Eric Roberts (spy)

Eric Arthur Roberts (18 June 1907 - 17 or 18 December 1972) was an MI5 agent during the Second World War under the alias Jack King. By posing as a Gestapo agent, and infiltrating fascist groups in the UK, Roberts was able to prevent secret information finding its way to Germany.

Early life
Roberts was born in Wivelsfield in June 1907, the son of Percival Arthur Garfield Roberts and his wife Maud (nee Green). At the time of the 1911 census, the family was living in Penzance, where his father worked for the Western Union Cable Company. Eric eventually settled with his family in Epsom.

He became a bank clerk in the Euston Road branch of the Westminster Bank in London. He spoke fluent Spanish and some German following holidays there in 1932 and 1934. He married Alice Lilian Audrey Sprague (born 1900 Droylesden, Lancashire), the daughter of William Sprague, a railway civil engineer, and his wife Margaret, in spring 1934.

Second World War
He had been employed as a bank clerk for Westminster Bank for 15 years when he came to the attention of the spymaster Maxwell Knight. After Roberts' employer was asked to release him for war service, one of his bosses wrote back, expressing surprise as to why they would choose someone so unremarkable for important work: "what are the particular and especial qualifications of Mr Roberts - which we have not been able to perceive - for some particular work of national military importance which would take him away from his normal military call-up in October?"

By May 1940, he was posing as a German agent named "Jack King" to obtain information about Nazi sympathisers in the UK. There had been speculation that King was John Bingham, until the release of files by MI5 in October 2014. Documents in the UK National Archives have now shown that Roberts ran a hugely dangerous and very successful deception. From 1942, as Jack King, he was in direct contact with six men and women who believed he was working for the Gestapo; they gave him information on "scores and probably hundreds" of Nazi sympathisers in the UK. Hardened spies were "astonished" by the treachery he unearthed. Originally, his mission was to infiltrate Siemens Schuckert (GB) Ltd, the suspect British arm of the German company, until he met a "crafty and dangerous woman" named Marita Perigoe. Of mixed Swedish and German origin, she was married to a member of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, but saw them as "insufficiently extreme". MI5 reported that "She was found to be so violently anti-British and so anxious to do anything in her power to help the enemy that it was felt that special attention should be paid to her." One Nazi sympathiser, Hilda Leech, passed on reports about secret research being undertaken to develop a jet aircraft. An astrologer, Edgar Whitehead, gave details about secret trials on a new amphibious tank. The naturalised British citizen Hans Kohout uncovered information about secret British tactics to evade air defences and passed this on to Jack King. The fifth column fascists' hatred for Britain, driven by anti-Semitism and the propaganda of Mosley’s group, was so strong that they "applauded" women and children being killed by German bombs, according to Roberts' reports. Thus, Roberts was able to prevent the passing on of sensitive information to Germany.

Later life
Roberts retired by 1957 and lived in Nettlestone, Isle of Wight, before emigrating to Canada, eventually settling in Ganges, Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, where he died on 17 or 18 December 1972. He left a widow Audrey, sons Maxwell (born 17 January 1936) and Peter, daughter Christa (McDonald), three grandchildren and two sisters. He was a freeman of the City of London and author of the book Salt Spring Saga.