ABSTRACT
The three volumes of Bob Stewart's MI5 file open in September 1920 with a report from secret intelligence service that identified him as a Communist and ‘a secret agent for England on behalf of the Third International’. Stewart had been a founder member of the Party when it was created in 1921, and the following year had been appointed the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB's) Scottish Organiser. By June 1932 Stewart had been elected to the CPGB's Central Committee, and it was in this capacity that his name had become known to Walter Krivitsky. There are two explanations for Stewart's apparent disappearance from the CPGB's overt activities. One is that during this period he was fully preoccupied with running the Party's underground cadres, and in particular was acting as the Soviet illegal rezident in London.
