11:31am Thursday 17th April 2008
By Daniel Binns
A Chingford man who worked for MI5 during the height of the Cold War talks for the very first time about his experiences with reporter Daniel Binns.
Brian Elton, 71, goes about his business unnoticed as he quietly lives out his retirement in a sleepy part of Chingford.
His neighbours could have no idea of the secret life this unassuming pensioner once led defending Britain's security during a conflict which brought the planet to the brink of annihilation - the Cold War.
Now, more than 50 years later, he has decided to reveal details of the shadowy world he once inhabited.
Mr Elton joined the British army in April 1955, as part of his two year's national service, at a time when British and American leaders fully expected a Soviet invasion of western Europe.
The naive teenager could have had no idea of the life that awaited him when he took up his first posting at an Army base in Harwich, Essex, where he was befriended by Sergeant Major Haggerty, a senior official at the base.
An intelligent and ambitious youngster, Mr Elton quickly made an impression on the older man, and was called into his office for a meeting that would change his life forever.
He said: "He told me to sit down, and then said that he had put my name down for intelligence work.
"I found it hard to refuse, and I began working for MI5's military section."
He was told, simply, that he would assist the Government agency with its work, and would be briefed once a week.
Mr Elton says he was told of Russian spies operating in Britain, and shown government intelligence that the Soviet Union was drawing up plans to drop a nuclear bomb on London in 1956.
The most memorable period of his time in Harwich was during one long, hot July month when he was sent to the docks to help oversee the top-secret shipment of a number of mysterious containers.
Mr Elton stood guard each night as the huge boxes were loaded onto Royal Navy ships under the cover of darkness.
He soon learned that the ships were bound for Montreal, in Canada, and contained thousands of 24-carat gold bars.
The youngster was stunned to hear that they were being moved directly from the Bank of England, in central London, as a precaution, amid fears they would be destroyed in any nuclear attack on the capital.
He said: "It was all very top secret - there were high ranking officials everywhere."
Later in the year he heard news that the Government had decided to fly two nuclear bombs to Glasgow before hiding them in a secret location underground, as fears of a nuclear attack from the USSR grew.
Mr Elton was sworn to secrecy about what he had seen when he completed his national service in April 1957, but decided to reveal the details while he still has time.
He said: "If I hadn't done this now I never would have got to tell people about what happened. They deserve to know."
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