Former Labour leader Michael Foot and his family have previously been forced to deny rumours he had any links to Communism in the Cold War.
Now declassified files obtained by the Mail prove at least one socialist intelligence agency tried to recruit him – only to abandon the operation after concluding he wouldn’t have ‘any useful information’.
The Czechoslovak StB spy agency first considered making an approach to Mr Foot in June 1983, a fortnight after he led Labour to a disastrous general election defeat to Margaret Thatcher.
Left-winger Mr Foot was due to visit Czechoslovakia the following year and agents hoped to get to him through his goddaughter, an English woman living in Prague.
After inviting her to a meeting using the cover of a visa interview, spies probed her about the politician.
Michael Foot (pictured) was leader of the Labour Party from 1980 to 1983
Following Foot’s death Oleg Gordievsky (pictured in Westminster in 1991) alleged the KGB had paid him for information and classed him as an ‘agent’ and ‘confidential contact’
Moscow pictured on the 66th anniversary of the Russian Revolution in 1983
The files note that, although reluctant to discuss Mr Foot, she agreed they could talk to her again once she returned to the UK.
But within months, Mr Foot – then aged 70 – had quit as Labour leader, replaced by Neil Kinnock.
An StB file from January 1984 gave a damning verdict when considering whether to continue attempts to recruit him.
It concluded that ‘due to his age and loss of political power we cannot expect to obtain any useful information from him’.
In 1995 Mr Foot won a libel case against The Sunday Times, which had accused him of having been an agent for the KGB – operating under the codename of ‘Boot’.
But the claims re-emerged in 2018, eight years after his death, when Soviet defector Oleg Gordievsky alleged the KGB had paid him for information and classed him as an ‘agent’ and ‘confidential contact’.
His family has vehemently denied the claims.