Julia Pirie

Elizabeth Mary Julia Pirie (8 July 1918 – 2 September 2008) is best known as a British spy who worked for MI5 from the 1950s through her retirement in the 1990s. She was known to her family as Elizabeth, but as Julia by her MI5 colleagues.

In Pirie's obituary in The Daily Telegraph, she is described as "a small, dumpy woman with the appearance of a confirmed and rather matronly spinster", whose "unassuming demeanour masked a sharp intellect and the powers of observation essential for the task of a secret agent." She worked her way into the inner circles of the party, eventually working directly under party secretary John Gollan. This put her in a position to pass information from Gollan's office to her MI5 handlers.

The Telegraph speculates that she may have been the inside agent who provided crucial information for two important MI5 operations described in Peter Wright's book Spycatcher.

Julia Pirie often travelled with John Gollan in trips to countries behind the Iron Curtain.

In 1978, Pirie retired from the Party. By this time it had been much weakened by Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. The Party paid her pension until her death.

Later assignments and retirement Although she had left the Communist Party, Pirie did not retire from MI5, and her next assignment was against the Provisional IRA. She travelled to various European countries playing the role of a tourist but in fact collecting information about them. On one occasion, still playing a tourist, she rented a flat in Barcelona, just below an IRA safe flat. When Spanish authorities became concerned about the wireless emissions of her equipment, they raided her flat. Although the authorities were satisfied, there was a risk of the IRA having noticed, and the operation was abandoned.

After retiring from active operations in the 1990s, she lectured to groups of MI5 trainees and to the police.