MI5 files show farm couple's support for Nazis in WW2

The Creasys had promised to pass intelligence about Allied activities on to Nazi spies

A Suffolk couple were placed under surveillance by MI5 during World War Two because of their support for the Nazis, newly released files show.

Ronald and Rita Creasy, who ran a farm in Eye, pledged to inform Nazi spies of Allied activities, the papers reveal.

The security service documents at the National Archives say they exchanged fascist salutes with their workers.

And they show the couple offered to rent rooms to German agents in the event of an emergency.

The Creasys were among the Nazi sympathisers infiltrated by a lone MI5 agent operating under the alias Jack King, whose existence was revealed last year.

A file shows they had sent a Christmas card to BUF founder Oswald Mosley in 1943.

"They were offering their help because they knew that if Hitler lost the war then Mosley would also lose," it reads.

Mrs Creasy was said to be "easily the more pro-Nazi of the two" and in 1943, secret services became aware of her passing intelligence to someone she said was a German agent.

However, a document from October 1945 indicates that her sympathies changed after the war when she became aware of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

The couple were both subject to restriction orders in the lead up to D-Day.

The files date from 1939 to 1957. They say Mr Creasy, who had been an active member of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and was interned for five months in 1940, continued to communicate with Mosley into the mid-1950s.

Other security service files released by the National Archives...

UK 'embarrassed to pursue WW2 spy'

Author Doris Lessing trailed by MI5

Ronald Creasy's grave in Monk Soham records his links with the British Union of Fascists

Other files show the lengths to which authorities went to survey those suspected of being communists.

Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing had roused the interests of the secret services because of her left-wing sentiments.

Her involvement with groups such as the Rhodesian Friends of the Soviet Union attracted their attention, as well her marriage to communist activist Gottfried Lessing.

A document explains that her deep hatred of racism led to her communist leanings which "have been fanned almost to the point of fanaticism owing to her upbringing in Rhodesia".

Lessing was associated with left-wing groups in southern Africa

Britain also failed to prosecute a member of the intelligence services who had leaked information out of fear of embarrassment, the files revealed. Cedric Belfrage, who worked for MI6 in New York, passed secrets to Russia during WW2.

Hastings Banda would later become Malawi PM

And the secret services kept an eye on Hastings Banda while he lived in the UK in the 1950s prior to him becoming the prime minister of Malawi.

It was thought that he was encouraging civil disorder in the country formerly known as Nyasaland, the files show.