Vic Allen

Vic Allen (born 1922) is a British academic who is a former Professor of Economics at Leeds University who was revealed to have been an "agent of influence" for the East German Stasi secret police.

Leaving school at 15, he was a bricklayer before war service. Attending the London School of Economics from 1946; he gained his doctorate at the institution. He became a lecturer at Leeds in 1959, and became a Professor in 1973. Allen was the official historian of the British National Union of Mineworkers, a confidante of Arthur Scargill.

In 1985, a member of the national committee of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, he came last in a ballot to choose the chair of the organisation. He was revealed in September 1999 to have been an "agent of influence" for the East German Stasi secret police, from material contained in the Mitrokhin Archive, possessing the code name "Barber". Allen has boasted on "pass[ing] on information about CND's activities ... [but] considered that perfectly legitimate because he belonged to a pro-Soviet, pro-East German faction of the group."