Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

OXFORD RING• 405

tives overseas known asdefence security officersand originally

based at Aden, Cairo, Malta,Gibraltar, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

OWEN, WILL.The Labour MP for Morpeth since November 1954,
Will Owen was a former miner named in 1969 by a Czech defector,
Josef Frolik, as one of his assets, codenamedlee. Owen had been
appointed to the House of Commons Defence Estimates Committee
in February 1960 and denied the allegation that he had sold informa-
tion to theCzech Intelligence Service(StB) for £2,300. At his trial
in May 1970 he was acquitted on all eight charges. After the trial, he
agreed to meet withMI5with a fellow MP, Leo Abse, present and
made a full confession, acknowledging that he had been cultivated
by the StB after a visit to Czechoslovakia in 1957.

OXENSTIERNA, JOHAN.The Swedish naval attache ́in London dur-
ing World War II was Count Johan G. Oxenstierna, who was quietly
removed from his post at the request of the British government at the
end of 1943 and replaced by the Swedish king’s grandson, Prince
Bertil. Oxenstierna was suitably indignant about his treatment and
the British ambassador in Stockholm, Victor Mallet, pressed his case,
as did the British naval attache ́,Henry Denham, but the Foreign Of-
fice was adamant about his removal and equally insistent that the pre-
cise nature of his offense not be disclosed. Oxenstierna had been
responsible for the leakage of secret information but was not pre-
pared to be specific beyond a reference to his inquisitiveness about a
naval stabilizer recently installed on destroyers. Certainly there was
no mention oftriplex, or the illicit copying of the contents of the
naval attache ́’s dispatches in the Swedish diplomatic bag, and the
issue has remained a mystery to this day. The count was from an
exceptionally well-connected Swedish family, being a cousin of the
Wallenbergs, and his removal, under the threat of being declared per-
sona non grata, continues to be highly controversial.

OXFORD RING.Although less notorious than the Soviet spy ring re-
cruited at Cambridge University,MI5acquired information that a
similar network had been cultivated at Oxford during the 1930s.
Among those known to have joined underground cells of theCom-
munist Party of Great Britainat Oxford, and the subject of MI5