou was the infamous"Fifth Man" in the 1930s Cambridge spy ring, rather than Anthony Blunt.

Actually, Blunt was "outed" by Mrs Thatcher in 1979. However, this was only as one of four Cambridge KGB spies who had been publicly revealed by that time. (The other three were Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean)

In 1990 Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky (a KGB defector), in _KGB: The Inside Story_, alleged that John Cairncross was the Fifth Man. Much of this greatly egged story was strongly disputed both by John Cairncross, in his posthumous autobiography _The Enigma Spy_ (1997), and also by John's brother, the distinguished economist Sir Alec Cairncross. However, no-one denied John's important role in helping the Russians win the crucial Battle of Kursk in 1943 through illegally passing on vital information obtained at Bletchley Park while working on the top-secret Enigma codes.

At Cambridge, John had studied German and French literature rather than economics, but came first in the Civil Service entrance exams that included economics, partly thanks to tutoring from his brother's friend Hans Singer on "the essence of Keynes in five lessons" (p.48).

In the Wikipedia entry on John Cairncross it mentions that he was "born to humble parents" in the small Scottish town of Lesmahagow. However, there is no mention of John's autobiography where is is quite clear that his parents were "sturdy middle class" and "staunch Conservatives" and that there was naturally "a political cleavage between the middle-class villagers and the [Red Clydeside] miners" (p.22).

My uncle, the son of farm workers, attended Lesmahagow village school with the Cairncrosses. He was in the same class as Alec and told me that despite being himself a top student (and ahead of the Cairncrosses in some subjects), he and the other Sandilands were unable to follow the wealthy Cairncrosses to Hamilton Academy in the 1930s (and thence to Glasgow and Cambridge Universities), and all left school at 13 or 14 to help earn their keep. (My uncle strongly approved of the help John Cairncross gave to the Russians during the war! On the Lesmahagow WWII war memorial there are the names of a William Cairncross and of my father.)

Roger Sandilands
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.

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From: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nicholas Theocarakis [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2010 5:43 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SHOE] Was Pigou a Bolshevik spy?

I remember about 30 years ago just before Tony Blunt was outed as the 5th man (Kim Philby etc.) that someone had suggested in the press that the fifth man was Pigou. This prompted Nicholas Kaldor to write an irate letter (to the Guardian I think) restoring Pigou's memory and arguing that because libel laws do not apply to the dead, this made Pigou the victim of any troglodyte.

Nicholas Theocarakis
Dept of Economics
University of Athens