Source: The National Times, 27 May to 2 June, 1983.
Betty Searle wrote this open letter to Meena Combe, David Combe’s wife, during the David Combe Affair.

Dear Mrs Combe,

It is with hindsight and a heavy heart that I need to relate to you my experiences as the wife of one snared in the net of those whose overriding ambition is to deny Labor power.

In April 1954 my husband, Rupert Lockwood, became an overnight victim of an anti-Labor ‘red bogey’ scheme, and he was offered a secret refuge for some weeks in order to be spared persecution and harassment from security operators and journalists. He also needed time to prepare a document in relation to Document J.

It was an early morning knock on the front door that really propelled me into confronting the incredible fact that Petrov's defection was actually connected to us.

It was the beginning of what was to become a permanent feature of the life of myself and my children for weeks on end. Trench-coated security men always hovering—sometimes at the front door, sometimes the back door and often peering through the windows of the cottage.

By mid-June journalists were no less obvious. They were either hanging around the front door or sitting in their cars parked on the road outside our front gate. They were all waiting for one of the scapegoats of the Menzies–Petrov affair, Rupert Lockwood.

As the publicity whipped up, suddenly the public world, the world of the Prime Minister Menzies, of security operatives, journalists, Russian Embassy staff and the Communist Party of Australia had ruthlessly invaded my private world and that of my children.

By 30 June, 1954, it had become impossible for me to sustain a ‘normal’ family situation as I had hoped. Tension and confusion were dramatically heightened by newspaper headlines reporting on the Melbourne sitting of the Royal Commission on Espionage. W. J. V. Wyndeyer, QC, Counsel Assisting the Commission, had tendered a document entitled ‘What Is In Document J?’, which had been printed and published at 18 Fowlers Road, Merrylands, the family home. Rupert Lockwood, Document J and 18 Fowlers Road, Merrylands were now synonymous.

Within hours of this announcement, my younger sister, who lived in Melbourne, telegrammed offering a refuge for the children. I didn't accept the offer as I was firmly convinced that it was essential to attempt to present a ‘normal’ family situation.

In retrospect it may have been better for the girls to have gone to Melbourne for the next few months. I had not anticipated the damage that could result from the imposition of the public values of McCarthyism upon the family.

On the morning of July 2, 1954, I was woken in the early hours by the sound of shattering glass. Immediately I thought that one of the girls must have knocked the glass of water, which with ritual they placed by their beds before going to sleep each night.

As I got out of bed to find out what had happened I heard a car move off and the searing sound of tyres screeching. I switched on the hall light and checked the little front bedroom where our eldest daughter was sleeping undisturbed.

I turned back into the hall intending to go to the back bedroom where our twin daughters slept, when I noticed glass on the hall floor – red glass – scattered everywhere, which could only have come from the broken leadlight window beside the front door. I saw a stone the size of a pine cone lying amidst the glass and my stomach lurched as I realised that the stone had been thrown through the window and it was connected with the screeching of the tyres.

Gently I woke our eldest daughter and with much beseeching transported her into my bed. I checked to make sure that all the doors and windows were locked and went back to bed, where I lay obsessed with fear and anger – anger directed at the stone-thrower that symbolised the forces that had us all in such an invidious position.

I got up at dawn, put on my gown and crept to the kitchen, collected a broom and dustpan and went back to the front of the hall where I swept the glass into the dustpan and crept out to put it into the garbage can. I made a cup of coffee and went back to the lounge room where I had left the broom.

When the children woke I was on the front verandah sweeping. As I expected it didn’t take them long to notice the broken window. Carelessly I lied to them and said something like, “stupid me put the broom handle through the window” and yet I knew that they, especially the eldest, knew that there was something dreadfully wrong and frightening.

From the day that Rupert's name was mentioned in the media, even before our address had become public, I was besieged by journalists from all over the world. In their favour I will say that they never ventured beyond the front door, but the security operatives took far more liberties.

Sometimes they would just circle the house, hoping Rupert had come home or would be about to be coming home. Other times they knocked on the front door, a soft knock—I'm sure they thought it was a friendly knock!

One morning we were having breakfast in the kitchen when to my astonishment two of them just walked in. There had been no knock, just the whine of the wire door closing as they came through the wooden door – there they stood.

My alarm became a dreadful anger as I ranted and raved and ordered them to leave. I recall one of them saying soothingly, “OK dear, don’t carry on like that, it’s not good for you!”

The contradiction between my deep resentment at being drawn into the Petrov Affair and that of personal and political loyalties has made it difficult for me to come to terms with the havoc that the Petrov experience wrought on me and our daughters, and its violation of my private life, not to mention the untold harrowing stories of our children’s private selves.

I’ve written this because I am convinced that women owe it to each other to exchange experiences and because I feel that we need to examine the pain in our lives and because you and I are joined together as the invisible victims of the espionage race.

Will you also join me in calling for unity to ensure that the plans of those who are persistently trying to undermine the elected Labor Government are resoundingly defeated in their purpose?

BETTY SEARLE