Lobster 22

Page 1

22


Fascisffi, the Security Service and the Curious Careers of Maxwell Knight and ]ames McGuirk Hughes. |ohn Hope Int'oduction The idea that the Security Service, MI5, colluded with British fasc sm in the inter-war years is not to be found in the existing

liter rture on the subject. on the contrary the fascists are depicted as t re victims, rather than the beneficiaries of MIS's attentions. MI5 it is generally argued, viewed fascism as a potential danger to s ate and national security against which it acted once that potr ntial became actual. This, it is stated, is what occurred in the gpd rg and,summer of 1940 when MI5 deployed its repertoire of

'dirt,, tricks' against fascists and their suppoiters and sym:athisers.l However, there is evidence that iollusion did indr ed take place, much of it to be found in the careers and

"

.

actir ities of two of the more prominent MI5 officers involved in

the ;urveillance of inter-wai fascism, Charles Henry Maxwell

Knil ht and James McGuirk Hughes.

M rxwell Ifuight was recruited to the Security Service by Sir Ven on Kell in April 7925 and won rapid promotion through the .u."|.? of the agency.2- By the 1930s Knight was in charge of B5b,

whir h conducted the day-to-day moniloring of both-left- and righ -wing subversion. It was Iftight and his agents who were prin arily responsible for the surveillance of Britain's fascists and othe :'fellow-travellers of the right', and for engaging in whatever cour ter-espionage against them was deemed necessary. The clim rx of Knight's encounter with domestic fascism occurred in 194c when his section uncovered the pro-Nazi activities of Tyler Ken and Anna Wolkoff. Knight was hble to link these with the circl,s cohering around Oswald Mosley, the British Union of

Fasc sts (BUF), Captain

prec Regr

yilt

A.H. Ramsay and the Right Club, thereby

pitating the government's amendments to

Defence

lation 18B, and the internment of fascists and other rightsuspects in 1940.3 This earned Ifuight the reputation of

bein ; as staunchly anti-fascist as he was anti--communiit. Tt ere was, however, another side to Knight's encounter with fasci im. At some point in 1924 Ifuight b6came a member of Brita n's first fascist movement of any significance, the British Fasc sts (BF) and served as its Director of Intelligence from 1924 to

7927 Evidence confirming Knight's involvement is

frorr

available

a number

of sources. There is, for example, the testimony of I eil Francis-Hawkins, recently uncovered by W.J.West.+ Fran :is-Hawkins had been one of the more influenfial members of the_t F before joining the BUF and becoming its Director-General of

o ganization. He was also one of the earliest BUF members

to

be i rterned in lvlay 1940. Appearing before the Advisory Com nittee on 18B Detainees in7944, Francis-Hawkins informed it that Maxwell Knight 'had been Director of Intelligence at the Britis h Fascists'.s This is substantiated

by Foreign dffice papers in w rich Knight's name appears on a lisl of the British Fisiists' senir r executives provided by two of the movement's members in Septr,mber 1926 to Special Branch and Foreign Office officials.o Klig rt's membership and position as the BFTs Chief Intelligence offict r also appears in an intelligence report on British fascism subn itted to the Australian authorities in November 1924, and discc yered by the historian, Dr. Andrew Moore.T

rght's involvement with the BF cannot be explained by sugg:sting that he enrolled in order to keep the movement under survr illance for MI5 from within. It is, of course, highly likely that rre did do precisely that once he had been recruited inio MIS, Kn

but fuight joined the British I

Fascists

in

1924,

prior to his

by the Security Service in April 1925. As its Director I !fi of Ir tellige.,.'e, he was iesponsible fo'r compiling intelligence I il', dossr rrs on its 'enemies' and rivals; for planning its counter- il espic nage and covert action operations; for establishing and il :l,l \'supe vising the fascist cells it set up and operated in the trade l' { unior s and factories; and for the movement's own internal I \'1

recru Ltment

secur ty and disciplinary problems.s

Lobster 22

There

is also

evidence that Knight's fascist enthusiasm

continued for some time after he lefi the BF in 1927. In the testimony referred to earlier, Francis-Hawkins recalled that sho-r!!y after Knight left the movement he revealed his identity as an MI5 officer and offered assistance to the BF in its work forthe 'Clear Out the Reds Campaign' launched by Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson, Colonel John Gretton, Sir Henry page Croft and

winston Churchill.e what form this assistince took, and whether or not it had the full support of senior security service o{ficials, are not disclosed in Franlis-Hawkins' testimony; but it

does suggest-that Knight's fascist sympathies did not disappear

immediately_h: left th-e movement.- Knight,s own testim*y ut the trial of Tyler Kent further suggests t-hat his sympathiej for fascism only began to wane in 1935 when he and his^colleagues became increasingly concerned about the British Unioi of Fascists'growing Italian fascist and German nazi links.10

That Knight's membership of the British Fascists did not constitute any barrier to his recruitment indicates that MI5 did not view the movement in an unfriendly or hostile manner. Indeed, his involvement may even have- been considered a bonus, providing MI5 not only access to valuable information, but also influence over the direction and activities of the movement. It is unlikely,-however, that Knight was recruited by sir vernon Kell because o/.hrp m9plgrslrip.ofthe Br. Bernard p"orter has recently suggested that Knight lrad served an,'intelligence apprenticeshif, elsewhere, his source for this being John Biker while, Assistant Director and then Director of the Eionomic League between 1926 and 1939.11 In his second autobiography whiteitates that in 1923 he had been recruited to run 'seclion f or a private intelligence 3g"l:.y. operated by a 'Sir Gegrge McGill,. Aicording to White, McGill's agency-'investigated all forms of subversioi including communism....the international traffic in drugs and the traffic ii women and children....[and] the cult or &l which Aleister Crowley_wa-s Jhe centre'.12 white himself employed agents for section D of the agency, one of whom was a young mai named Max, 'a naturalist who later entered government"service,, and

who (white recalled) died in l96s - biographical details corresponding closely to those of Maxwell Knight.

If Porter is correct, Knight's recruitment to MI5 was probably

:f":*a by.McGill's agency. According_to White, Sir' Georg'e McGill was 'a close and personal friend oisir vernon Kell..... ufra corrld always see the Permanent secretary to the Cabinet whenever he wished and at short notice'.1d white, too, had similar connections. His step-father, Gerald Hartley Atkinson, had been involved in the creation of speciar Branch, and was brought or1! of retirement to assist its operations against the IRA and sinn Fein after world war one. - Atkinson -employed his step-son for special Branch assignments from time to time.ra As Assistant Director of the Economic League, white maintained his lpegial Branch and MI5 connections throughout the 1920s and 99r.''] I.t may not have been entirely by ch-ance, therefore, that Knight Jgqla himself attending a dinner party at which Sir vernon Kell was among the guests

'invited' to join MI5.

-

and after which Knight was

. It Tuy also have been through-the medium of McGill,s agency that Knight was introduced to the British Fascists. tn hii firjt autobiography White recalled that in L1ZZ he visited BF headquarters 'in a large dark house in Elm park Gardens,.16 White's mother was a close friend of Nesta Webster, the intellectual doyenne of the BF, and had collaborated with her in

writing The Communist Menace; and White, too, seems to have been friends with the Lintorn Ormans, the mevement,s founders. white admired the

for meeting'the Communists on own methods.....in many bloody and sometimes considerable battles BF

their 9wn ground and [fighting] them with their page

7


at street corners and in public halls'. Rotha Lintorn Orman, he de:lared, 'was one of the bravest people I have ever met in my lif,r', whose 'bravery was by no means purely physical'. Had sh-e be:n'gifted with greater political judgement', he went on to state, 'w rth the backing of funds, and had she been able to formulate a mure constructive policy, the movement might have become an

im portant factor in the political life of Britain'. That aside, hc wever, White was convinced that the BF had 'achieved an end

for which it has never been credited. It forced the Communist Pa :ty to abandon

much of its militant activity...'.rz

lhe evidence on Knight's dual career indicates that McGill's

pr vate intelligence agency served as an intermediary between the rld of the Security Service and that of the fascist movement. It is rlearly of some importance, therefore, to identify McGilt and his ag )ncy more precisely, and examine its links with MI5 and fas cism. Although White is suitably reticent on the matter, his au obiographies leave sufficient clues to enable such identification to rc made. White refers to McGill's friendship with Sir Vernon Ke [, his participation and involvement with the Organization for thr Maintenance of Supplies (OMS), and finally -his death in l9i 6.18 These are all details which correspond exactly with those of Sir Sl. George Makgill, General Secretary gf Secretarv of the British Empire Emoire Prt ducers' organization nization and Honourary Secretary secretary of the grilish British !" Ery Union @nU;.te Makgill's membership ind position in tht BEU are of particular impoitance for the BEU esta6fished and op-,:rated its olvn network of 'special Agencies' which not only col ected intelligence on communists, iocialists and 'militan[' w<

tra

le

unionists,

but also conducted counter-espionage

and them.2o The British Empire Union's nelwork can therefore reasonably be identified as' the private int,rlligence agency to which Ifuight belonged. 'l he involvement- of the Security service in the intelligence actvities of the BEU began during the First World.War. -Like other-riglt-wing groups such as the Navy League and the AntiSo< ialist Union, the BEU helped Speciil Bra-nch and MI5 by attr mpting to locate German agents, spies and saboteurs. Thi; ass stance continued when surveillance was extended to include pa< ifists, the anti-war movements, socialists and those engaged in wa'time strikes - all suspected of being sponsored or instigated by 3erman agents.2l Th-ese informal airangements carrieilover int<,the post-war years when the security seivice became ararmed at t re dramatic upsurge of industrial unrest and political militancy tha followed war's end. Militant trade uinionists, radical soc alists, and communists were now seen as the new enemy, atte mpting to instigate a Bolshevik-style revolution in Britain and its Empire.zz_ To combat the Bolshevik danger the security Ser dce collaborated with those right-wing ng"groups groups actively -Theacti engaged eng aged in fighting the 'anti-Christ of eommunism,. unism'. The Br British sat otage operations against

Em rire Union's private intelligence network, example, wor ked with Lieutenant I.F.c. Carter, Assistant Commissioner at

for

Spe cial Branch, who supplied it with funds and Special Branch offi:ers from time to time.23 (Sir George Makgiil, of course, liair ed directlywith sir vernon Kell.) Nor-was the"BEU unique in this respect. The Anti-socialist union and the various groups . establishe.d-by the Duke of Northumberland were supplie-d wilh -Sir con idential intelligence material and agents by Basil Thc mson, Director of Intelligence at Special Branch, and Sir

Her ry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff .24 T rese relationships were stimulated by the participation of such groups as the BEU and the National Citizens' Union (trtCU) in the gov:rnment's Supply and Transport Organization (STO), esta blished in 1919 to maintain essenlial supplies and services in the event of major industrial disturbances, br a national, general

g

revolutionary' strike.zs When the Supply and Trinsport

Orgenisation was brought into action in 19i9, 1921, and 1926, it was largely from the BEU, the NCU, the Anti-Socialist Union and sim lar groups that volunteers and Special Constables were recr rited.26 Indeed, it was precisely to resolve the problems of recr riting such people for the Supply and Transport Organisation

that the British Empire Union

-

and in partiiular, Sir George

MaI gill_- the National Citizens' tlnion, the Economic Lea'gue and othr

r bodies helped establish the

Mai rtenance of Supplies in early \925.22

Organisation

for

the

T,re links established with the Suppty and Transport

Org rnisation, however, acquired something bfan official sanclion whe n, in October 1979, Lloyd George called upon the services of

Adr riral Sir Reginald Hall and his organisation, National Prolragznda, to assist the government to- defeat the Railway

strike.28 National.Propaganda w-as employed b' the Fut,ticity Sub-committee of the STO to produce uirofiicial FroFasanja for tt: go_vernment and its strike-breaking org-an:--ancr. and although Admiral Hall and his assistant, ciptainiK*I}.t- anended

only the first meeting, permanent liaison betrr-en \anonal instituted. Its role, hrr"*arâ‚Źx rvErs

Propaganda and the sTo was

not confined to propaganda, as the Ministry of L-abour mr,loved it to recruit, supply and supervise volunteers to undertare- rffose dangerous duties' others had declined. To exeorte these duties National Propaganda was granted direct, official access t"-, Special Branch, Ml5,'the Admiralty and the War Office.zs In practice this also meant providing access to the BE[-- \CU and other right-wing groups for the simple reason that >rnn--e its establishment in 1919, National Propaganda had functionel as a central co-ordinating body for these organizations. The neeC for such a body had been recognised in late 1918 bv the C,eneral Secretary of the British Commonwealth Union, and it rra_< nargelv at his instigation that National Propaganda was launched at a

conference convened for the purpose at 4 Dean's Yard, westminster.3, Initially, NP adminisiered the Cenhal Councij of

the,Economic I,eagues, comprised of representatives of emprovers and employers'organizations, and delegates from the BEi, NCU and other right-wing groups. Between 1921, and 1924 horvever, the Central Council was itself elevated to the status of the main coordinating committee, with NP, the BEU and the NCU given permanent posts on the Council.3l This structure allowed each constituent body to retain a relative degree of autonomy, whilst * enabling maximum co-ordination of activities. At the same time, Admiral Hall sought to amalgamate the intelligence and counterespionage networks operated by the BEU; NCU and other affiliated groups to bring them under the central and direct control

of the Economic -I,e-ague (as the Central Council u.as finally called), a task in which he appears to have been successful.32

The 'private intelligence agency'to which ]ohn Baker \4,hite and Maxwell IGight were recruited in 1923, then, !r'as not simply a private agency as is commonly understood. Rather, it rvas piri of a more extensive and sophisticated network that had been

established by the conservative

iight.

