Fighting the Anti-Red Menace: Britain’s Cold War against Kenneth de Courcy

Abstract Throughout the 1940s and into the early 1950s, the British government sought through various means to curtain the activities of a journalist and a self-described private intelligence officer named Kenneth de Courcy. The objective of this consorted campaign was to discover de Courcy’s sources and to limit his influence on current affairs. The methods employed in this pursuit were unethical, conspiratorial, and at times illegal. They represent a form of governmental malfeasance that hitherto has rarely been noted in the existing historiography covering the period. This overlooked episode calls into question the long-standing narrative that British authorities of the time considered communist spies as the primary threat to continued governmental secrecy, especially because few suspected Soviet agents were investigated and harassed to the same degree as this dedicated anticommunist and self-described committed patriot.