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He was born in 1907 and grew up mostly in Penzance, Cornwall, in an ordinary middle class family. Aged 17, he moved to London and got a job as a bank clerk. He also joined a political group called the British Fascisti.

There he met a man called Maxwell Knight. In time, Knight would become a legendary spymaster – rumoured to be the model for ‘M’ in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Knight was undercover, spying on the British Fascisti – and he believed young Roberts had the potential to be an agent too. He asked Roberts to join the Communist Party and report back to him. Roberts did – beginning an extraordinary career in espionage.

The rise of fascism in Britain

In 1932, the charismatic, aristocratic former MP Sir Oswald Mosley set up the British Union of Fascists. It became notorious for violence – especially against Jewish people and communist groups. Initially, MI5 had been concerned with the influence of communism, and some officers had seen fascism as a counterbalancing influence. But as the British Union of Fascists became more and more prominent – with Time magazine describing Mosley as “Britain’s Hitler” – the secret services began to believe that fascism was the greater threat.

After his early espionage work, Eric Roberts married and settled down to have a family. But he was bored. In 1934, he reconnected with his old handler Maxwell Knight. The timing was perfect, just as Knight needed someone to infiltrate the British Union of Fascists. He gave Roberts the job. Roberts joined the Fascists and was highly successful, rising to the rank of inspector.

Who was Victor Rothschild?

When Britain went to war with Germany, the British Union of Fascists was proscribed as an organisation. But now that the stakes were higher, MI5 was even more interested in what fascist sympathisers were up to. In 1941, Roberts was given a new handler: Victor, third Baron Rothschild, head of MI5’s counter-sabotage unit. Lord Rothschild was a scientist and an accomplished cricketer. The Rothschilds were one of the most prominent Jewish families in Europe and were explicitly targeted by Nazi propaganda.

Lord Rothschild believed Nazi sympathisers within the United Kingdom might form a ‘fifth column’, trying to undermine Britain from within. In particular, he became concerned about the German-run firm Siemens. Though the firm’s head, Carl Friedrich von Siemens, was deemed “far from pro-Nazi” by MI5, there were suspicions around some of the British staff at its West London factories. And so Eric Roberts was given a new identity as metals expert ‘Jack King’, and was sent to investigate.

After a year of digging, Eric Roberts and Lord Rothschild came to the conclusion that there was no spy ring at Siemens and no fifth column. But the intelligence operation did reveal that a number of British people wanted to be in a fifth column. At the beginning of 1942, Lord Rothschild decided that he would secretly run a fifth column himself. In other words, MI5 could fool these enemy sympathisers into believing they were part of a Nazi spy ring – and that might lead to useful information. For instance, it would help MI5 create a list of “persons who might give food, hiding and lodging to parachute troops”, in the event of a Nazi invasion.

How did Jack King join the Gestapo?

Roberts had previously played ‘Jack King’ as a Nazi sympathiser. Now, though, King was promoted to the role of Gestapo agent – though of course his position was entirely fake, created by MI5. Roberts set up headquarters in the basement of an antiques shop in London’s Marylebone High Street. MI5 ensured it was thoroughly bugged, and issued Roberts with a fake Gestapo pass, complete with swastika stamp.

Roberts began with a secretary called Marita Perigoe, who he had met during his research into Siemens. Her husband had already been jailed for fascist activities. Posing as Jack King, Roberts easily recruited Perigoe to the Gestapo – and she recruited a network of her friends.

Perigoe offered to carry out a sabotage campaign against Britain – but of course MI5 didn’t want that. Instead, Roberts persuaded her that what the Gestapo needed was information. She copied down details of military operations and equipment, as well as factory security arrangements, from her employer, and passed them all to King.

What happened after the war?

By the end of the war, Roberts had identified around 500 Nazi sympathisers in the United Kingdom – and had kept his cover as ‘Jack King’. MI5 considered the operation a success, but didn’t know what to do with the intelligence gathered. Most of it couldn’t be used in a court of law, because MI5’s methods would obviously qualify as entrapment. MI5 asked Roberts to keep his contacts close in case of future need. And so, in January 1946, ‘Jack King’ presented Marita Perigoe and one other agent with fake Nazi medals for gallantry.

Eric Roberts’s work helped the British government to understand, contain and control any threat posed by Nazi sympathisers within the United Kingdom – which might have been essential in the event of an invasion. The members of the ‘fifth column’ he created lived the rest of their lives believing they had worked for the Nazis. Thanks to Eric Roberts, the truth was that all along they had been working for MI5.