Furthermore, this netrvork

operated in- conjunction with the intelligence and security apparatus of the state with which it appears to har-e been

interwoven. This artangement was lormalised bv

the

government itself in the crisis years o17919 to 7927 when National Propaganda and_its affiliates were more or less integrated into the structure of the supply and rransport organisation. [n short, the line separating the_private intelligence a[encies of the right from the state security services was distinctly blurred. There was a

continuum,

a network of inter-locking individuals and

organizations linking the 'private' and the 'public' intelligence and

security agencies. White's guarded revelations, ther6fore, are

validated by the documentary evidence which survives, and it is easy to see how Maxwell Knight moved so easily from one to the other.

That fascism intruded into this arrangement stemmed in part from the fact that, as White suggests in his autobiographv,'the right-wing participants possessed rather close associitioni with the fascist movement, deriving in part from the ideological similarities between the two, and in part from the fact that niany

right-wing groups displayed distinctly -

quasi-fascijt characteristics.33 The BEU is a case in point. Durins the First

World War it formed 'a perfectly well-inown gang 3f br[i"r,,

comprised of soldiers, sailors and military resewists, organised on military lines, to conduct violent assaults on Germans, Jer+,s and pacifists - tactics adopted by Mussolini at the same time! - and continued to deploy them against strikers and socialists after the war.34 Some of the earliest members of the British Fascists were drawn

from the organizations of the conservative right: Patrick Hannon and Major Pilcher from the British Commonwealth Union; Basil Peto and Reverend Gough from the National Partv; Colonel Sir Charles Burn, Sir J.R. Pretyman Newman and Sir Burton Chadwick from the National Citizens'Union; and Lord and Lady Sydenham of Combe from a variety of right-wing causes, are only a few of the more obvious examples.3s Other 'feilotn, travelleri' who 'flirted' with the BF, or accorded it respectabilitv by speaking on its platforms or by employing its specially trained 'Q' divisions

for their own meetings and campaigns, included Commander

Oliver Locker-Lampson, Sir Robert Horne and Sir Philip

Sassoon.36In addition, the plethora of titled aristocrats and senior

Lobster22 page2

-


mi itary personnel who graced the movement's Grand Council an t Executive, linkea it witn those circles cohering aiound the Co rservative right.az

lhere is some evidence, too, that the conservative right was

dggply involved in facilitating the growth and devei-opment 1o'e of he BF than most studies

indicite. Aluch of this appears to

har e stemmed from the Duke of- Northumberland,'ihrough rvh rse pup^er, The Patriot, the initial recruiting for the BF wis

conlucted.s For a time the BF used rhe pairiot to inform its

me:nbers oi its activities, and shared the same premises until the

er moved rvhen Northumberland purchased the controlling sha'es of The Morning post.se Besidei this, some of the more qnF ortant and active members of the BF - such as Nesta webster, the Lintorn ormans and Lord and Lady sydenham were close p.at

lrie

N

I

I :

I

rds and associates of the Duke.a0

crthumberland's fascist associations are important, for

alth ;ugh often portrayed as one of the more i. Diehard I or 3s, he. enjoyed considerable popularity amongst ".."it back-bench cor;ervative MPs, and commanded a ceitain de[ree of respect

fror, Conservative Cabinet Ministers (however rriuch they inay hav' considered him a disruptive influence). Northumberland

y]al ed 1 yajg,r role - along #ith Colonel |ohn Gretton, Admiral Hali and Lord salisbr-ry - in the Conservative revolt against the George_ coaliiion in tg22.4t More imiortantly, !J"t 1 Nor humberland w1s .deeply involved in a variety oi right -*iig glol ps jgrryed to defeat-the Bolshevik menace, inclu?ing thE Nati >nal Federation of Propagandist societies (later absorbed into the Economic League) ana,- more significant still, the British EmJ ire Union.+2

Alihough these fascist connections remain obscure, it.is clear

., that they have- been consistently underestimated

in

existing

stud es of the subject. Certainly they were institutional as well as pers rnal, and sufficiently close to lead to several meetings to discr ss merging their respective organizations or more formal co-

operation and collaboration.a3 The organizations of the right,

it seems reasonabre to suggest, encou.u-fied und foster"a tt versions of fascism; and, """riy 6ven that tliei. fasciJii"trlo"tinued

well into the 1930s, were iirplicated ilyrTfualy development.aa This meani that the BF became"""A,

,t

ge of its

of the links that the conservative righr h;d ;itila blneficiary tli; security apparatus of the in particulur"*ith Mts. ro the security 1tale, Service, the British Fascists would hry".r,"r"ty u, , more

militant and aggrg-ssive version of thoiJ "tt;ur; with which it was already ioiluding the more so as".gr"ir;ii"ns frscism appeared to emerge from the same bodiJs.

If sir Georee Makgill was responsible for introducing Maxwelr

il.,il:;j""

t to siriernoriKelr, th; ; k;Eil r; ill",, would not have been considered to be ,fr detrimentar than the -or" position he held in Makgilr's organisition. nather,liwturd have simply ensured that,- thiougtr knigrrt, MIs would be in a better position to direct and contrdl the riovement,s activities; and this, Kn i gh

r,"em,.is precisely ylu!Ituight *u, aoi"j?"i irars I^*:.yld ne orrered assrstance to Neil Francis-Hawkins ind the when British

Fascists after he had formally left the movement.

+++ The case of ]ames McGuirk-Hughes confirms the impression of collusion between MI5 and fasciim. t/nder the pserido.ry.., of P.G_.Tay-lor, Hughes served as the British Union ofiascists, Chief

ot lntelliggncg !n Department Z of the movement, from its formation in 7932 until it was banned in lg40.4s one former member of the movement stated that Hughes had disclosed his employment by MI5 to Mosley when he aiplied for the position, commenting lhat Mosley accepted because Hughes, dual m_embership of MI5 and the BUF 'need not have ch!hed.....He [Hughes] was "on our side", which seemed good enou [h,.nu

Like Knight, McGuirk Hughes had first served an apprenticeship, with the BritiJh Empire Union,s private .

intelligence and counter-espionage netwoik, which he combined yvr-r.rr with rrrs position as secretary, his pu$r,,n secretiry ot secreta oT the BEU,s BEU's Liverpool Livernool branch. hrennh bEU's substantial documentation of his activities for the'BEU was first unearthed in 1977-by the labour historian Ron Bean, amongst the

Cunard-papgls deposited with Liverpool University.+z These -i;;;l upprouihir,g aid foithe BEU ind for

:Py that. Hugh.es.. was. responsibll fo, qmployers to solicit financial and other

directing and supervising the branch's propaganda d.ives and its

street corner anti-communist meetings and deironstrations.

The documents.,clearly illustrate that the sole purpose of this

section was to infiltrate and sabotage trade unions

uia t"rt-*i.rg groups. For five and his agents broke into .years Irqgn"r premises, stole and forged

d5cuments, and b"ehaved as agents proaocateur.a, For Liveipool employers Hughes provided the names of the most active trade unionists in tf,e ur"'u, uro" *itt, their plans and preparations for strike activity.ee -i" o"" of his reports Hughes wrote 'that we have the .o*pl"tu confidence and help of Scotland Yard, and in fact have received payment from them. The Assistant Commissioner (col. Carte.l'.oi,ria".s that we are the only efficient organization.......our relations with the provincialpolice continue to-be good....we had placed under us a of the plain cloths_(sic)hen of the Ghslgow poli""...,.uo 1umb.e; Even if allowances are made for exaggeration, itivoufd seem that HugJ:res and his section collaboratejl"itt special n.u""rr, as did the Economic League, of which Hughes' uni't was i"urt up to -lt 7923- a part. . It is.also possible that Hughes and his agents had some form of association with the BF in th-ese early yearsl one ;ith" ,special Activities' in which Hughes was inirolved in 1924 was the 'Removal of documents fiom H.e. of the Red International of Labour unions and the Minority Movement in London,, an action which he claimed 'resulted in important information being obtained and was a severe blow to the Reds'.sl As Ron Bean has pointed out, The Times carried an article in August l9za, rcporting that 'the police had been called in after the"offices of tire nei International of Labour Unions had been broken-lnto and ransacked.- Papers relating to theNational Minority Movement minutes of meetings, coriespondence and memliership lists were stolen.'s2 At the time it was assumed that the- BF hadcarried out the raid, as two or three of its membe.s *e.e identified the ga,y.feforg, apparently reconnoitering the premises. ff," nf derued the allegation, but, given Hughes' laier activities with Lobster

22

page 3


fas :ists, it is possible that some of its members collaborited with Hu ghes, and conducted the operation on his behalf. It is int 'resting to rote, too, that the-riaison officer between-Hughes

entail, as one might expect. an\ aci::: :. .__-:=:_:= :i i:tLrtage the BUF and its .""u-=r:tir= o;.";;''.::.:.:;l-. : :act, it acfually involved utitizrng the BLT as : _-: " =: ::: \L= . - *_ .*_;; operations aainst the left. The mr-'st n.r:.iiii.*i â‚Ź.r-i_-- - ,_-,f this occurred in7937 when Hughes enipiL-i +: + - i..-" dr--i'_

an( Special ,Branch, Lieutenant I.F.C. Carter, u.t"a u, the int, rmediary belwgen the British Fiscists and the i"ilil"bffi."

inf eptember 1926.5s t y 79ry, h_owever, Hughes, relations with the BEU Liv rrpool and at national [eadquarters became strained both in when he refr sed to div-ulge all of his attivities and sources of financiar suI port. He therefore took his 'special propaganda section, and ran organizalion financd u"J *o.ti"g ll ?:_ri !r, solt ty tor, a 11,llpenagnt number of shipping companies, of *hich the Cunard Lin , was one. Between 1923 and tgZS the agency expanded its acti 'ities to include Glasgow, sheffierd and Bairowl aI?r.], *,"

="=-Ford, Dawson, Maln_andl.C.freer. _,. ;--_.-..=" :: \lajor Vernon, a Technical Officei at the Ru-r,ra-{rr::: l=_:.;:r:n,ent Vernon n.as a *x,:_.: .f: .== :<: ;p an

*r}lf.r?lglj rnrormal ltrdy_. Group and Selr_Fie-p C;is unemployed.a

::r the -,uqht by ,=the police as they _attempted tt make --he:r :e-;,:-. r. a car d.isplaying the BUF flug. At the subseqre:i=i.r. ... preen they,had burgled Vernon,s cottage to :e,--u:e er:ience Shl^"9 for MIs that Vernon darrgerous sut,r-ers:i-e .:reading tmand 1 seditilon communist.propaganda amongsr The fa.sciits burgied hi_. home b_,

was concerned this.was simply not acceptable, presumably use of the re-organization or its intellig'enc" uria-.o""t".CSP f,nage network fo{ow.inq gradual ibsorption into the Eco romic League_. sir Reginald-its wi6on, Generar d".."tu.v-or tn" BEI. and one of the two Directors of the Economi.-i"ugr", APP oached Hughes' main financial sponsor, requestins him to witl draw support for Hughes. This was.d"iy a,i"", i" y"fy 792! Hug.h_gs' organizatibn was closed d6wn, ""od i i, .o"t r.t . BEI bec

rhe =."_-:= rn thE Aldershot district.- while the four were foulia --r -arcenry sr-r. and bound over for twelve months, Vernon -;;;;; tortunate. Among the papers stolen from his cottage were dcrurnents from me KA' - papers/ notebooks and drawings related tc-r aeroplane construction - which he had taken to woik on at home. These were deemed to be 'sensitive' and vernon was charged oJi under the

official

secrets Act for the illegal porr"irio" classrfied documents and dismissed from his 16b. That the man behinq burgrary was Hughes there can be no doubt. The fascists toldlh9 the police'that they"huJ uu"" i"structed to commit the offence by asenior intelrigen-ie officer, and to b;"t whatever documentrlli,y found to the i"t"r[g"r-,." tiepartment at

tern inated.sa

H l8.hes' career after his dismissal by his sponsors in lulv 1925 and his reappearance in the British Union'of F;;.iriJ\i ltrtEz rem ,ins unknown, but bJ the time he joined fraosf"y;s,"or"*".rt hev as an established MI5 agent and identified himself as such on mar / occasions. Hughes'enthusiasm for and commitmenitt tne BUF appears to have been quite genuine, and, besides beine head

ofi s notorious 'Z'

department he held

Scotland House.6s The 1gB Detainee file "on J.C.dreen, now

available in the Home or{19e papers at the

publii n"co.a office, identifies the senior officei concerned as r;";- McGuirk Hughes. At his hearing before the Ad'iso^' co**rttee on 1gB

a number of"othe,

posi ions. He,appears, for example, on its Research DireGry, on the 'ropaganda Directory whicli replaced it in July 1q35,-J" its

Detainees, Preen exprailed that p. G. Tai'lor 1ihJir'J. rnr. n"gl,"ry, having disclosed his MIs credentials, toid ti- tn.i irrio. vernon had stolen secret plans which he intendea t" p*, iJin" soviet unron.. layror then asked preen and his associates "" to raid vernon's home, retrieve the documents and so bring the Major to justice'0e

Indt ;trial Section, and- as Vice-president of t[r" Brackshirt Autr mobile Club.ss I" l:by3^ry 1935 he was also put in charge of the ascist Union of British workers.s6 some oi tr," a"ti"', t",

Perfr rmed were identical to those conducted in the 1920_rr;;;; and ;o those which Iftight carried out for the Britishlu'r.irt* com] {ling intelligence doisiers on the BUF's rivals urrd

After the..hearing, MIg sent a note to'ih" Ad'irory that pr6en should u" ,Li"ur"i^_ u

S:_t:':tr".:-r?lils perhaps, tor services

suPâ‚Ź 'vrslng

"rr"-i"r, and .counter-espionage- and sabotage operations, conc rcting the various 'Court Martials' and"'cou'rts of Enquiry,

whic r the movement launched to punish its mo.e-way*uli

Armr I Forces, key manufacturing and commercial enterprises, and t re trade union movement, wis launched at the beginriing oi 1933. r. of particular importance was the setting up of ic.et c?[s in thr trade unions and in factories, considerer vital if the BUF was t r rival and successfully combat the Communist party o., it, own I round.60 Thr role of James McGuirk Hughes, therefore, was of central impor tance to the organization and development of the BUF as a fascist

least Franc

durin perfor Mosle secon

in the

movement, and, his own individuil contribution was at s important as that of other influential members such as ;-Hawkins, Raven Thomson or W.B.D. Donovan. Indeed, ; the crisis which engulfed the BUF following its dismal nance in the local elections of 1937, it was to Eughes that r first turned to salvage the disaster, rather thin to his l-in-command, Neil Francis-Hawkins a fact which many movement noted with some surprise.6l The importance of

Hugh 's to-Mosley personally appears to have increasbd towards the el d of the 1930s. when Mosley decided to initiate closer contar i and collaboration. with- Captain Archibald Maule Ramsay

and

tt ie.

