Not covert. It was entirely respectable to prefer communism to fascism during the Spanish Civil War, widely seen as a rehearsal for the French one. Attlee found it necessary to expel Stafford Cripps from the Labour Party in 1938 for over-enthusiasm for a Popular Front of all Left (= anti-facist) parties. Not readmitted to Labour until 1945: Churchill appointed him Minister of Aircraft Production, where almost his last contract award was to Preston to start Petter off on (to be) Canberra. As Chancellor, paying for it all, he was part of Attlee's Cabinet decisions to initiate the British Bomb (1/47, though excluded from the innermost circle), and in April,1948 to accept the Soviet Threat and Task (thus fund) Staffs to slow Sov. armour on the Luneberg Plain. On thus, to NATO, in which, again, Cripps, was involved. Red: 1936: OK; Red 1948, not. (There's a quote in the sense: if you are not Left in your 20s you have no heart; if still Left in your 40s, no head).