T
he essence of treason has
remained static through the
centuries, as a crime that
seriously endangers state security, often in
collusion with a foreign enemy. However,
the threats to British security have con-
stantly shifted. Since the Second World
War, treason has usually meant the
betrayal of state secrets.
In 1955, foreign secretary Harold
Macmillan spoke in the House of Com-
mons about the case of the “Cambridge
Spies”, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean,
who had just been exposed as traitors
working for the Soviet Union. Macmillan
explained that the landscape in Britain
now resembled the era of Elizabeth I, with
“traitor-spies” busy everywhere. Citizens
were being attracted to communism, just
as once they were drawn to Catholicism.
But, he warned, the state now had to be
careful to balance civil rights against the
interests of state security.
In our own age, the use of the archaic
1351 Treason Act has been abandoned
although it remains on the statute book.
Instead, as in the past, the British state
has created a range of new laws for new
dangers. When traitor-spies were prose-
cuted from the 1950s, they were usually
charged under the Official Secrets Act,
but more recently the government has
employed terrorism laws against violentcrimes once designated as “treason”.
Yet with the evolution of security
dangers, it’s been argued that new meas-
ures are required. In 2018, the think-tank
Policy Exchange suggested that the 1351
Act should be reformed or replaced, in
order to easily condemn as traitors those
British citizens who fled abroad to help
Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq. So
far, this idea of a new treason law has
remained just that: an idea.
The history of treason in Britain has
repeatedly revealed not only the difficulty
of defining a crime that’s so inextricably
linked with state power, but also the
challenges of ensuring the accused are
given a fair trial. With these two issues in
mind, the jury is still out on whether we
need a new law for British traitors in the
21st centur y.LISTEN Clive Anderson investigated the
Lord Haw-Haw trial in an episode
of BBC Radio 4’s Every Case Tells
a Story;QWECPPFVJCVCV
bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b05wxx6x10 treason trials
10 The era of the traitor-spy
The Cold War saw the emergence of a new security
threat, headed by Britons working for the Soviet Union
Mark Cornwall is professor of modern
European history at the University of South-
ampton. He is writing a history of treason in
the late Habsburg empire, 1848–1918Communist threat
The foreign secretary Harold Macmillan
compared “Cambridge Spies” Donald
Maclean (pictured above) and Guy Burgess
(left) to Catholic agents of the Elizabethan era9 Haw-Haw’s
fatal lies
A passport proved crucial in
sending Nazi propagandist
William Joyce to the gallows
E
veryone had heard of “Lord
Haw-Haw” (William Joyce)
during the Second World War.
Joyce’s daily radio broadcasts from Nazi
Germany had made him one of the most
reviled men in Britain – a sentiment that
was hardly improved by Hitler’s decision
to decorate him for his work.
After his capture in 1945, the authorities
were keen to set an example of Joyce, trying
him, like Roger Casement, under the 1351
Treason Act for “aiding the enemy”. The
jury found Joyce guilty in 20 minutes, and
he was hanged in Wandsworth Prison in
January 1946. He was the last person to be
executed for treason in Britain.
Yet this easy conviction was problemat-
ic, even a miscarriage of justice. Although
Joyce had committed the crime, it was
discovered during his trial that he was not
a British citizen and therefore not subject
to British law. He had been born in New
York and, though residing in Britain for
17 years, had never taken citizenship.
The charge of treason therefore seemed
weak, but the prosecutor, Hartley Shaw-
cross, found another way to convict. When
in England, Joyce had openly stressed his
British allegiance, and had three times lied
in order to secure a British passport. With
this he had fled to Germany in August 1939
and retained it for a year before taking
German citizenship. Because of this
passport, Shawcross claimed that in
1939–40 Joyce (pictured below after his
capture) had owed allegiance to the king in
return for being under “British protection”.
Instead, he had betrayed the crown.
Joyce claimed that he had tried to lead
Britain towards friendship with
Germany: “I know that I have been
denounced as a traitor and
I resent the accusation, as
I conceive myself to have been
guilty of no underhand or
deceitful act against Britain.”
In fact, his conflicted loyalties
entrapped him: in the end he was
hanged for having a British passport.GETTY^ IMAGES/SHUTTERSTOCK