Just why George Blake, the cold war spy, was sentenced in 1961 to an unprecedented 42-year prison sentence has always been a puzzle.



A decade earlier, the spy Klaus Fuchs had been sentenced to just 14 years for passing atom bomb secrets to the Soviet Union. Others, notably Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross, members of the Cambridge spy ring, would soon be offered immunity from prosecution.



Glib claims, notably by the journalist, Chapman Pincher, that Blake was sentenced a year for every British agent executed as a result of his betrayal, never quite rang true. Pincher claimed that his source was a politician who had been briefed with the approval of the prime minister, Harold Macmillan.



An astonishing revelation that may help to explain the severity of the sentence has just come to light. Lord Parker, the Lord Chief Justice - England’s most senior judge - phoned Macmillan to consult him before passing sentence at the end of Blake’s trial at the Old Bailey.



The breach of the basic principle that judges in a criminal trial are independent of the government and must on no account collude, or discuss the facts of a case, with ministers has been disclosed by Thomas Grant, QC, in the paperback edition of his book, Jeremy Hutchinson’s Case Histories.



Blake was the first high profile client Hutchinson defended as a QC. The barrister, now 100, later defended Christine Keeler, the Great Train Robber Charlie Wilson, the drug smuggler Howard Marks, and two anti-nuclear campaigners who later helped Blake to escape from prison - Michael Randle and Pat Pottle.



Parker stunned commentators - as well as MI6, Blake’s employer - for flying in the face of convention by handing down maximum consecutive, rather than concurrent, sentences on the indictments with which Blake was charged.



Even Macmillan expressed surprise, noting in his diary the next day: “The LCJ has passed a savage sentence — 42 years!” His comment certainly raises questions about Pincher’s claims.



Parker’s phone call to Macmillan came to light after the publication of a hardback edition of Grant’s book last year. Hutchinson received a memo from a retired, barrister, Ben Hytner, QC.



Hytner and Parker had been guests at a judges’ dinner in Manchester soon after the Blake trial. “Blake’s conviction was still a talking point and Hytner was astonished to hear Parker discussing the case freely with a small group of young barristers after dinner”, Grant told the Times newspaper.

“Lord Parker told his audience that he had not wished to pass sentence without knowing what damage Blake had inflicted on the country, and so he had telephoned Macmillan the night before the trial to find out.” Grant added: “Parker’s action led to a miscarriage of justice.”



Blake escaped from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966 with the help, not of the KGB which the government at first assumed, but of Randle and Pottle, who had been jailed under the Official Secrets Act for demonstrating inside a US air force base, and of a petty criminal, Sean Bourke.



Blake won over the sympathy of many inmates, including Randle and Pottle, precisely because of his harsh sentence. After a trial in which they defended themselves, Randle and Pottle were acquitted by an Old Bailey jury in 1991 of helping Blake to escape even though they admitted their role.



MI6 officers privately expressed concern about the length of Blake’s sentence, saying it would hardly encourage other double agents to confess. Blake, now 93, lives in a dacha outside Moscow.

