ASIO Sparrow Anne Neill was a 'secret service housewife' who lived an incredible double life - ABC News

In the 1950s, Anne Neill cut an unimposing figure. She was neatly dressed, white-haired, softly spoken.

Some regarded her as "a fluttery old lady", historian Phillip Deery tells ABC RN's The History Listen.

But they were wrong.

Neill, a suburban Adelaide housewife, was living a double life. She was working as a secret agent for Australia's security police, ASIO.

The inconspicuous, middle-aged widow was an ideal recruit, and from 1950 until 1958 she was one of ASIO's most effective penetrative agents, or "Sparrows".

"It's a remarkable story in that her self-sacrifice and dedication almost knew no bounds," Professor Deery says.

Neill's work as an undercover agent took her all the way to Russia.(Supplied)

Deceit and duplicity in Cold War Australia

Anne Neill was already in her 50s when her career in espionage began.

Her late husband Roy had been gassed in World War I, contributing to his early death. It sparked in Neill an interest in efforts to achieve harmony between nations.

She also held the Christian faith, British Empire and monarchy in high regard – and she saw communism as a threat to all of them.

In 1949, Neill joined a peace organisation, but when she received some information that bore, as she saw it, a striking resemblance to communist propaganda, she took it to the South Australian Attorney General and asked what she could do about it.

Not long afterwards, an ASIO officer came calling at Neill's home in suburban Adelaide. He saw the potential to gain some undercover information. 

"[The officer] said, 'Would you like to go to the South Australian peace conference just to test the water?'," says Professor Deery, a Cold War expert who has studied Neill's archives.

Neill willingly took up the offer.

A natural, dedicated spy

Almost immediately, Neill was hooked on her new role. A natural spy, she'd found her vocation.

She joined – and spied on – as many communist front organisations as she could: the New Theatre, the Eureka Youth League and the Union of Australian Women. Then in 1951,the ASIO Sparrow finally joined the Communist Party itself.

At regular meetings, Neill surreptitiously gathered information "for a handler, who was extremely impressed with both the volume and the value of, as they called it, her 'product', her 'intelligence material'," Professor Deery says.

Neill was paid five pounds 10 shillings a week by ASIO, plus two pounds for expenses – but money was never her primary motivation.

"Her dedication, her commitment, her assiduousness made her calling almost a moral one … that impelled her to sacrifice nearly a decade of life, as she saw it, to a higher cause," Professor Deery says.

"I don't see her as merely another snitch."

'Communists don't take holidays'

Leaders in South Australia's Communist Party found her to be charming and dedicated.

One of the comrades she worked alongside was party member Beryl Miller. At 94 years of age, she's been a communist for nearly 70 years.

Long-time Communist Party member Beryl Miller was spied on by Anne Neill.(Supplied)

"I suppose if you were that way inclined, you could have found [Neill] a very likeable person," Ms Miller says.

"She was very motherly. She spoke very softly. Never raised her voice like me. And a lot of people would have held her in good regard."

She says Neill "seemed to have a finger in every pie" – sewing costumes for the New Theatre, typing notes and making marmalade for fundraising fates.

"She made herself very valuable for the organisation," Ms Miller says.

By day, Neill worked hard as a member of the Communist Party.

But by night, she did her real work for ASIO writing up hundreds of security reports about the comrades and their activities.

She was such a dedicated spy that ASIO actually tried to reign in her passion for the job, after she experienced a series of illnesses.

"Her handlers were trying to pull her back from some of her commitments," Professor Deery says.

"They'd say, 'Take it easy, go on a holiday'. And she would say, 'No, communists don't take holidays'.

"It was an incredible commitment. I haven't come across any other agent with quite that drive."

'Inside the belly of the beast'

In 1952, Neill flew as a Communist Party delegate to the World Peace Congress in Vienna and then to Moscow, on a ticket secretly covered by an enthusiastic ASIO.

"Anne Neill's visit to Moscow was the first time ever an ASIO agent had gone over to the enemy territory. So this was a coup for ASIO, having an agent inside the belly of the beast," Professor Deery says.

Her visit to the Soviet Union impressed her Australian comrades, too.

"When she returned from overseas, that was a real badge of honour," Professor Deery says.

"She spoke at great length and with great enthusiasm about the Soviet experiment and its other virtues."

Neill was even invited to attend the Soviet National Day celebrations at the Russian embassy in Canberra in November 1953. It was here that she met the KGB spy Vladimir Petrov, who, after defecting in 1954, became one of the most famous Russians in Australian history.

Suspicions confirmed

Petrov's defection came just months after his private meetings with Neill, timing that raised suspicion within the Communist Party.

More stories from The History Listen:

Was Neill working undercover too? Senior party members took her aside to find out, Professor Deery explains.

"The doors were locked. The interrogation went on for several hours, and she was asked to explain her whole history.

"She came through it relatively unscathed. She held her nerve. She showed enormous strength of will and resilience, and she didn't crack."

The party accepted her assurances of loyalty and for several more years she continued her double life of good communist and ASIO agent.

That is, until 1958, when the mother of a committee member expressed her suspicions that Neill was working undercover. Unbeknownst to her, the confidant was a secret ASIO agent herself.

"She, of course, informed ASIO, who said, 'Right, time to pull the plug'," Professor Deery says.

For the Communist Party, Neill concocted a story about needing to devote more time to her religion. But a few years later, in 1962, she went public as an ASIO Sparrow.

In 1962, after years of secrecy, the Sparrow finally outed herself.(Supplied)

Neill, who died in October 1986, wanted Adelaide and the world to know that she spent years in the Communist Party only to help protect Australia from what she perceived as the menace of communism.

She published a series of newspaper articles in the Sunday Mail and the Herald under headlines like, "Secret Service Housewife".

"It was confirmation for what we had thought for a very long time," Beryl Miller says.

Even the lifelong communist has some grudging respect for the woman who spied on her.

"She worked very hard and was a woman who did a job for her cause. That you can't deny."

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2022-02-08 18:00:00Z
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