The British National Archive has recently released 140 top secret MI-5 files to the public, one of which details the smuggling of diamonds and pearls stolen by the Bolshevik rebels from Tzar Nicholas II into Britain. According to the file, the diamonds and pearls were hidden within chocolate creams, and then smuggled into Britain in order to finance a revolutionary communist newspaper run by poet Francis Meynell.

The MI-5, or Military Intelligence, Section 5, is the United Kingdom’s counter-intelligence and security agency run by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). Most of the recently released files recount illegal goings-on of German intelligence officers, soviet officials and communist agents. One, however, is a detailed account of how Francis Meynell succeeded in smuggling £40,000 of diamonds into Britain. Although Francis Meynell has since been knighted, he was once a great anti-British force. His MI-5 file portrays him to be a zealous political activist who promoted and campaigned for the complete separation of Ireland from England, and fervently advocated for socialism and communism. Apparently, as a young man, he went so far as to attempt to derail an army train, although failed.

British security first took notice of Meynell’s political activities in 1916 when he founded “The Pope’s Peace”, a Catholic anti-war movement. This movement was immediately considered by British security forces to be rebellious. Only once the Soviet Union began its campaign to fund international communist parties, was he successful.

He then attempted to dodge the WWI draft by proclaiming himself a conscientious objector. After the First World War, British authorities still kept tabs on Francis Maynell, and considered him to be an extreme socialist. It was only after he became the director of the communist party that Meynell succeeded in smuggling £40,000 worth of diamonds from Soviet Russia into Britain.

According to the documents, Meynell was given these pearls and diamonds by representatives of Lenin’s Soviet regime in 1920. He then bought a box of chocolate creams, stuffed the precious diamonds and pearls into the bottoms of the creams, and then sent them via post to England, where the box of diamond-filled chocolates arrived safe and sound.

By World War Two, the British authorities began to lose interest in Meynell who, 1940, became an adviser on Board of Trade, and surprisingly went on to be knighted in 1946.

According to Christopher Andrew, a historian who specializes in MI-5, Francis Meynell’s fascinating diamond-smuggling story gives us a good picture of the days when communism and communist funding was entirely idealistic and relatively naïve in its methods.