Pigou in the Foreground

On 29 May 1979, The Guardian published excerpts from a forthcoming book by Richard Deacon, a pen name used by Donald McCormick. His most sensational revelation was the accusation that Arthur Cecil Pigou (18 November 1877–7 March 1959), Alfred Marshall’s successor in the Chair of Political Economy at Cambridge University, was the mysterious ‘Fourth Man’ in the Cambridge spy ring operated by the KGB. The first three were Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and Kim Philby, all of whom had studied at Cambridge in the early 1930s. Working as agents at the same time that they held important posts in the Foreign Office or the intelligence services — for a time, Philby was a leading candidate for chief of MI6 — they passed secret British and American intelligence to the Soviets in the early years of the Cold War. Burgess and Maclean escaped to Moscow in 1951, when they realized they faced imminent exposure. Philby, although compromised and forced to resign from MI6, continued to flourish in the British journalistic and intelligence establishment, living by his considerable charm and wits. He finally made his way to Moscow in 1963. In McCormick’s imagination, however, Pigou was the master spy of the KGB Cambridge stable.