Right Club

negotr rtions

in

1939 he ihose Hughes

and to be

h!s_

personal liais6n

to conduct the with Ram say.62

Intere ;tingly enough, Hughes was to throw himself whole reartedly into the intrigues in which Ramsay engaged in 1940,

nsuring that both the Nordic League and the ni[nI CtuU

surviv :d on an underground basis.63 birru., how cloie these intrigt es came to treason the role of Hughes appears distinctly

Conclusion

,

squa resP(

subvr rsive task of establishing the BUF's secret"cells, modelled on thosr of the German Nazi party and the Italian Fascisti. An ambi ious scheme to establisli sulh cells in the Civil Service, the

This brief re-examination of. the careers and activities of {night and McGuirk Hughes rr,o-r- tnut existing

Maxwell accounts

: ,

of

the relationship betweeri the security ilrvice and fascism in inter-war Britain'are far f.or., ,utisfa;i& " Both men held important positions within the British F;i;i, ild the British union of Fascists, providing t]r-"r" with a d"gr; oi'.o..,p"t..,."

arrd sophistication- they w6uld have othe,.iir" lacked.' It is, i_nadequate to suggest that Knight and Hrlf.,.r;o_"j ll:::f"^: rnese -organrzations merely as a means of keeping tf,em'under surveillance. In the case of Knight this is irr.orr!.t,"he enroiled in

r

I

the BF before he was recruited tdUlS. As for U"ehui his service to the fascist cause appears to outweigh the "i"ior.nrtron he

relayed back to the secuiity service. Besi"des this there is simply no evidence at all to show ihat either Knight o. Hrghl, maae a'nj, attempt to undermil" sabotage the movements to which thej,

9. at least before the Jtart of world w; T;". More it is quite clear that Knight and Hughes colluded with fascism, using-it as a.source of politive intellig'ence and as a belonged

-importantly,

cover.for

plausibly deniable counterlespionage u"3 .o"".t action operations against those on the politicalieft. Furthermore such collusion was not simply an aberration on the pa+ of these two MIs officers. The'Security S".r.i.u had embarked on the.path of collusion when it 'firrt--b"gu., to

collaborate extensivily with the immediate forerunners of the organizations of the conservative right such as the f::jr,.', bntrsh Empire Union, National Citizens' Uiion, National Prop-aganda and the Economic Leagu-e. Indeed, ih. private intelligence counter-espionage netw"ork established bv these groups was closely interwoven with the security service lrom

Notes 1. 2.

Lobster22 page4 _:

rr*Lb

a

very. early stage. For MI5 to collude with fascism was merely a continuation and extension of existing practice.

dubior

This is not to suggest that Hughes neglected the duties he was suPPo ed to be performing for MIs: far fiom it. But these did.not

pavoff,

,

6, '

itrant members and branchei and to sort out'personar rbles and feuds between members.sz He wls also for investigating and reporting on those o.gur,ilrtior,, Mosl ::,I]l 'y hacl targetted with a view to their incorporatiSn into the BUF. 8 This was not all, however. To Hughls fell the more recal

rendered.

SeeCohenandThurlowpp. 173-95. Masters p. 12.


Itid. pp.7G1.06 and13*157; Thurlow pp. 194-5; and Henri. West pp. 233-5.

J.

4. 5.

PRO HO 283t40/22

6.

PROFO 371nt3%/18f-182.

s3.

PRO FO 37utt3wt80-182 54. Bean 55. PRo Ho Lw20l42; Ho l&/2lt44and 20l4i-contain

listing his involvement in these sections of the BUF. 56. PRO HO 14/20t44/74T4.

Austral.ian Archives, cRS A 981/1, item'Fascism 3'. I am grateful to Dr. Moore for bri Lging this document to mv attention and providing me witl a copy. 7.

8.

9ntbh Guardian. October 1924; PRO HO LWl9O69l29.

9.

?RO HO 283 {O22

57. PRo Ho wn2u42l3l4; Ho tA/2orw7o3, ?35.

Porter p. 165.

12

W'hite (l%1) p. 129.

13.

Ibi/t.

V.

lbtd. p.122.

career can be found inwho's who L927. on his earl .' association with Kell, see Pananyi pp. 113-128. on his involvement in the oMS see 'RO HO 45112336 and the Drage papers, Box 6, part 3 (OMS). 20. The formation of this section was announced in the British Empire Union Annual for 920 and192l', and referred to repeatedly in subsequent issues. The information it coll, cted was made available on a reitrictedbasis in a ionfidential newsletter, Weekly Circ ilar. For details of its sabotage operations see Bean. The papers Bean refers to are he Cunard Papers, D.42lC2/108. (1986 a and b).

22. Porterpp.lSL-774. 23. I.M. Hughes, Secret Report, Cunard papers D. 42lCZ.L0g. B_t:ry"leld Papers, Thoms 1-4; Hannon papers, Box 13, File 4; Croft 1l 17 Ll20; J. St Loe Strachey Papers., Sllll S llz1-f7

?1._

papers, ll2,

.

25. feffery and Hennessy, chapters 1-3; Morgan pp.7S-LL0; Wrigley pp. 252-5. 26. Middlemas pp. 99-10L; PRo cAB 27159-61; pRo cAB 27182-84. The Chief Civil

Con missioner for the STO from 1925 was Sir Wiliam Mitchell-Thomson, an executive men ber of the ASU.

prpers, Box 6, Part 3 (OMS): British Empire Union Annu al, t92S and.26; 11 ^ ?J$" PRC HO45/12335. '>RO

Offi,

CAB 27lWl-24 and, CAB 28/83/1-38.

listed in Ramsay's Right Club notebook. (I am grateful to Griffiths for allowing me to vie* Caplain Ramsay,s notorious notebook listing the membership of the Right Club. It is tire notebook used in the trials of Tyler Kent and Anna Wolkoff.) See also pRO H0 lMlZ24S4/112-g.

63. PRO HO 1M/2245A100_115 64. NCCL (1938). See also the account 65. tbid. 66. PRO HO 2831W23-4 and 3t

e.

30'.. Jannon_Papers, Box 11, Folder

31. 'Ro Fo

op

13 and Box 13, Folders 4 ands;Mclvor op. cit.; cit; Mike Hughes , op. cit.

371111775130-33. As a special Branch report written bv Captain Guy

Lidd :ll putit in February 1926:'The Cintral Council oi Economic Leaguis represents, amo rgst other bodies, National Propaganda, British Empfue Union aid National Citiz :ns' Union.'

32. {all's success is indicated-not only in Liddell's notes to the Foreign office, but in whil Js fust aartobiogrlphy, where he-states that he attended the firsimeeting of the

Inter "rational Entente Against the Third Intemational as a representative of uik6ll,s a8:n y. According to Liddelf the only British representative attending that andsubs :quent conferences was the delegate sent byihe Central Council oiEconomic [,eag res.

.

bid.

ilume p. 100. Shortly before the British Fascists was launched, Northumberland had vritten in the paper: 'All those brutal attacks on Christianity, individual liberty, gaf.ri.ti11-3nd loyalty to the throne, under which - but for the iomilg of Fascism Italia r civilisation had perished, are to be reproduced here early in1913., Farr, p. 59. I

39. I lume, pp.

85-98; Gilman pp. 42-44.

. I tid - so, glose were {Nortl umberland _

the links tha t the Daily Herald continued to refer to as the head of the BF as late is october 1923, some six months after 101.

then ovementhadbeenlaunched. Blume, p. 41. { .owling parts 1 and 2; Weber pp. 18-25.

42. t owling, pp.8G87. 43. I arr pp 59-50; PRO HO

1.441t9069122;The patriot, t Apnlt926. ,14. I [iles pp 10-11; Empire Recoril, June 19l(); Griffiths pp. 49-55. 45. I etter from former BUF member who wishes to remain anonymous. 46. I rformation in possession of Richard Thurlow: see also Thurlow pp. 203-4. 47. I ean and Cunard papersD.42lC2llOS

8. I

the Anti-Bolshevik Activities of J.M.Hughes inBulretinof thi siietv in ihe study of labour History, spnni.rgTz. Benewick, Robert - The Fascist Movement in Briiain (Allen Lane, fiar#ondsworth, te72)

Blume, H.s.B. - A study of Anti-semitic_Groups in Britain, lgrg-rg4o (unpublished M. Phil. thesis, University of Sussex L97l) political police in Britain (euartet !un-1a1, Tony - The History and Practice of the Books, London,1977) Bush, J. - Behind the Lines (Merlin press, London, 1.9g4) Cohen, P. - The Police, the Home office and the surveiliance of the BUF, in lntelligence anil National Securig, vol. 1 no. 3, 1996. Cowling, Maurice - The Impact of Labour (Cambridge university press, 1971) Cross, Colin - The Fascists in Britain (Barrie and Rocfliffe, tlOt; ' Cullen, Tom - Maundy Gregory @odley Head, London, L972)' Farr, Barbara - The Develo_pment and Impact of Right wing politics in Britain, 1903L932 (Garland Publishing, London and Niw york,'i9g[ Gilman, Richard - Behind 'world Revolution': the strange Case of Nesta webster (Insight Books, Ann Arbor, 198L) Griffiths, Richard - Fellow Travellers tlg Right (oxford university press, 1983) 9J Henri, Pauline - Tyler Kent, Anna wolkoff and the BUF in searchligit lz2, october

Hiley, Nicholas _ -.!9gter-gspionage and Security in Britain during the First World War, in

English Historiul Reoiew, vol 51, 1986 (a).

- British Internal security in wartime: lnte_lligence

52.

I

L

the Rise and Fall of p.M

no. 3, 19g6 (b).

.s.2, l9l5-17 in

McCarthyism (National Council for Civil Liberties, London, 19g9)

"

I_effery, Keith and Hennessy, peter - states of Emergency (iroutledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1983) Kushner, T. and Lunn, K. - The Mosley Papers and the secret history of British Fascism, 1939-40 in Kushner and Lunn (eds.) 1989 (eds.) - Traditions of Intolerance (Manchester University press, Manchester, 1989)

The Poli[c9 of Marginality (Frank Cass, London, 1990) 1919-1939 (Research Working paper, Polytechnic of Central London, 1983) Y"*"o:-ttt:ny - The Man Who was M: the Life of Maxwell Knight (Basil _ -_

Blackwell, Oxford, 1984) Middlemass, Keith - Thomas Jones: whitehalr Diary vol.1, rgrGzs (oxford University Pre ss, 1969) Miles, A.C. -Mosley in Motley (Self-publisled, London, 1.937) Morgan, )ane - Conflict and Order (Clarendon press, exford, l9g7) National council for civil Liberties - The shange Case of Major V"*on (NCCL, London, 1938) Panani, Panikos - The British Empire union during the First world war in Kushner and Lunn (eds.) 1990 Porter, Bernard - Plots and Paranoia (Unwin Hyman, London, 19g9) Thurlow, Richard -Fascism in Britain: A History 191g-g5 lBasil Blaciwell, oxford, 7987)

Webber, G. C. - The Ideology of the British Right , 1918-1939 (Croom Helm, London, 1986) Weller, K. - Don't Be a soldier (Joumeyman, London, 1.9g5) West, W. J. - Truth Betrayed (Duckwoith, London, 1987) White, John Baker - It's Gone for Good (Vacher and Soni, London, 1941) White, John Baker - True Blue (Frederick Muller, London, 1971) winterbotham, Frederick - The Nazi Connection (weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1978) chris-Lloyd George and the Challenge of Labour (Harvesterwheatley, Idgl"y, London, 1990)

id.

l, id.

andNational Securig vol.

Hollingsworth, Mark and rremayne, Charles - The Economic League: the silent

49. L rd.: those using the service did so to supplement similar services provided by . Natio ral Propaganda and the Central Councilbf Economic Leagues.

fl. 5t.

- Liverpool shipping Employers and

Mclvor, A. -The Economic.League,

hnewick pp. 3942;Fan pp. 53-56. Y.'anayi op. cif ; Weller pp . 30-1, 56-7, 87-90; Bush p. 180. 35. renewick pp. 39-42;Far pp. 56-[ Cross pp. 58-9. 36. \oss ibiil.: see also Winterbotham p. 34.

37.

Bibliography p911,_Roy

_

33.

38.

given in Bunyan pp. tg_20.

1989.

45/11075: correspondence from Caillard, Hall and Kelly to the Home

Holi rgsworth and Tremayne

-Mosky

P. JlT* I{:ghes'name.is Dr. Richard

15. White $9a\p.122. 77. Ibitlpp.122-3. 18. White (1971)p.129. 19. A brief overrriew of Makgill's

29- 'Ro Ho

7&*tzot4st222-5 and

60. PROHOTM/143-LM. 61. PRO HOt4U2t247t70.

Cullen pp. 150-4; Mclvor; Hollingsworth and Tremayne; Mike Hughes, un1 ublished manuscript on the Economic League. For permitting me"access to his un1 ublished manuscript I am most grateful to Mr. Hughes.

