Mild Punishment for Espionage
Monday 26th
October 1936
Standards were
rather different in 1936. An aircraft draughtsman convicted of espionage –
supplying performance figures for military aircraft to a foreign power - was
bound over to keep the peace for two years and no worse. The trial of Eric Camp
was held in camera so no further details became public, including the fact that
his paymaster was not, as most would have suspected, Nazi Germany, but the
Soviet Union. Camps was a Communist.
Camp took advantage
of his non-custodial sentence to go to Spain as a volunteer on the Republican
side. He was no greater success as a soldier than a spy. Camps rapidly made
himself unpopular with his comrades, by stealing cigarettes amongst other
delinquencies. His instructor believed
he might be mentally unstable to the point of deserving to be expelled from the
Party. He deserted.
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