George Orwell’s left-wing views and “bohemian” clothes led British police to label him a Communist - but the MI5 spy agency stepped in to correct that view, the writer’s newly released security file reveals.The secret file the intelligence agency kept on the author from 1929 until his death in 1950 was declassified Tuesday by the National Archives.It reveals that Britain’s real-life Big Brother had a surprisingly benign view of the writer, a socialist who railed against inequality in Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier but also savaged the totalitarianism of Stalin’s Russia in Animal Farm and 1984.The documents show Orwell — whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair — attracted the attention of police in the 1930s for alleged “communist activities in Wigan.” He had gone to the mining town to research a book about working-class life in northern England.In 1942, Orwell drew police interest again while he was working for the Indian section of the British Broadcasting Corp. A report by the British police intelligence wing, Special Branch, said Orwell had “advanced Communist views, and several of his Indian friends say they have often seen him at communist meetings.”“He dresses in a bohemian fashion both at his office and in his leisure hours,” police noted.The file shows that MI5 took no action against Orwell. In a note, an MI5 officer named W Ogilvie reveals that he phoned Special Branch to ask why Ewing had described Orwell as having “advanced Communist views.”A police inspector replied that the sergeant felt Orwell was an “unorthodox Communist.”The Special Branch files on Orwell were released by the archives in 2005, but MI5’s response had been kept secret.The declassified file also includes photographs, Orwell’s passport application and a 1936 Special Branch summary of his career, which began conventionally — education at the elite Eton College and service as a colonial police officer in Burma — before taking a radical turn.