28.

Ho

PRO HOlW20tM/103; HO t4r'.tz}t4i/2ss versus Marchbank papers, statements made by Mr C.M. Dolan at g9{"^.9ry: l! Unify House on 2 Nbvember 1934, MSS t2TtNWtGSt3tSA; pnO tlO lW 201W 126; HO 45 I 25385 I 28.

59.

15.

2L. Panayi;Hiley

2oB and,237-8;

58.

T1-pesorpt of the Tvler Kent case pp. 9L5, in Tyler Kent papers, princeton Un versih'. 10

11

the special Branch reports

L id.

id.

Lobster22 page5


The Anglo-Rhodesian Society Robin Ramsay

Introduction whi e researching the Rhodesia chapters of our book, I

Rhodesian 31.impacj. In the Labour party at the time of the,there

came

the Anglo-Rhodesian society, and discovered that, as usual with the British right, there was no substantial account of it. Here is th r result of an initial trawl. ac.rg

is-

unilateral Declaration of Indepedence (L,DD in 19d5,

Future historians of the Conseraatiae party may discoaer that upon its heart in the 796bs ' Rhodesia' was indelibly graaen. t

v'ith the arrival of Mrs Thatcher inlgZscame,the New Right,, with about as much claim to be called 'new'as had ihe ,New Left, a de, ade earlier. Although the Tory right has , nirtory with the samt kinds of continuitieJand discontinirities as the Labour left, it lacks a detailed historical record like there is of the Labour left, ior right ha.s. mostly organised semi-clandestinely.2 The lT^ _:.y best example of this is the 92 Group, founded bv patiick wall arou rd (pr-ecise information is racking), *f,i.h remained .1964 unde tected until the 1980s, when it was said to have 93 Mp mem rers and to be having weekly meetings with the prime

Minir ter.3

A.nglo-Rhodesian Society the post_war Imperial Tory visibly.organised a series of defensive campaign's rounr I the decline of the Empire, and is identifiable first as ,the series of temporaryr u[iu.,.", orr". ll"?,gloyp'. Jhjs.'g1oup', includ-ed at various times and occasions, up to llle,l:52-5Lperiod, )s. 40 M The names that are striking n_ow are ]urian Amery'and ]ohn Biggs-Davison, whose careers ind cause, ur" u., unbroken threa I through to the late 1920s.4

*nght ^P"^, :1",rhe had most

i

As Britain's 'colonial problem, deepened through the 1950,s _ nsurgency',and 'emergenry, afier another l alongside the ,.:: rmpe lal I ory nght appeared the professional lobbyist, I private

sScto.r adaptation., of the ?sychorogical warfar'e iech'niques rped thg wat_ Th6 pioneEr was Toby O,Brien, who 9:y"l re anduring independent pR man in 1949 after reorganising the felan rvative consr Party-machine. His clients included Franco,s s[ain,

S:l11rr.t.Portugil, the commerical TV lobby, ianganyika

conct ssions and the Imam of yemen.s The o,Brien orgaiisaiion yt J i.:1 fy.the Tanganyika-Concessions chairman; Cattai; charl,'s waterhouse - one of the leading members of the 's.re, - put Katanga's case in Britain. "The perceptible British -G-ro.rt ga !o in this period was matched by a'simiLi,Tshombe ,\rjul in the fgbb_y' United states.6 The role of the b'B.i"r, organisation 1oo!y' in Britain is similar to that of Marvin Leibman i" *r" U.s.. The

first s ecretary General of the world Anti-Communist

League

when Lt was entirely a lobby group for Taiwan, Leibman uegrri i., c rina Lobby, went on-to t^he Tshomu" rouuy 1A*6.i.u, F"_ t-omn ittee to Aid -Katanga_Freedom Tighters), Cuba lobby (Comr rittee for the Monro6 Doctrine), Chiie r-oufy-1e*erican-

Chilea n Council) etc.z

whr

n the Central African

Federation, of which (southern) Rhode;ia was a component, began to unravel in the iate 1950s, there rormed a Rhodesia lobby,"'high Tories, Imperialists of the old sclrool'.8 In the House of mrai the leaderri"r" Salisbury, Robins, Hinchenbrooke, Balniel and Clitheroe: in the Commons, waterlrouse, Patrick _wall, Anthony Fell, fohn Biggs-Davison, Harolc Soref and Robin Turton. This 1obLy,s, hisli point was rygbut ly a Parliamlnta5r,mgrion by Robin Turton iri rg'60 against Coloni rl.secreta.ry [an M_acloud's plans to allow greater A"frican

in the Northern ilhodesian legiilature, which d support from 102-Tory Mps.e This cam"paign arso had a l$i:t, PR firn in tandem with it, voiie and vision, hirei in"t960 to save the Fr deration from the break-up which by then looked immin, rnt. The campaign took 4b British Mps to see the Federa ion.10' The e-ffectiveness of the pR campaigns like that run fo the Federation is impossible to evaluate.' hi this period repres.ntation L

they w:re generally brought iate into what turned out to beiosing causes but the voice and vision campaign does seem to have hai

were

f"y :{Aputhisers with- the Rhodesian caure isuch as [the ,"y"1: latel Reginald Paget and the late Frederick Bellenger), some of whom had been-converted by the free public rJlations tours organised by voice and vision on behilf of the Federation

governmenl'.l1 With a Labour parliamentary malority of 4 at the it might be argued that this ,rii"oritv '*itfrirr the I-9, Parliamentary Labour party contributed to the u[rou. Cabinet,s reluctance to seriously -consider the military option against the 9llth regime - arguibty a victory of a kirid rL. in"-voice and

Vision campaign. The Central African Federation's disintegration was completed with the UDI of southern Rhodesia in 19651 Up to this point the campaigns of the British right on the fringe of the Tory party had been discreet for the mosipart., The noiable was the League of Empire Loyalists, whose tactics of"*."pti'o" ais'rupting Tory meetings and abusln.q Topr Ministers got them p."r', attention but had pyt th"T beyond the pul"e for even "i".fi the Imperial right.tz- Prt the Rhodesian iisue was'sufficiently powerful for sgTe of the Imperial right to overcome their dislikl Jr1r"," further Ight ti work together in the Angro-Rhodesian Society (ARS). The ARS was the ieber Rhodesian"government,s seconi ittempt a propagal{l Ugay in Britain. The tust attempt hid l"^.:."i,1: been the Friends of Rhodesia, creatpd py tn" Rhodesiari High Commissioner in London in 1964, befdre the D;;i;ration of Independence, but yhlh never got off the grounJ.--fti, *r, leplaced by the Anglo-Rhodesian Eogi-ety, initialry tunded by the

.government, and provided with i"fo.*rtioi by H*::Ol tnem.tr In its first six months it acquired over 1000 members ani a. monthly bulletin, editeh by u ro*". iirector of P",g"" Intormation for the (southern) Rhodesiah Government.la A*olg.its public supporters were Reginald paget Mp (Labour

-. gl,

l

Trinity

C_olleg-e, European

-

NIolre-ur,tj, Co"r"rvative

cabinet member Duncan Sandys; pahick wall Mp (founder of the 92 Group of Tory M-Ps);is ex MI6 officer Stephen Hastings ::gq MP; Lord salisbury, the society's president, and'his son Lord Cranborne; Lord Cole_raine, ludge Geraid Spa.row, Lord Hinchenbrooke, (Victor Montagu), iord Forester,'tne pute or Atholl, Lord^wedgewood, Gen-eral sir Richard Gaie.-Ltrd De La warr, Lord Coryton, Air Chief Marshall sir Arthur Longmore and Sir Archibald fames. ro

altnggs\ fgrm{ly dominated by Tory party grandees, the ^ Anglo-Rhodesian so5iety was a_mee[irg grour,d for"the io.y'.ighi and the further, racist right. This waiTllustrated ii-tgeo when

l\s lrl.hes i,.1966.t,

joined the National Front on the latter,s formation

The influx of the further right into the ARS resulted in a1967 faction fight at which the Societjr ,narrowly survivea a take_

over by^extremist members demanding immediite recognition of Smith's.".qiT." p legal government.... The siciety has Yih" -the been,seriou.sly divided for months and earlier, a meet#g of

branch chairmen.... passed

council'.le

a vote of no confidence in"the

."F9:pe.ct this was an ominous omen for the the Monday ^,Ir] which, like the ARS, acted as 'a bridge'between the righiClub "As with the ARS,"the ITg of tne Tory Party and the racist right. influx of the racist right into Monday Club led to a faction fight. rn 7973, fronted by George Kennedy young, the enthusiasls of the bridge' attempted - lut nu..o#ly failet - to trii"-over the 9lyb.. I presume that essentially the sa*e people were involved in both events but have no evidence to support tirat assumption. The rise of the right in the Tory party after 1965 can be attributed,ln part, tolhe rallying effect of the Rhodesian crisis. Although Tory leader Edwird -Heath tried to maintain a bi-

LobsterZ2 page6

Continues on p. 11.


A Who's Who of Appeaserc,1.:glg-41 Scott Neutton - is intended that this list should include all parliamentary who are ur proposing an {nglo-Gernan-p_eace deal after the outbreak "u*"awar o'. uJ b"i.,[ in ouch with the Nazi regime _either directly orofthrough neutralS in l,ursuit of such an accorimodation. I

(Lc rds and Commons) perso_nalities

Record Office, f_""Jo"; P.Pfpers Ne,ille Chamberlai, p3p..9T, University of Birmingham (CHAM); Chr istie plpers, Cnurcnil College CamUridge. o----Ker neth de Courcy papers, HoJver Institution, Stanford, Cal fornia; B.H . Liddell Hart papelg (King,s College, London);

in the

Stoke-s

plpers, Bodleian Librury,

Sxford; "

pap rrs of the Spanish Foreign Minijtry archives, Madrid; doc rments released by the FBI under ihe Freedom of Information

Actr.

Published: Doc rments on German Foreign policy (DGFP) Nicl olas Bethell, TheWar HiierWonitOZZy ,C,: *i! :g"y Cave Brown, The Secret Lrp of Si, Stewart Menzies (1e8 t)

$gh 1d Cockett, Twitight of Truth (1989) Iohr Costello, Ten Da{s thit SaoediheWest (1gg1) Rich rrd Griffiths, FelfgyTraaellers of the Right lldlO,i-I;Aey

lHaxey, Tory M.p. (7939) pa_vrJ l*ir,g, Goeiing (1989) R. Li mb, The Ghostsbf peaci (tgBT)

I-,

oithe British Secret State (1989)

with Kenneth de Courlv.

Biog aphical details are taken fuoiwho,sWho,1940. In or e case (Lord McGowan) I have included a name which is not refer ed to in the sources mentioned above. This is because McG lwan's business associates were all involved ir, f"uc" moves; and lrccause of this as well as of his own past fte Lttended the 1938_ Nuremburg rally - see Davenport-Hines's entry on him in of Business Biography (ie84)), he cannot, at the very :i:^!,:r:::T least, have been unaware of them. Th, r current list is not meant to be definitive. There were other namâ‚Źs besides those quoted here: Richard Stokes, M.p., one of the fe low travellers, wis able to organise a lobby of ao ru.pr. *t o *lttl rd a positive response from C-hurchill to Fiitler,s peace offer of Jul r 7940. His pap^ers at the New Bodleian Librarv,'Oxford do not h, )wever reveal all of the identities involved. It should also be remer nbered that 1,500 people were detained under Defence ReguJation 18b between Maland August 1940, a fate which the Priq, ity of narnes on the [:l.gr.lp:d.r" This Regulation was only

rygk:d against known Fifth iolumnists urrl Fascists. The indiviluals referred to here must therefore be only tn" up of an iceber g whose full extent would reveal u .,rury consiherable

sociarsm been the

2

In addition to what Griffiths calls ,Fellow

Travellers of the --so*e, $g]',t', there are a handful of socialists featured rrliu. like

Stokes, were more yj"g than Conservatives like Anthony Eden and Harold S-Sht Macmillari. others, r*" Mu*io" and the Independent Labour party group, operated from a conviction that war was a product of imperialish, *hich in itself was the rrignesi stage.of capitalism. It was therefore the duty of ttre working"class and its representatives to mobilise for peJce f- u", case this argument faded most rapidly after the Cerman inva'sion of the

soviet Union). The influ'ence of this clique;;iil-;ffish Labour movement was very small; the anti_semitism and purges of socialists, liberals and trade unionists organised by the Nazi state, together_ with the herp provided by d"..nu.,y io- r.u.,.o, had

prepared the ground

Doa' ment i Diplomatici lt aliani (DDI)

(1988)_andWho'stMo ??or.l7 Inter view

ul,'tua

rationale behind Chamberlain,s appeasement policy.

