THEIR SAFE HAVEN,but not his

In the January 25 2019 edition of the TLS, under the heading "Cruel Britannia", Robert Waterhouse sets out the story of the Hungarian-born artist George Buday who had his 1950 application for British citizenship rejected over false allegations of Communist sympathies. Robert’s new book THEIR SAFE HAVEN describes how 14 artists who arrived in Britain before the Second World War made their way, and their lives, in their adopted nation. In the face of many challenges they settled, contributing to the rich mix of émigré art during and after the war. They all, apart from Buday, were granted British citizenship. Ironically, Buday was the greatest patriot of the 14, both for Britain and for the Hungary he had felt impelled to leave in 1937. His story is a heart-breaker. The case against Buday rested on claims by MI5 that he had stayed too long as founder-director of the Hungarian Cultural Institute in London during 1948 and 1949 as the Cold War intensified, and that he had personally followed the dictates of Moscow.

However, secret Home Office files in the National Archives opened under a Freedom of Information request suggest that, by pointing the finger at Buday, the M15 operative Dick White - the man who let Kim Philby slip through his fingers - was shielding another Hungarian, Andrew Revai, a double agent who had been turned by none other than Guy Burgess. Buday had made striking contributions to the British war effort both as an artist, a BBC broadcaster and as part of a Foreign Office unit countering Nazi propaganda. He had been a founder in 1941 of the Association of Free Hungarians in Great Britain - combining patriotism for his native country with allegiance to the British cause. But when Russian tanks crushed the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, Buday suffered a nervous breakdown, needing residential care for the remainder of his long life. Articles on this site track Buday’s life in London from when he arrived in 1937 until his applications for citizenship were refused. They show a Home Office in the thrall of M15 despite Buday having the support of top politicians. His treatment remains a slur on Britain’s reputation for fairness. He was never accorded an apology, not even after his death at a Croydon psychiatric hospital in 1990.

Buday’s naturalisation file in the National Archives reveals that Sir Dick White, the MI5 operative who let Philby slip through the spy net, kyboshed Buday’s life while endorsing the Hungarian double-agent Andrew Revai

November 1947. George Buday, internationally known as a book illustrator and, aged 40, at the height of his powers, made a first visit to Budapest in ten years. During the five-week stay his old friend and colleague, the writer and academic Gyula Ortutay, invited him to be director of the proposed Hungarian Cultural Institute in London. Ortutay, then Minister of Education, represented the liberal wing of a coalition government already under pressure from hardline Communists. The two had published books together in 1930s Szeged. Buday had been active in the London Hungarian community since May 1941 when, along with the diplomat Anthony Zsilinsky and the journalist and publisher Andrew Revai, he signed a letter to The Times disassociating himself from the actions of the Horthy regime in attacking Yugoslavia. They were stripped of Hungarian nationality as a result, and later Zsilinsky committed suicide. Revai and Buday went on to found the Association of Free Hungarians in Britain, urging their fellows to support the Allied war effort in any way available. The patriotism Buday showed to what he believed to be the true spirit of his native country was paralleled by three  graphic front page images published by the Times Literary Supplement in 1941. After the war (he had served in the Foreign Office’s Foreign Internal Defence department at Woburn Park between 1942-45) he resumed his highly successful career, sharing one of the Rossetti studios in Flood Street, Chelsea, with his great friend, the medallist Paul Vincze. He should have left it at that. For, as his citizenship file at the National Archives, Kew, reveals, the denizens of Box 500, Parliament Street, SW1 – otherwise known as MI5 – found it convenient to imply he had Communist sympathies. The file, originally classified as SECRET and closed until 2086, has been opened under a Freedom of Information Act request. It shows, conclusively, that Buday was never granted citizenship.

Although he seems to have been allowed to carry on life in Chelsea as before, Buday’s feeling of rejection ran deep. When the October 1956 Hungarian uprising was quashed by Soviet tanks, Buday suffered a nervous breakdown. He was admitted to a NHS psychiatric institution at Coulsdon, near Croydon, where he died some 34 years later in 1990. Happily, he was encouraged to carry on working and was offered a studio in the grounds. So, just what did MI5 allege? In October 1950 the MI5 operative D.G.White wrote to his counterpart at the Home Office, W.S.Murrie: “We referred to his position as Director of the Hungarian Cultural Institute. We know from a delicate and wholly reliable source that while in this post he was regarded by the Hungarian legation as a Hungarian Government official subject to orders from Budapest.” The crunch phrase is “delicate and wholly reliable source”. He was never named, but the source was almost certainly none other than Andrew Revai, Buday’s former colleague at the Association of Free Hungarians. Revai, it transpires, was a double-agent working both for M15 and the Russian secret services, where he had the codename TAFFY (or TOFFY). He was, according to the Russian source Vasili Mitrokhin, who defected to the UK in 1992, turned by his former lover, Guy Burgess in November 1942 – and appears consistently in accounts of the Burgess/Maclean/Philby/Blunt spy web. What makes Buday’s treatment shocking is that Dick White knew Revai’s role well but – when communicating with the Home Office – he insisted on pairing the two. He wrote, in his same note to Murrie, “Although I think BUDAY was identified more closely and for a longer period with the Communist regime than REVAI, the two cases are undoubtedly similar and we cannot say that the former associations of either have implanted in them an enduring loyalty to communism.”  However, White concluded his note, referring to Buday: “We cannot have any real confidence in the permanence of his political loyalties.” By being less than truthful about Buday, White was taking the pressure off Revai, who he knew was a spy. As a further injustice, Revai was granted British citizenship in 1964.