Vic Allen

Who is Vic Allen?

Vic Allen is a British academic and Emeritus Professor at the University of Leeds who was revealed to have been an "agent of influence" for the East German Stasi secret police. Vic Allen has contested these charges since he was listed as being an 'agent of influence' simply because he happened to speak to East Germans who were listing any foreigners they spoke to as such agents.

Leaving school at 14, he was a bricklayer before and after war service in the RAF. He went up to the London School of Economics in 1946 and gained a BSc in Economics and a PhD. Allen was appointed a Lecturer at the University of Leeds in 1959 and became Professor of the Sociology of Industrial Society in the School of Economic Studies at Leeds in 1973. He retired from Leeds in 1988 with the title Emeritus Professor.

Allen was the official historian of the British National Union of Mineworkers, a confidante of Arthur Scargill and an adviser to British trade unionists for over 40 years. He also aided trade unionists and campaigners in the fight against apartheid in South Africa. He was a member of the national committee of CND Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament for many years, and in 1985 he came last in a ballot to choose the chair of the organisation running on a pro-soviet, unilateral disarmament ticket. He was revealed in September 1999 to have been an "agent of influence" for the East German Stasi secret police, from material contained in the Mitrokhin Archive, possessing the code name "Barber". Allen has admitted "pass[ing] on information about CND's activities ... [but] considered that perfectly legitimate because he belonged to a pro-Soviet, pro-East German faction of the group." In any event, the information which he is accused of passing on was publicly available and he received no monetary benefit.