Office (FO) and prime Ministerial i-epffice, (HO) Foreign ' pu6lic

R.R

t.il;;i;f

at home and Bolshevism abroad. This, after

Unpublished:

[g

pro-Nazi, many more were committed to Anglo-Cerman detente so that the weilth of the country would not bZ aisriprt"a in war,

leading to the collapse of the Enipire and the

Sources:

(fR

network, or networks, of bankers, industrialists, randowners, service officers, members of the security and intelligencl establishment, and poriticians. some of th6se were genuinery

necessary.3

foi a reluctant conviction that war was

sgT"- eyebrows may be raised at. the omission from this rist of ^ uavrcl Lloycl George. Late in 1940 Churchill likened him to Petain; the mud his stuck, cemented uy *u**ilr'tr the old Liberal's visit to Hitler in 1936. yet Churtnil was unrair. LloyJ Gg?rs-" w^as not an appeaser. He argued i" favour of ln aliance with the soviet union-and was unhappy about tr* J".ju.ution war because he did not see how, in tlie abser,ce boin or rr.n of ur, alliance, and of commitments of help from tn1-u"it"d states, Britain could win a conflict with Germany, still less protect the territorial integrity of poland. In the summer of 1940 he resisted the eftorts of stokes to recruit him to a peace drive, and maintained that such action *o"ia o"ry u" upf.opiiatl once the German threat to Britain had been miiitarily'j"f;il. He was prepared to contemptate a fight to the finish if of the soviet Union and the UnitEd states came into "ith;;;;oth the war on the

British side.a The list.is in 2 parts: (i) parriamentary Fglro-w Tiaveilers; and (ii) extra-Parliamentary Fellow Travellers. Each curriiilim oitae is quoted as it stood fi 1940.

Notes ]. fohn Costello, Tey DgysThat

Saaed theWest (tggt). Newton, 'The Eionomic Backqround i" elpuurement and the search Anglo-German Deten teiefore and'ail.ir,g worra {o1

2. scott

War Two', Lobster, 20, 1990. 3. See the the.biographiq: I o{Ernest

Bevin,}Iugh Dalton and Hugh bv Alan Bullock Brrllock (volume /rrnh,-o 2, i ts6D:Be" 10av\ D^* pi-ioiiirqGjl"a D:-r--ar /r^6F\ ^G."*.rkgllfy Williams (1979),

?:: 1 Gaitskell

respectively.

l{ip

4. See memorandum by

!]bya

G_e5rge

of 12 September

tg11},

Hart pupg;,.Sng,_s CoIEge, Lond6n;,"d;; lfl,Liddell Stokes papers, New Bodleian Library, Oxford.

in

Box 1,

Parliamentary Aberc onway (Lord)

1939. Mentioned_supporting negotiated peace March and -Stokes). Jury

Henq Duncan Mclaren, b.lg7g

1940. (See FO, PREM,

th-ui" nan of |ohn Brown Ltd, of Thomas Firth andlohn Brown Ltd (a corporate ryegb.e1of_the Anglo-German Fellowship), of Jlede ;ar Iron and Coar Co Ltd, of F'irth Brown st"a, ofwestrand Aircra it,. of English Clays Lovering pochin u"a co; u Ji"ector of Nahor LaI l'rovincial Bank, the London Assurance, Doncaster Collieries and of the Sheepbridge a;Jl.Jt.o. Co lTult Ltd' lix3TlJed Liberal politician. Club: Brooki. rvr8rc-oeri"l a"g"rt Lobster22

Aga Khan

RtHon. Aga Sultan Sir Mahomed Shah, b.

1g77.

Religious.potentate; head of the Ismaili Mahomedans; premier L"91ulp.ilce; chairman of British Indian deregation ioin" Round Table Conference, 1930 and 1931; led Indian a"eregation to the of Nations Assembly, 1932-37 ; president,"Leaeue of J._eague

Nations Assembly, 1937. covertry supported Germa?victory in page 7


letl :rs to senior Gu..Iu19ipl9mats which were captured by Bri ish forces in 1945. Club: Marlborough. (FOi'

Chief of Naval Staff ,1933_3g. Club: Army and Naw. Anti_ soviet advocate of negotiated peace ,f;; a;;irrr i'" ai, il 1940. I (Spanish

An old (Lord)

Foreign

Syr ney Arnold, b.lgZg. Sto :kbroker. Ex Liberal and Labour M.p. Resigned from the Lat :ur Partv 1938 in disagreemenrwitrr its stanc? on foieign affa rs. Council or *re affie;; Fenowship. Advocated -f,nEilt' neg rtiated peace througho-uttg3g_40.

foana

Bea:sted (Lord) Wa ier Horace Samuel, b. 1gg2. Ind rstrialist and Banker. chairman of shelr Transport and Co Ltd (the British holding.o*pu.y of Royal Dutch L1u, ,r,"S Dne r)/ corporate member of the Anglo_German Feliowship; four der of Samuel's (m_erchant uanfl); trustee of Nationar and rate Gall :ries. MI6 (Secre! Intelligence Service). aarrocuteA

,I*d 1940. ClubiCartton, White,s.O.i;r; l:g; DurJ ngton B9u."l l,rne Arts, Buck,s, -

Bath, Beefsteak. (Stokes,'Lobster)

Bea. erbrook (Lord) am Maxwell Aitken, newspaper magnate

will

,b.7g7g. Unionist

Bulo-", r6v'y. ah,?;;iil;;i;i; bucr,y or 1i: :?19-^y1:1:il"g Minister of.rnformation, 1e18. s"pp".1* I1l:1.^"::19 Cha nberlain's foreign poricy and imperi"ii*rrt]Silr*? "r an" 1930 ;. Kept samu"rH'oure iq.".) on a retainer and worked for a negr tiated peace in 1940. Crub: carrton; rvrraboio"gh. (Cockett;

FO).

Benr ett, Ernest, M.p. Nati, 'nnl Labour M.p. for Central Cardiff r937-rg4s(Labour M.p. for si me 7929 -97).{r,Slq--G-"rman Fellowshrp. aa\rocutea nego iated peace 1940.Club: Bath, Reform, iryrirr,"ir,. (stokes)

Brocilet, Lord

Arth

rr Ronald

Nall Nall-C ain,b. -1904.

and |.P.; member of i{erts County.Council; chairman of -Barri- !9r Land Union; of Centrar and Associated C(ambers-iaf.ic,rttrre. Frien I and confidant of Chamberlai". (C;iffi-t-h, ;. ioi5 Angto_ Genr an Fellowship. Advocated negoiiated peac'e lgi6-+0. Club Carlton, Marllborough. (FO, S"toke r[,iiiii,oJcorr.y inten iew). ", Buccl eugh, Duke of Waltt r John Montagu-Douglas-Sco tt, b. lgg4. Num''rous earldom-s in scoland andnorthern Engrand; Lord Stewt rt of the Royal Household , 19gZ_41. f.uqr"?iiv ,nirit"a Hitler pre-war. Consistent"i";;t".i""s"air'r;;J":". Ctub: G_uar< s, Turf, Carlton, New, Edinburgh. irREtIrI,iia"l_ fFd, Hart, itokes).

Buckr raster, Lord Stanley Buckmaster, b.1g90. Committee of the London 9*:r DrocK :xchanse- Advocate of negotiated peace. Crub: United o-'-

Unive .sity.

lBtokes)

Butler, R.A., M.p.

B. 190 l. Conservative M.p. after 1929. ]unior Minister 1gg2-gg. Under secretary of,state for Foreign Affairs Tgig- ,l,. supporter of lppea ;ement, worked,for negotiated peace 19gg_41. Club: Carlto'r; Farmers'; Buck,s; BeEfsteak.'(DGFP, Costello-,-be Courc,). Buxtor t Charles Roden, M.p. Ex Liberal and Labour

8.187!

.

M.p., representing Cambridge

Unive: sity in 1940. Confidant of Chamberlain. dr;;p :o.mpl :hensive scheme for economic appeasement for pU. i., luly 79 )9; advocate of negotiated peace iggg_EO. GO, pnffr{, Stokes . Carnel ie (Lord)

Charle Alexander C-arnegie, KCVO. Scottish peer. Lando' vner. scots Guards until 1925. ADC to vi."rov of India 1917-1:. Member of the Right Club. Club: c"urar. -iJvocate of negoti; ted peace lggg-401Criffiths; Stokes). Chapli r (Lord) Eric Ch rplin, 2nd-Viscount,b.7g77. Scottish peer.

Landovnsr. niglt Club. Club: Carlton; Mariborough;

f..!ls

Royal

luadron; Cowes. Advocate of negotiated pexce .trigg- }.

(GriffittLs)

Chatfie ld (Lord) Admira I of the Fleet Alfred Ernle Montacute Chatfield, lst Baron lCB, KCMG, CVO, b.1873. priry Councillor'tigg. \lfn, Ministe 'for Co-ordination of Defence tgig-Eo;First sea iord and

Ministry).

Cranbrook (Lord) John David Gathorne-Hardy, b. 1900. Landowner, Conservative peer and junior Minister, tgzz-za. Countv Counci,Ior, E. suffork; ].P., suffolk. Related to Goschen family e3*;*1.- A;, Royar Cruising. Advocate of negotiat"a l"uc6, 1940. tsiotesl

culverwell, Cyrrl, Tom B. 1g95. Unionist M.p. for Bristol 1928. Ciub: Carlton; Royal io.Ury yacht; Clift-oru west Bristol.

since

Apologist for Nazi regime; advocate or (Stokes)

""go;ui"a

p"".!ie+0.

Darnley (Lord)

H:il:I;"?[g[3;,133h"Hti:ru?f,:ft:"?Fsi,i?b*.j[3;r Davies, Rhys, M.p. B. 7877. Libour M.p. Advocate of negotiated peace 1940. (Stokes)

Davies, S.O., M.p.

B. 1886. (Stokes)

LabourM.p. Advocate of negotiated peace, 1940.

Edmondson, Major (Sir) AlbertJames, M.p. B' 1887. Governine"t]Ilip, tgzz-gg;Lord Commissioner of the Treasury after 79i9. Carlton; Conse*;ti"";;.!t"ph".,,r; v" eu!: -' ' 1900. Member of the Right Club. (bostello).--'-Halifax (Lord) Edward Frederick b. 1gg1. yorkshire randowner. !Tr"y wood, Former Unionist M.paird junior Minister, vi."iov or i ndia 7926_ 31. Succession of.Cabin_et appointments ihe;;;ii6. ;;ril made

I::::m.T:fTI in 1e38. wbrked r* 1"so;u;J;;;;"

te3s_47,

!f,,ii:i{,i:"3,l,tll',".?,'."i,ff :f=Ti?:ll,t'#XTflin"backor

(FO,FBI,DGFp,Costello, De Courry interview) Harmsworth (Lord) Cecil Bisshoo Harmsworth, b. 1g69. Newspaper magnate, brother of L6rds Nothcliffe u"Jnotn"rmere, both known for their :Tl.g*" Right wing^opinions. Liberal f.d.p .' tgO6d;' ir*o.

Minister t9r,s-22 - ctrit: Reform; university,

D;ill'

l{d'.ro.ut"

of negotiatedpeace, 7gg9-40. gOl Harvey, Thomas Edmund, M.p. B. 1889. Indeoenderrt progressive M.p. for Combined English Universitie, ,ir,." 1937. M"aster oi tt crita of st Georg e, 7934 Club: National Liberar. supported "negotiated

p"*"

(Stokes)

Ioer_+0.

Hoare, Sir Samuel, M.p. B' 1880. Conservative M.p. for Chelsea since 1910. p.iry Councilror since 1922. Aviator. E*-s".r"t i"1;lltg;il;'service (Poland, 7919-20). secretary of State for-rndia, 193i:-3t Foreign Secretary, 1!35; First Lord oi the Admir alty, lsei_t);i'oi^u Secretary, privy Seal, t939_ab; U.M.amUiss"ao. to !9?!-39; Lord Spain, 1940-45. Leading rpli"rr"r; ua,uo.-u-t" oi;;;;;;d and involved in covert dlsiuisions wth Germany,io3g-+s peace (u, t:"r,a) beforeteing warned off by the Foreign Oiiil".- ttrU, r

Carlton. (FO,

DDD

Holden (Lord) Angur william Eden Horden, b. 1g9g. Liberal peer. Ex Guards, Regimen! Hon Attache, H.M. Mission to Holy'Se i, tits;to H.M. Embassy,.Madri{, 1922; to.Berlin, 1925. Club': -"rrarl n.ya Automobile. Advocate ofneg_otiated peace, 1,9gg_40.- (fO,

PREM, Stokes, Chamberlain, tockett,'De Cour.rl -Kerr, Lt-Col Charles Iain, M.p. 8.1874. Stockbroker (Kerr, Ware and Co.). Liberal National M.P. Montrose Burghs since 793z;LofiCommisionei or*," Treasury and Chief whip Liberal Nationar partv, rg37-3g. Member of the Risht Crtib; advocate or n"gotiit"d p;; 1[l3g-

40.

