Percy Glading, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetPercy Glading
English co-founder of the CPGB and Soviet spy
Date of Birth: 29-Nov-1893
Place of Birth: Wanstead, England, United Kingdom
Date of Death: 15-Apr-1970
Profession: engineer
Nationality: United Kingdom
Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius 
About Percy Glading
- Percy Eded Glading ( 29 November 1893 – 15 April 1970) was an English communist and a co-founder of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).
- He was also a trade union activist, an author, and from the mid-1930s he spied on Britain for the Soviet Union, for which activity he was convicted and imprisoned.
- Glading, who was born in Wanstead and grew up in East London, left school early to find work.
- Starting with menial jobs such as delivering milk, he found skilled work at the Stratford marshalling yards.
- Later he worked as an engineer at the Royal Arsenal, which was then the national production centre for military materiel.
- Glading spent World War I at the Arsenal, and after the war, chose to involve himself in working-class politics.
- He joined the forerunner of the CPGB, which, with his friend Harry Pollitt and others, he later founded. Glading was a national organiser for the CPGB and acted as its ambassador abroad, particularly to India.
- He was active in other groups, such as the National Minority Movement and when he married, his wife Elizabeth joined him in his political activity.
- He was prominent in the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU), but his political activity resulted in dismissal from the Royal Arsenal, a security-sensitive post, as the government of the day regularly dismissed those suspected of subversive activities from its employment.
- MI5 opened a file on him in 1925 and considered him an extreme communist.
- The OGPU and its successor, the NKVD—the Soviet secret police—kept in touch with him through a series of handlers (including Arnold Deutsch who later recruited Kim Philby). Around 1934 Soviet Intelligence recruited Glading as a spy.
- Although he no longer worked at the Arsenal, he had maintained contact with men of similar sympathies who did.
- The Arsenal was of interest to the USSR as it was known that Britain was on the verge of creating the biggest naval gun yet.
- Glading had set up a safe house in Holland Park, West London, where he photographed various sensitive plans and blueprints.
- Unbeknown to him, the secret service had infiltrated the CPGB in 1931, with an agent known later as "Miss X"—Olga Gray.
- Glading trusted her and involved her in his espionage activities and lodged her in the Holland Park safe-house.
- He was eventually arrested in January 1938 in the act of exchanging sensitive material from Woolwich.
- Predominantly due to the testimony of "Miss X", Glading was found guilty and sentenced to six-years' hard labour. On his release from prison near the end of World War II, he is reported to have found work in a factory and maintained close links with Pollitt and the CPGB.
- Glading died in Richmond on 15 April 1970 aged 77.
Read more at Wikipedia