MI5 links up with gay lobby Stonewall

Richard Gray
London Telegraph
Sunday, Aug 17, 2008

MI5 has teamed up with a leading gay lobby group in an attempt to recruit more homosexuals and help encourage spies to be more open about their sexuality.

The intelligence service, which deals with counter-terrorism within the UK, has hired Stonewall to try and attract a broader range of candidate.

This year the organisation will appear in Stonewall’s graduate recruitment guide, which lists gay-friendly employers.

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Until the early 1990s, gays had been barred from sensitive government jobs because of fears they would be open to blackmail – this followed the revelations about the well-known Cambridge spy ring, the 1950s group of Cambridge graduates who worked in the intelligence service. Two of its ringleaders, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt, were both gay.

Ben Summerskill, director of Stonewall, who coincidentally went to school with MI5′s Director-general Jonathan Evans, said: “I am optimistic that in 10 to 15 years their [MI5's] employment profile will look very much like modern Britain. There is no reason why there shouldn’t be a lesbian or gay director-general.”

He added: “People from all minority communities do have experience of getting on with people who are different and of fitting in.

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