(Stokes; CostZlo;

Kimberley (Lord) Iohn Wodehouse KT!9.1:y. 2nd Earl, b. 1gg3. Landowner (c. 11,200 acres). Liberal M.p. Mid. Norfolk, 1906-10. Cr"f, r".r Bath. Advocate of negotiated peace, 1946. fSt.t"rl-^-Lambert, George, M.p. B. 1866. Liberir M.p._s. Molton, 1897-1924; r929-3r;Liberar National since 1931. .p..irny Councillor since 1912. Club:-Reform; Devon and Exeter. Advoiate of negotiated peace ,19i0.' (stokes)

Lobster22 pageS


Lorrdonderry @ord) Sir lharles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-Stewafi , 7 th Marquess, KG. MVO, b. 1878. P.iry Councillor since 19L9. Landowner wit r extensive estates in northern England and Northern Ireland; coa lowner; aviator; Lord Lieutenant of Co. Durham since 1.928; Ch ef Commissioner, Civil Air Guard, since 1.938; Conservative M. '. for Maidstone ,1906-15; Ministerial experience in both Lor Ldon and Belfast including Secretary of State for Air, 1931-35; Lor d Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords, 1935. Club: Car lton; Royal Yacht Squadron. Advocate of appeasement before the war and of negotiated peace, 1939-41,. Member of the Imperial Poliry Group (FO, PREM, DGFP, De Courcy). Lol hian (Lord) Philip Henry Kerr, LLth Marquess, b. 1882. Landowner (c. 28,000 acr :s). Editor, The Round Table, 1910-1,6; Secretary to the Prime Mi rister, 1916-21; Secretary of the Rhodes Trust, 1925-39; Ch rncellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1931; director of the Na ional Bank of Scotland; member of the Anglo-German Fel owship; H.M. Ambassador in Washington since 1939. Ad rocate of appeasement before the war and of a negotiated pei ce, 1939-40, working for this with the tacit approval of Lord Ha ifax (q.".). Club: Travellers'. (DGFP, FO, Costello) Lu,ns, Major Sirloceyln Morton, M.P. B. 889. Conservative M.P. Portsmouth South since 1.939. Club: Ca lton; Conservative; British; New York. Advocate of ne1;otiated peace, 1940. (Stokes)

Lytton, Lord

b.1.876. Civil Lord of the Ad rriralty,19'I..6;7919-20; Under Secretary of State for India, 792022; Governor of Bengal, 1922-27; leader of the Indian Delegation to the 8th and 9th Assemblies of the League of Nations, Geneva, 7%7 and 1928; modest landowner (c.600 acres); industrialist (CI airman of Palestine Potash, Ltd; of Central London Electricity, Ltc; director of the London Power Company.) Club: AtI renaeum. Advocate of negotiated peace ,1939-40. (Stokes) Mc Govern, |ohn, M.P. B. 887. Independent Labour Party M.P. for Shettlestone Dir ision of Glasgow since L930. Advocate of negotiated peace, 193)-40. (FO; Stokes) Vic tor Alexander George Robert,

McGowan, Lord Hu ty Duncan McGowan, 1st Baron,b.1.874. Chairman of Imlrcrial Chemical Industries; Deputy Chairman of African Ex1'losives and Industries, Ltd; director of Canadian Industries, Ltd ; director of General Motors Corporation, New York, and of the Midland Bank, Ltd; Advisory Director of the Overseas Bank, Ltd. Steered I.C.I. into cartel arrangements with I.G. Farben, Ro.'al Dutch Shell and Standard Oil; launched I.C.I. on policy of fou nding joint overseas companies with US chemical ma rufacturers Du Pont. Advocate of appeasement before the wa ; fascist sympathiser; visited Nurembergrally,1938; member of t re Anglo-German Fellowship. Executives of companies with wh ch McGowan was involved (e.g. Du Pont, Royal Dutch Shell an< General Motors, the last two represented, respectively, by Bal lwin Raper, j.. v. , and by |ames Mooney, the American Ch rirman of General Motors ) were all working covertly for neg otiated peace, 1939-41,. Economic League. Club: Carlton; St fan es's; Bath; Conservative; Glasgow. (FO; Costello; Davenpoit Hir es; Haxey; Irving)

Mamhead (Lord) Rol,ert Hunt Stapylton Dudley Lydston Newman, b.1871. Ex Un onist M.P. ; advocate of negotiated peace, 1940. (Stokes) Ma nsfield (Lord) Mu ngo David Malcolm Murray, TthEarl, b. 1900. Lieutenant in the Black Watch; Territorial Army; Urrionist M.P. for Perth 793735; lhairman, Edinburgh Royal Insurance, British Society of Mo rarchists; President, British Empire Union; founding member of t re Imperial Policy Group. Club: Pratt's; Carlton; M.C.C. Ad rssnls of appeasement before the war and of a negotiated pee ce, 1939-41,. (Costello, De

Courry,

Lobster)

Ma rochetti (Lord) Geurge Charles Marochetti, 3rd Baron,b.1894. Ex Military

Intr'lligence (probably Secret Intelligence Service); Asst. Military Att rche, Vienna, 1919-20; British delegate to International Cor nmission of Blockade (Hungary),1921; Inspector of Shipping, Ma lagascar,1925; mission to South America, 1929-30; insurance bro <er with A.W. Bain and Sons Ltd, after 1932. Club: ]unior Na"al and Military; International Sportsmen's; Berkshire Golf;

Golf. Advocate of negotiated peace and replacement of Churchill Coalition, early 194'l' (conversation with Raymond E. Leelanuary 1.941 in which Marochetti is quoted as speaking for opinion in the City of London, in Secret Diaries of Raymond E . Lee, Ganton

edited by ]ames Leutze,l97l).

Maxton, James, M.P. B. 1885. Labour M.P. Bridgetown Division of Glasgow since 1922; Chairman of the Independent Labour Party,1934-39. AdVocate of negotiated peace, L940. (Stokes; FO).

Milne (Lord)

Field Marshall George Francis Milne, lst Baron, G.C.B., G.C.M.G., C.8., D.S.O .,b. 1866. Soldier, Lieutenant of the Tower of London ,1920-23; A.D.C. to the King, 1923; Chief of Imperial General Staff ,1926-33. Club: A.-y and Navy. Advocate of negotiated peace, 1939-40. (CHAM)

Mitchell, Harold Paton, M.P. B. 1900. Unionist M.P. for Brentford and Chiswick Division of Middlesex since L931. Chairman, the Alloa Coal Co., Ltd and the Alloa Glassworks Co. Ltd; President, Luscar Coals Ltd and Mountain Park Coals,Ltd, Alberta; director, The New Zealand and Australian Land Co. Ltd. Club: Carlton; Bath; Alpine; New; Edinburgh. Member of the Right Club. (Costello) Mottisone (Lord) Maj-GenJohn Edward Bernard Seely, C.8., C.M.G., D.S.O., b. 1868. Ex soldier and Liberal M.P. Secretary of State for War, 1912-14; member of Anglo-Gerrnan Fellowship. Club: Brooks; Athenaeum; Royal Yacht Squadron. Associated with peace plotters after the outbreak of war but acted as rePorter on their activites to the government. (FO; Griffiths) Noel-Buxton (Lord) Noel Edward Noel-Buxton, lst Baron Aylsham, b. 1869. Former Liberal and then Labour M.P. Privy Councillor 1930. Minister of Agriculture 1924, 1929-30. Club: Athenaeumn. Advocate of appeasement and of negotiated peace 1939-40. (FO, PREM, Stokes)

Phillimore (Lord) Godfrey Walter Phillimore, 2nd Baron,b. 7879. Chair, Friends of National Spain (pro-Franco pressure group) 1936-39, and of Executive Council of the Country Landowners' Association. Vice-President of the Economic League; member of the Imperial Policy Group. Club: Athenaeum; Carlton. Advocate of AngloGerman peace deal,1939-41. (De Courcy) Ponsonby (Lord) Arthur Augustus William Ponsonby, 1st Baron, b.1877. Labour peer, once diplomatic service and Liberal M.P. Advocate of appeasement and after outbreak of war of a negotiated peace. (FO, PREM, Stokes, De Courcy) Raikes, HenryVictorAlpine MacKinnon, M. P. B. 1901. Conservative M.P. for S. E. Essex since L931.. Violently anti-Soviet advocate of appeasement; member of the Imperial Poliry Group. Club: Carlton, MCC, Pratt's, ]unior Carlton. Supported negotiated peace/ 1939-41. (De Courcy, Lobster) Ramsay, Captain. A. H. M. B. 1890s. Unionist M.P. for Peebles since 1931. Military intelligence (S.D.3, War Office)1917-19. Vice-Chairman of the Cavendish Land Company. Club: Carlton. Pro-Nazi advocate of appeasement; member of the Link and the Right Club; detained under Regulation 18b in May 1940. (HO, Haxey, Costello) Redesdale (Lord) David Bertram Ogrlry Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron,b.7878. Profascist peer, admirer of Hitler, member of pro-Nazi organisation, The Link. Club: Marlborough. (Haxey, HO).

Riley, Ben, M.P.

8.7866. Labour M.P. for Dewsbury. Parliamentary Private Secretary to Noel-Buxton (q.v.) 1930-31. Advocate of a negotiated peace, 1940. (Stokes) Sanderson, Sir Frank Bernard, M.P. B. 1880. Conservative M.P. for Ealing since L93L. Chairman of Salts (Saltaire) Ltd; of |. andJ. Crombie Ltd, Aberdeen; and of Humber Fishing Co. Ltd. Director of United Premier Oils and Cake Co. Ltd. Member of the Anglo-German Fellowship; supporter of the Link. Club: Unionist; L900; Carlton. Advocate of negotiated peace, 1940. (Stokes)

Semphill (Lord) Colonel William Francis Forbes-Semphill, 14th Baron, b. 1893.

Lobster22 page9


T ,l

t: ;:' E. fi

ft tr i1.

Chi,mber of Commerce,lg3l_84; Ctiui.inu., qi4ii; f Vi*_ Pre ;ident, 19ZS-; executive committee of the fVar.ii"rd", mer nber of the Anglo-German Felowshrp; on the Council of The Lin r; member of t{1,nightd"bi1;"p"ty Royal Em rire Leazue; Chairnian and direc'to1of -C1rri.r"r" F. T. M. Ltd.; director, Kel"in, Bott-omrv and Baird, ita. -cr"u: Athenaeum; Beefsteak; Jun or united s6rvices; ucb- aa*.rtu orp"u." *i'tfrt".-ur,y, l93l -40. (Stokes; Costello; Haxey) -Stol:es, Richard Rapier, M.p. B. l;\97. Labour M. p._for Ipswich since 193g; Chairman and Mar aging Director of Rans'omuru"Jnupi".ltau"J rrru.,u6r,g Dire :tor of Cochran and Co., e""r" Lt,i. r*u."ti"" dJmmittee, Leal ue of Nations Union; Commiitee

F"l

H

rj

r

ii

ii H

k l,

}E EI

li g

iil.*"iff r.".'i:I{iiifii*,[Tnhi",i5,41i:1",,

Aml assador to Turkey, February

pea( I

I

lobby.

tO+O;

(Stokes)

pu.nrL".,tr.y^r.gr"iser of

Tavi rtock (Lord) Hast ngs William Sackville Russell, landowner, heir to Duke of Bedf rrd whom he succeeded in tqaO. B. 1ggg. Advocate of appâ‚Ź asment and of negotiated peace, ' --' 7gg9_40. (FO, PREM, Lidd ]ll Hart, Costello)" WeII ington (Duke of) Arth rr Charles Wellesley, 5th Duke, b.7g76. Landowner; Feuowship anJ th;r[s1i crru. T:T i:flAnglo-Germin and or negotiated"fpeace' igsg-+o'

I

ffiJi

ii'E::ftl,Tii,ffit (Duke of)

Jlestninster Hlgl RichardArthur

brosvenor, 2nd Duke, b.1gzg.

with 'rstates in scotland, Frintshire, cnesnire,l"a-oob Landowner acres in Lond rn. Admirer of Nazi regime.' AJ;";;t;a;;i;-German

peacâ‚Ź

7939-40. (FO; Brown)"

Wise, Alfred Roy, M.p. B' 19t 1. Conservative M.p. for smethwick since 1931. Member of,the Imperial policy Group. Cf"U, United Universitv. tt aPPeasement and of Anglo-German p"r.'". (De

A;Ji;i"

BaII, liir George Joseph B. 188 ). Warbfiice rq Irish Comm and19t4;British Expec itionary Force i,^tr: tgts-ztiwii cin"., is+r. - Mb;;organised Consr rvative Research Depirt-"rrt, signed the cheque which paid tJ forger of the Zinoiiev Iettei .8"iiar"i"i illiuurruin throul 1e hout his prim.e Ministership; oii;;;h:;;;o_Nazi paper ,vhich advocated peace witfr Germany "aito. after ihe'outbreak --ico"ulu, of war ar d which consistentry_ smeared cr,"r.iiir. Inforn ation from A. Liddell

ffurij

Christ e, Group-Capt. Malcolm Grahame

.

B. 188: Aviator u1'q burilesr-r", ai. Attache, Berlin, 1g27_g0. Travel, ed continent throug-ho"t-it u igaOs; hal ,'ri""r"'lt venlo,

on the Dutch-German borier. worked fo, sec.eJi^t"itig".,." MI6l 'Z' organisuuor, rr,a ii11u"., v-a-nsitr art, Chief Dfrromatic eaviseito the Govemment after 1938' vlet most of the reading Nu=ir; discussed negotiated peace with th e s.s. and with represJ"tutives of Goeringtzt*;;" 1D3g40 und rr the instructions of the F;;eign office ;fJNri;. ----'^--' iChristie; A. Rea, I and D. Fisher, Colonel Z, rcy, Kenneth Hugh P"-^Cgf B. 1909 Secretary,.jl:"I.*ferial policyGroup; personal agent to sir stev'art

ige)

Menzi-es, Chief oi

s".r"t ir,t"ttig"r,du s"*i""

from N rvember 1939;.reportea aiso to Chamb :rlain during theiate f qgOs tn grrop"lli Jifrf

r.

I

?rrrrrol

ffi?;i;:":;ffi'.; .*rti.

Friendly with Londonderry, Mansfierdlndphillimore \nti-soviet advocate of-, p;ii;i'.f ,ir"p;;l i;uuor,ir,,., for Briti;h Commonwearth and Emnir-e attempted to negotiate $nglo-t lerman peace thlotlstr u"ii'"J states Ambassador to Great P_rifain J :seph Kinnedy in rfiay-fl"l or

(q."]

Ef,

,

ffiil fl ,f, ts"'#i;#iId# *rf#';*t',[;Pg'o",l

Domvil

e

ge, tgtz34 ; m em be. o f in_" e"ir

_c

Flt'ttjx?f ilTff trJ,,.S,"ixT:,,*:ff

(Haxey; Costello)

*#[f [i*]il,,;

_Drummond,Wolff , Henry

B. 1900. Conservative m'ember for Basingstoke r934-3s;member of the Grand Council of the primrose r-""fir";_uaJ.;;i Goering; friend of the Duke of Westminst". G-.".1;;r"d bt ah;ritedain to pursue secret feerers towards Germany

in u"y isieiuarrocrtea Anglo-German peace dear after the ouibre* ,ir-git*")]" *"i. -ct.ru, pratt,s;'Royal Carlton; Air ro".". [rO; oCFp; Gibbs, Sir Philin B' 1877 ' Authoi and journarist. Friend of westminster Drummond Wolff (:.i,). Supportertf upp"ur"*""ir"aand

after the out'blreak or wa'ri ci"u, lggotiated peace (Griffiths) -

of

n"r".-.

