Eric John Ernest HOBSBAWM, aliases HOBSBAUM, Francis NEWTON: British. A Party member...

Eric John Ernest HOBSBAWM, aliases HOBSBAUM, Francis NEWTON: British. A Party member from 1936 while at Cambridge, HOBSBAWM first came to the Security Service's notice in 1942 when a sergeant in the Army Education Corps; he wished to invite a German communist to lecture to troops. In the same year he was in contact with the British Communist Party HQ about his propaganda activities among soldiers, which had caused concern to the army authorities. After World War II, while pursuing an academic career at Birkbeck College in London and King's College, Cambridge, he was chairman of the Historians Group of the Party until he resigned in 1959. He was in contact with senior members of the Party, including Margot HEINEMANN and James MacGIBBON, and with the convicted Soviet spy Alan NUNN MAY and his wife. His relations with the Party deteriorated from 1959 after he began to write for non-communist publications using the name 'Francis NEWTON'