GONE

Not for years have British newsmen worked so hard on a story as they did last week when Britain's first atom spy, Dr. Alan Nunn May, was released from Wakefield prison (see FOREIGN NEWS). For 15 days outside the prison gates, more than 30 reporters stood a freezing round-the-clock watch, hired special radio-equipped cars, guarded every entrance and pounced on every lead for news of May's release. But for every step the newsmen took, the Home Office, which runs Britain's prisons, took a counterstep to thwart them. "It is undesirable," said the Home Office, "that a prisoner should be subjected to undue publicity at the moment of release. As extraordinary steps were taken to give May such publicity, it was necessary to take suitable steps to safeguard him."

Newsmen charged that to throw them off the trail prison officials sent a closed van through the prison gate as a decoy. Then, under cover of darkness, they slipped May out. Not until a convict inside the prison blew his breath on the ice-cold windowpane and wrote with his finger GONE, did the reporters waiting outside know that May had been released and they had missed him. Said a terse prison announcement later that morning: "[We] can inform you gentlemen that May has been discharged. That is all."

To the Manchester Guardian, May's insistence on privacy and the Home Office's determined cooperation with him seemed reasonable enough. In Britain, where a convict's full citizenship rights are automatically restored as soon as he is released from prison, there is a long tradition of forgiving & forgetting no matter how serious the crime. Said a Guardian editorial: "There is a decent British tradition that a man's past is not to be raked up lightly, and that a convict, having purged his offense, is entitled to ... a new start in life." But other papers were indignant that a man convicted of betraying his country, and unrepentant of his offense, should be protected, while newsmen trying to interview him should be treated as if they were committing a crime. Said the Laborite Daily Mirror: "His crime was coldblooded, calculated and . . . damnably hard ... to forgive . . . Those who are protesting against the curiosity as to where he is and what he is doing now, are protesting too much. He cannot expect the rights of privacy . . . accorded to a common crook."

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