Sir David, C.M.G., M.C. B' 1891. Militarv intelligence, worrd war one; Foreign from 1919. Clu6: Athefaeu#, S,luil"r.r; Marlboroush: office Travellers'. In fact- worked r"i s"*"ii" riil;;;b:r.?i:" Minister to switzerl and, 1939. rti"." met a succession of German officials and discussed the possibilit_r."f -o- --*r!Y r!q\ *itt them from 1939 onwaras. " "";;L;;;flce IOCfR-irri"Uoy Mosley, Sir Oswald B. 1896. FormerConservative and LabourM.p.. Chancelorof the Duchy of Lancast er, r9z9-30. Founded tt N"* iiurty and then the British union of Fascists iilgez. " M;;l'il;r, daughter of Lord Redesdlle 1q.".1i" f eaO. Arrested under Regulation 18b in 1e40. cruUiWniie,s. (C;;i;X;i* *'

{elly,

Mountain, Sir Edward Mortimer

B. 1872. Chairman and Managing Director of Eagle Star and British Dominions Insurance io*"puny, Ltd; of British Crown Assurance Comoany; of Threadn;Jd iF;r*";;;;"y (1923). Advocaie oi rpp"rr"-.""ni;"ilet Coe.ing secretlv in August 1939 along with Robert nenwick ,"Ja."i:;;r.er (q.v.). Persisted in contalts with uliifi;::"","" Birger Dahlerus after the outbreaf o f war, against the advice of the

coeiid;;ts;ari

Office. (FO)

Norman, Montagu Collet B' 7871' Govenior of the Bank of Engrand since 1920. p.iry Counciltor 1923. Crub: athenaeum. -il;;;t" ;iil;;r"ment; worked successfuily to keep A-ngro-German financiar ties intact throughout the 193bs; ailegLd rfnoor""elt to be invorved in discussions conceming, .,tgouuted Angro-German -ilir";.ni peace with f ormer Rei ch s ba nk Diftctor Hj, r gi i:if.="i, o I Raper, Alfred Baldwin

il;

tii*"#1ffi ,TJ5"?ffi:H:::t'iiHi,H,i,,;.-":rTffi ill""." r.i"i""I Green, tiio.ih *itt

ft service); Conservative and u"i;"iJivi]n ro.ti. 1918-22. Clubs: Royal Air Force; -ity ,f fo.,Jo.,.

uirJ;;;ffi;;

::*i:l

situatio

I

founder and Chairman p".Li+;'pro-Nazi " ".*, advocate ""r"l,iri"rr,ip; gf Lr ando-

Foreign

Extra-Parliamentary

I

Col

.itt*

ei

l

Naval College, Greenwich, and ViceAdmiral CommandingWar

it{##,H6l;ft ,;[l*k"*Ht$#,

$tlffiffi

ff

E

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Lobster22 page70

,


G<

pe

eringvia Swedes, February 1940, concerning compromise

rce.

(FO)

Rt nwick, Sir Robert Burnham B. 1904. Stockbroker (W. Greenwell); director of electricity gu rPly companie-s stretching all the way across Southern England frc m Bournmouth to Folkestone. Club: White's; Orleans; Ci-ty. Il ,olved along with Mountain and Spencer (q.".) in the dir cussions with Goering, August 1939. Conlinued these after th, : outbreak of war through Dahlerus against Foreign Office ad rice. (FO) Spencer, C. F.

B. I Director of fohn Brown; of Associated Electrical Industies; Cl airman of Swan Edison Cables; financial adviser to CoWholgsale Society; friend of the pro-German go-op:rative b_e ween Birger Dahlerus who called him 'one of the pillirs of the Cc nservative Party'; participated in the Goering negotiation of At gust L939; stayed in touch after outbreak of war via Dahlerus ag rinst Foreign Office wishes. (FO; Bethell)

Tirrks, Frank Cyril B. 1874. Banker; partner in ]. Henry Schroder since

1902 (the

Ge rman branch of Schroder's had

financed the Nazi Party when it ha I been on the edge of insolvency in 1931-32); director 5f tne Ba rk of England since 1912; Lieutenant of the City of London; wc rked with Norman (q.v.) to keep Anglo-German financial cor Lnections intact throughout the 1930s; member of the AngloGe rman_Fellowship representing Schroder's and the Anglo-Ira rian Oil Company. Club: Carlton; Royal Thames Yacht. _A lvocate of Anglo-German rapprochement; alleged by Ro tsevelt to have been engaged in covert talks wifh Schacht on bel ralf of Norman with a view to setting out the terms for a nel;otiated Anglo-German peace ,1941,12. (FO; Haxey)

Walker, Sir Alexander B. 1859. Chairman of The Distillers'Company. Member of the Right Club. (Costello)

Wernher, Sir Harold Augusfus, K.V.C.O

B. 1893. Anglo-swedishbusinessman. Chairman of Associated Theatre Properties (London) Ltd; of Electrolux, Ltd and of Ericssen Telephones. Associated with Dahlerus, who was the Yu.?grrg Director of Electrolux, and with Axel Wenner Gren, Swedish owner of the Electrolux Group. Wenner Gren was a F"ld of Goering and of the Duke of Windsor (q.v.) and banker for the Nazis (see sunday Times Magazine,lT|unb 1gg0). wernher was involved with spencer and Dahlerus in attempts to broker peace dgTg the summer of 1939 and probably aft-er the outbreak of war. (FO)

Windsor, Duke of His Royal Highness Edward David, King and Emperor, 1936 (Edward VIII), b. 1895. Abdicated. Admirer of Hitler and of Nazi Germany. Passed information to Germans while working as Major-General on Allied General Staff.,1939-40. Governor of the Bahamas, 1940. (Brown; Costello, DGFP)

Wiseman, Sir William George Eden B. 1885. Banker; partner in Kuhn, Loeb and Co. , New York; Worked for Secret Intelligence Service in United States during First World War. Club: Athenaeum; Garrick. Autumn 1940was involved in negotiations with Fritz Wiedemann, ex-adjutant to Hitler and German Consul-General in San Fransisco, and Stefanie Hohenlohe-Waldenberg, a Nazi agent, designed to create framework for Anglo-German peace deal. Claimed to be operating on behalf of the section of the Conservative Party which owed allegiance to Halifax (q.rr.); probably working under the instructions of Lord Lothian (q.".). (FBI; Costello)

Ar glo-Rhodesian Society policy with the Labour Government, the campaigning of the right gradually stiffened the spines of the Parliamentary Tory Par ty and it abandoned the bi-partisan policy in December 1966. In he ARS and the Monday Club began to assemble part of the coa lition on the Tory right which was to capture the party in1975. par tisan

Notbs (1) (2)

(ennethYoung,Rhodesiaandlnilepenilence,

year ; there is one, The HeI r, London, 1986).

(3)

(Dent, London, 1969),pp.510-511.

Tory Right. On the inter-war ldeology of the British Right-wing 1918-39, G. C. Webber, (Croom

lhere is not one volume on the post World War

2

llheTimes,l December 1988 and 23 February 1986. Norman Tebbit attributes his

rise vithin the Tory Party to support from this group which he describes as being 'slig rtly. right-of-centre'. Like himself? Norman Tebbit, Uyoardly Mobile, (We lenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1988), p.96.

(4)

)ther well known names were Lord Hinchenbrooke (Victor Montagu), and MPs

ff;LTH:r*ffi (5)

F:X#fi:#;;:ih*i:TJ1lri.ffi

{e acquired the Yemen contract after the 'private' intervention there of '}ulian em. ry and clutch of his old Albanian cronies'. Anthony Verrier., Through tlu Looking Ghs, , (|onathan Cape, London, 1983), p. 255. (5) )n the Rhodesia Lobby and Katanga lobby personnel, see Elaine windich, Britain ondthePolitbsof Rhodesianindependence, (CroomHelm, London, 1978),pp.6G7. (n )eter Dale Scotlinltobster 12, p.20. The best profile of Leibman I know of is in ]ofu Gregory Dunne's collection of essays, Quintana and Friends, (E. P' Dutton, New Yorl , 1978).- On the day of the first ballot for the Labour leadership in 1963, appealing to tt : left-wing of the party, Harold Wilson called for an enquiry into the Congo story,

"a

including Tshombe's relationship with sir Roy walensky and the role of the o'Brien organisation: 'We know perfectly well who is behind all this propaganda: a former official in the Conservative central Office who is making big money representing in this country not only the union Miniere and Katanga Concession but the spanisl and Portugese governments and the whole record of Portugese aggression in Angola and Mozambqiue-'- Srlch an enquiry, he said, 'would be a rivealing commentary .... on the seamier side of our political life in this country.' Cited in Andrew Roth, The YorkhireWalter Mitty, (Macdonald andlames, London, L97Z *withdrawn) p. 269. (8]. PeterJoyce. Anatomy of aRebel: Smithof Rhodesra, (Graham Publishing, Salisbury [Rhodesia], 1974), p. 101.

(e\

rhid.

(10) John Pearson and Graham Tumet,

The Persuasion

Inilustry, (Eyre and

Spottiswoode, London, 1965), p. 281.

(11) Windrich, p. 59 (see note 6). (12) Chapter 3 of George Thayels

The British Polilical Fringe, (Anthony Blond, London, 1965), is apparently the only decent account of the League. (13) Andrew Skeen, Prelude to Independence, (Nasionale Boekhandel, Cape Town, 1966), p. 39. The ARS denied this - see the Sunday Telegraph, 4 December 1956 but then, in those famous words, they would, wouldri't the"yZ'

(14) The Daily Telegraph, 13 November 1965. (15) Rhodesian High Commissioner Andrew Skeen said, 'Rhodesia owes much to the unselfish efforts of Patrick Wall.' Skeen, (see note 13) p. 2a.

(15) This list is compiled from press cuttings in the Guarilian 19 July 1966, and the Daily Telegraph 15 March 1955 and 8 November 1966. (17) The

Surulay Telegraph,l3 November 1966, described him as 'the keep Britain

white rectol.

(18) Denick IGight, Beyorul the Pale, (CARAF, Leigh, (19) The Obsenter, 29 October 1967.

Lobster22 page77

1982),

p.

AS.


My enemy's enemy... Introduction Tt

e

mid 1g70s.was noj a gogd time to be

sociar democratic ally of tl e united states. In Eritain we hada,th" wid;n prots,; in ralia whitram, yim -airns and the Austrarian Labour $_usl l'ar{ got 9o"sn

Governor Kerr and the CIA; i" c;;-;;;-wili n.u.,at resigred after a,,r,eSrlg_scandal,; in New Zealand a series of dom' rstic scandals

th; i;to"r party. w"."?,ure events i, ,,o-",oia".." yli _ what was the mechanism? The CANZAR;;;;tii-i.t"ttig".,." confrrences begun in the 1960s rook interesti"gl..li'"r"w, owen wilkr s discus#s *,e rirsl bo"[," uru"ia u ,,o,i"i, tl attempt to elabo:ate 91igl,t6-q conn :cted? Co-ordinited? If so _ and theie

the New Zealand situation; and stepherr Dorril purs

i$ff

::llili,il?:*,n?5ri:.1xTi,,,,.1

jl:"?ii*ilHi:rh

seem to be just about the oniy people interested.

RR

Museum Skeet Manderin,

or"uili"l,'$"Y%uu,.,d,

$

(NZ) 1 s

Th : death of Labour prime Minister Norm Kirk in AugustrgT4 bqq?o a rather wig.r{ neriod in New Zeala"tp;iiti;;.'

while we were still.digesting the watergate Jr"i;il, rirt ai"a major Watergate-relatdd disilosures abJut Cm Ji.t, before the work and assassinations, and before the ClA_assist"a ,f"..-.Jup, againsi .Ggystr w-hitlam in Australia. Even so, many people crose to Kirk believ:d he was murdered. He was.a very-Jick'man, certainry,

but he should not have died from what made him sick. The r there was the arrest, trial and acquittal under the officiar secret ; Act of the respected and influentiai retired economist, civil servar t and author, Dr. Bill Sutch. There was the Moyre affair in which a police report about Corin M;ri;'r ffit,;;;i'r'.,,rriu", o.,

the

st

reets

of welrington somehow got into the hands

of Conse vative leader Mrrdoon. There wai the ,Think in whi:h the newspaper Truth concocted a conspira"ytank, affair, ru"tury i., which -abour was Eoing to nationarir" rri tt r*ut""L]'i.,sutruorrs " affair, in which Bf^jT ,1ountry. fhere" was the Freeman_]ays ,I:"u1t:y:,u supposed NZ SIS man (who we now know to have I {16)

passe4 poti"" report from SIS files to Auckland ,?eel busrne isman Paul 1 Freeman, wrro embarassed Labour prime Ministr r Bill Rowling by handing him th" p;p;-iir pubric. (Freemrn has been mosf recentry"sighdi;, ilt#r;roker for Colone Rabuka of Fiji.) There iu*"tn" o;8.i"";ffJr; in which one of the more radicar_ Mps in the Labour Government was beaten uq in Christchurch moter and then accrsua Lr having -a committed a homosexual- assault. (He was ,"!"iti"a.; These events rnd personalities form the basis of Michier wati,s story, ' and.thr

y are alt aescrilJ;tth;;;.ip"1"";r;;;-.*y. Wall co rstructs quite an impressive c'onspirary theo'ry.

i.o*

the t970s with the aim of discrediiing Laborir :o.,.*,9,.r_rlg:, .in

ii:l#;i,:",*%J,ff

"il'x,:T',,i:l'l;r3T,i,,J#

jj';,"i,#.:"fu

in 1972' In no other-period rn our

,#;;r2:"

poriticar history as many unexptined mvsteriol, r,rfp""ingi have as in

The possible conspiracy was hinted at in reporting at the time never piope.ly .ecounted since. - The usual .p":lit was interpretation is that i,oJtty, conspira*. between National Ieader Murdoon, Truth r;d th" N"isl;'' ,Pu.lty believed that the sutch Affair came about t'ir.ti.ular it is because a soviet diplomat wanted to defect anJ went to the rvzsrs ioi i The SIS agreed, but only if-he did a littie;oU "rp. a for-ttrem fi*;;arranging series of pseudo-crhndestine meetings with sutch, could be smeared as a spy.- The miin evidence io that Sutch rfi u,,is being a set-up was the cfym11'tridecraft' of both sutch *r" soviet, and the fact that the siS was arways,o.l ".,a th^e rporinra*'ance to spy on the meetings between sutch u'rra tr," s";;i ([n case the sIS even rented a room or"rtooti.,j-th;ffi "mJ"r.whereonce the next meeting was due to be held.) In wall's book the conspiracy is shifted off-shore. Rather than blaming it all on Murdoon, rrriniiathe sIS, wa[ dirty work to the cIA, MI6, and a rogue ,"rurrir, ascribes ail the *r,o refuses to retire. The US bases in New Zearand'as *"li;i;i*ou.u

but has

also part of Michael Walt,s

proposition

*yrt".y.

