The word “hero” is overused in the history of espionage, military derring-do and secret operations, often as shorthand for brave. I use it frequently. But I have only ever met two people I would class as genuine heroes.
Both died in the past fortnight, and both were courageous to a degree I have never before encountered. Yet in almost all other respects they were completely unalike: in character, actions and beliefs. And they would not have liked each other.
Oleg Gordievsky was a KGB officer and double agent who spied for MI6 for a decade, passing on world-changing intelligence, knowing that if he slipped up or was betrayed he would be seized, tortured and executed. He escaped from the Soviet Union in 1985, hidden in the boot of an MI6 officer’s car.
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Trevor Lock was a policeman from Barking, who happened to be on duty at the Iranian embassy in London on April 30, 1980 when it was attacked by heavily armed gunmen. He was held hostage along with 25 others. Throughout the ensuing six-day siege he kept his revolver hidden under his tunic, boosted the morale of the other captives, acted as an intermediary with the police and, when the SAS finally assaulted the building, pinned down the lead hostage-taker at the critical moment.
Gordievsky’s daring was long planned, an intellectual and political decision he arrived at consciously and alone: a determination to defy the Soviet system from within, whatever the risk. Lock’s bravery was instinctive and unexpected, especially by him. He became a diplomatic protection group officer precisely because it was boring and uneventful.
Gordievsky’s bravest act was to return to Moscow, even though he knew he might have been exposed. Lock’s equivalent moment occurred when the gunmen, who had come to trust him, heard suspicious noises and asked the policeman to go downstairs and investigate. Lock could simply have walked out of the front door and escaped. But he did not. That possibility never occurred to him.
• Trevor Lock obituary: hero of Iranian embassy siege
Classical heroes faced down danger and performed feats of valour for the sake of glory and honour, to fulfil ambition or attain wealth, revenge or fame. The word comes from the Greek heros, meaning “protector” or “defender”. The term “heroine” did not appear in the English language until 1587. Despite plenty of female valour down the centuries, for most of history heroism has been an all-male club, focused on fighting.
Our modern notion of heroism is very different. Neither Lock nor Gordievsky were men of action or violence. The policeman barely knew how to handle his gun and had no desire to do so. The closest he had come to conflict before the embassy siege was subduing drunken fans after a football match.
With his revolver pressed to the lead gunman’s temple he wondered: “Do I have to kill him?” Achilles never paused to ask himself that. Gordievsky made it a condition of working for MI6 that no one should be harmed on account of his espionage.
Psychologists have identified the eight central traits of the hero, who must be wise, strong, resilient, reliable, charismatic, caring, selfless and inspiring. Lock and Gordievsky would have both scoffed at that list, for a defining trait of the modern hero is humility.
Gordievsky enjoyed his brief burst of celebrity after escaping but for most of his life he lived in obscurity under a false name in a safe house in the Surrey suburbs, his neighbours unaware that he had helped avert nuclear Armageddon. Lock shrank from his own fame. When people spotted him in the Barking supermarket, he squirmed.
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Heroism may involve physical danger but in our age it is also often modest, retiring and gentle. And there is not one type, as demonstrated by the passing of these two contrasting heroes: it is possible to be a hero at the same time as being an overweight Barking copper or a disillusioned KGB spy, or a woman, or a child.
Gordievsky and Lock could hardly have been more different personalities: one shy, apolitical and straightforward; the other ebullient, sometimes demanding and conscious of his place in history.
They say one should not meet one’s heroes — but I am grateful I did. I am also thankful they did not meet each other. Lock would have found Gordievsky intellectually intimidating. The policeman would have struggled with the idea that betraying your country could be an act of moral self-sacrifice.
Gordievsky would have scorned Lock’s earthy simplicity, his unquestioning patriotism. The Russian minutely investigated his own society and found it rotten. Lock thought that Britain was “quite a nice place, really”. Gordievsky was an ideological zealot. Lock supported West Ham.
But they had this in common. They were impelled to do what they did by some innate sense of obligation. Neither felt they had any choice, though they expressed this very differently. Gordievsky had become so alienated by the communist system, so appalled by the corruption, hypocrisy and repression, that he had to act. Lock found himself suddenly dragged into a terrifying situation that he did not anticipate, and behaved in the only way he knew how.
“I don’t feel at all heroic,” he said, insisting that anyone else “would have acted the same way”, a statement as generous as it was untrue.
The function of the classical, semi-divine hero was to inspire admiration. The modern hero shows that ordinary people may do extraordinary things, not because they are born heroic but because a choice is thrust upon them. The heroes of antiquity demanded veneration. The modern hero asks: “Would you do the same as me? Could you?” Classical heroes demanded that the world look up to them; latter-day heroes invite us to look inwards.
PC Trevor Lock and the former KGB colonel Oleg Gordievsky are now in Valhalla at the great banqueting table reserved for heroes. But sitting at opposite ends.