-inffifi#"?,

u." his basic

- that the us wanted t-shiilt,;;;;;. pine Gap and Nurrungar in Ausharia to New Zeafind ir the technological facts.) As a result, i" w"ilt ""irripported by ,.i."#, National Party polilicians emerge with integrity smeared faces, and Murdoo., usihe ir.,oc".,iL;"fi.ir.y;; ail over their Jan", peopre,s dirty tricks. wall has Nationar party connections. His most recent job was 1s gaqraign organiser in the o'ctober 19g) election for Nationar PT.ty leader 1im nolgea a-1d p1o1to the 1975 erection wail was with the advertisinf/pR firm Colenso which did the Nationar

l:1*i:I,#";,y?l[:,x3,,H"';:.tyll;l*.*?*fi iltlT

Cossacks' anti-Labour TV cartoon, rlportedly ;;;ti;; the Nats for a fraction of its producurl rtr6 a"hl.tion maae by 1119'" Labour at the time was that the'cra *ur r;r;il;; the Nats, 1975 election campaign. None oi tn* gets into Wall,s book. wall also shifts th19ig1ns of the werhnlgton;;;r;;;.y back in time to world war II. Most investigatorr%iin" there was was a conspiracy, it ori"ginated in ".;t#;i:"" that if the New Zearand 'was Borneo

Batallion *hich

l?volved

in the so-called 'confrontation' with Indonesia in trie mid 1960s. ri""*rrr, ;ry, and several of the other personaritils of the time ail served in Borneo.

Museum Street

them

iryfgrtant because there probably was dirty

.^,IT:.l:-* ]:l:if

been

,"f

ir.u

.qgog yarn, reasonably well told, and

if it

itf,:l,o,"r',:tn':"Tiif":,:lHl,i;i,i*lf H"T,y"""l,'.#

::I",."i!li?:'":?:F:,Ffl and defence policies now.

+illff ,,ru*ii:l"tlm,:*,H Owen Wilkes

I4'illy Brandt: the,Good German,. Stephen

Donil

Ol",n eglected aspect of the plotting against Harold Wilson and .,rne Lau rur Governments of the r970s was the fact that it took 4ug" wlrile the social democrat governments of Austraria, New Zealand and West Germany _ uria possibly C;"J;:iere ulso being su rjected to destabilisation caripaignJ, wittr the some of the

ch rracters playing a role in the# :rT: w -u.t i"rtil"r. David lergl ites that the Brandt Affair 'had involved at least four of

the wes !'s Intelligence agencies, workilg in prit""rrt ip with

each

oth

'r-

the

wlst

Germans, the French, MI5 and the CIA,.l

sunday _Times'In-sight' article informs us that MI5,s Director ^A Michael General Hanlef first quarrelled with wilr." the case

"er that ,It Deverop",;i;;d aJoreign agent who sparlea tne iow., The agent was Gunter Guilraume,- special aisistant to the west of Judith Hart, Minister of overseas seems to have been

German Chancellor winy Brandt.' o., z+ ipril igia crittur*" was arrested as an East German spy. on 6'May 1g74 Brandt, a friend Mlson, resigned, ostenii6ly as a ."rrlt of reverations _of about Guillaume.2

Lobster22 page72 \'t


we know of no evidence that in

syb.sequent interrogation -Ho*"*r"r,

listo Britaiir. anything that poinied ,one high political sourie iniondo'n' maintained that it was in some fa;hion because of Guillaume thailn Jury lgzai;i"t ,presented w ilson with the suspicion that in th;;;;{rTes-0, rii,iril r Hart had be en closer than she had admitted to ihe it#*r.,irtr,., The G rillaume said

wartime radio traffic known

as vENoNA and had found the name of wi,i Brandt in it.s In his private .o.."rpor,a"nce wright has written that,elements

ilMit'rffi;ilil;.Yiffirron

with the CIA, claimed that ord -ur-ti-" ciph-ers *,."*-rrrpicion on Brandt himself of being a- soviei ager,r. wright's

friend James Angleton, head of the"clA's division, had at that 1967 meeting u.ra,"o.rr,t"r-irrtenigence u, a result, f,ua ,rua "glr.rat. \s super_ secret Speciar Investigati6n. Group to investigate The sIG, basicallv Angretdn and a coipre o.f lr-,| right-wing cronies, concluded

;l[T.^Tfffr,J"0?,Ti:';,X,lllol]ir,!Toy,ll,,it"L*i

been

bcck smear!. Here

I shall deai *iin ir,"-1u-puig" against rndt. I have no access to German sources and would welcome ad litional information which wourd flesh out this Br

?Cr

that

)uring the thirties Brandt was a resilient anti-nazi activist, a *iri.n sought to ' '"1:p a popular front of all left-wing foi."r. nru,Ji,,

mr mber of the socialist workers' p.arty^rs*ni

1: 'portrayed rat,,r

enemies -fact t[1 as a crypto_Comhunist at this stage of his ' but in he wiining against starinism and wrote -urorir,t -was_ spiitedly the Moscow"trixrs, *ticn-against ,,deviationism,, ,. tn igig,;h;i, thedeath ser tences for so-called SWp

indentified Willy Brandt in the t'raffic,.o Just as MIS's hostility to Harord wilson was support for and partiiipation in trade t"in rooted in wilson,s ir," stiei utoc, tne anti-Brandt feeling had a gre-at deal to do with his support tor

illegal by the Nazi regime, Brandt went into exile in remained untir 1g,45, becoming the leading spc kesman of Norway's German-speaking emigr-esla- when he reh rned to Germany after the war *ith frt;"?il"n nationarity, Bra rdt embodied one dilemma for post-war Germany: what made a'g -rod'German? Brandt was an in marry eyes. This was used in 1961 "'-igr";"J;h;;#resuspect #hen, i., o""-oi the dirtiest 111:feclared r\u'way. rhere he

ostpolitik - seekirig. i."p1o?"J rJuiio"r with the soviet union, normal rerations *itrr ine East European states, and a modus aiztendi between the two.parts of Germiny. Brandt was an outspoken anti-communist and uEven'though toyur r"lporter of NATO, this was an anathema to frofessional'anti-c6mmunists :r:l,.ur Angleton, Wright and thei'r cotteug.res *'W"l German

pol tical campaisns.. in post--war C"r-r"y, -th" ";;;rervative cD J/csu,parties"called B'randt;ui.uito, to the fatherrand,. Nazi pro raganda that emigres were untrustworthy had a rasting ",h"'w;r?, effe :t. This unease even e*te.,aeJ lii; security

intelligence.z

when the Brandt-led spD ailiance with the Liberals was erected to office in october 1969, reratrons between some sections of the BND (west Germany's equivalent of Mr6j ;il;;; ieached a new low. Many of- the teadins SpD figur";;l*l;;;ng Brandt when he had been Mayor of we"st Berlin, had been praced surveillance by the BND. In 1962, BND;;il#-lnd under head General Gehlen had commissioneJan inqui.y Bahr. An Ambassador in the Foreign oln"" and aini;;g;" crose friend of

agerrcies.

1967 the

first of the CANZAB -thu(Canada, New

Britain) conferencer l::;l'lh, urre rgence oepartments, Gen

Zearand,

of heads of the counterwas held in Australia. MI5 Director_

eral Martin rurnivar-Io"es- informed the

interligence chiefs that peter

kignt

assembled

had broken some ord soviet

Splinter Factor

(Those

In th: collection C9nle1ypor1ry British History this ;ssue, Richard Ardhch #.it"r'tr,rt ,th6 7g3L_51, reviewed in ia"u oi'austabilizing -u parts of Eastern. Europe trad crearry ,"ni"""a lrr"urrr" of interr lepartmentar support lwithin the'g.iErh ,trt"iby No,o"*b", 1948 arhen the Russia'Committee, y"d-"_r C!1a*y"7LAA ....,. (p. 206) A little further on he -uiar, ,In November rg4g the rform bggan to issue,urg""i*U, i-*i at a time when ail in-ternar 1g1;1g,ir"." ,"g;i"r. enemy agent;, poriucafopp.rrtr?" had been

liq'io ated and there was no sign of the spread of Titoism. Nearia gnppe-d Eastern r"rop% u"a W;"*"ugur,., *"ru unco\ ered bv the-hundreds.' 'The missiig.u"ruili"t "x"gJ

lry*

;cat_tering

rf ..;;;;;"_ti;;,

run by

for Aldrich

the British in the Baltic :_t1".tre and Ukraine, most of which were'blowrr, ;lr,o*tedge of weste rn efforts seems to have driven siuii" 6;G; numerous innoclnt East European r rproteges -o-' on imaginary chages of subve .sion.' (p.207) For Chri.stopher Andrew, on the other hand, the starinist purge in this period were the resurt or *r"-,pu*riliai".rauncies, of sta in and the Centr"' *r,i.r, .onstructed a vast ary American conspiracy round the activities but whoily 3"gy of a felowtravell ng American euaier,'Noel Field, who had been in (innocr nt) contact withhur,y iuuai"g figures i" it

(KGB; t te Inside Story pp.

eee!ii.1-"-

"^i."iet

broc.

Neitlrer refers to st_ewart steven's book operation sprinter Factor {Lo1d1 a 1974, Z6 11d ZQ SteveniJUoot is alsq about Noel Field rbut in I is version A[en riulles oftr-," ngqghng CIA used Fierd, his contact; with the soviet bloc, and a porisf,i"i&ldil; d"fector_in_ place n rmed swiatlo, to createth" puru,oiu. swiatlo discovered 'plots'

:verywhere, their

il:T|,,g; XTf_:,"::i.,"a

realit-;;,

confirmed by other n,ai. r,"d u",,p" L,*J.,I,,liess,ges.toUSa

within,h;so;;;,::.'rt;::Xtffi,rrlfi "ilt[rrr,1lffi'J"1;fitn it resulr -'d in the deaths of tno"su"as .f p;;E;. 'i;r* ensured that thr new soviet saterites

the

the comm;*t resistance in war and with the herp o7.1e or""r,-'*"the definitery

Moscow

Iife

rn

Brandt**;" ri[?g"r,t,.

wright rater described the supposed evidence in a tetteiJo Chapman pincher: ,Brandt ...... himself is very suspect. In the wur, he left Germany and was firstly in the Dinishiesistance and then the Noil"girrr. He was one of the readers of a big c-ommunist network run uy radio from Moscow. In the secondf,aff of the sixties, we broke most of the traffic between

skeletar

OUflt.

*;;;;pects

of Soviet c omination. This, argu"r "*p".i"r,."d 5tur".r, was Dulles, intention.

with a simple- view of the ideolo gy of British media managers please note that steven is editor or"bo"r"*utive party_ supporting

Mail on Sunday.) running to three editions in the r97}s,steven,s ,^ -Althoug,h thesis has never been taken seriousrv bv either tn" r,irioiil", the cord war or writers on the CIA. " Tfie o"ry ,"i".""""'L*in" "r thesis I know of is in Leonard tvtort"y'r bio iltrr" b"]r", *^i\y 'isiay-^ip. brothers, pres.s{ames Dulles (Dal The

wide.

rr7eori

Vort,

27s_2. Mosleldescribes the same scheme and personner, butlttributes it not to Dulles but to Frank wisner and cfaims t#it #rted in the imprisonment or death of 150,000 (t) p;.ph l;;" years. Although written.four years urt"r -si"""nrs bbok was pubrished, Moslev savs that'the s6urce inu i"i*;;;;;

il?ff#:y)

does not wish to"rbe

J;rit

lBritish, identifieJ.;ip.;1"0i. Certainly

Now that the cold war is over it may be,possible to begin to get a real fix on what was actuary going "on. ail.ing itr years. ]ohn Le Carre is ouoted on the ."o""ior th" pililbrJii,rt "".ry

'has unearthed

i

steven

trr"'. It certainry is that. But is steven's version correct? Al_though some of anonymous/ many are not. In the paperback his sources are 1{. ZOO! Steven states that 'after i rcompleteJ Ly book I reirned that the ,rraa American writer Robert Deiniorfe. is.iue i" p"uiirr,'iil *"rr,oi* of an ex-officer of Britain's secreit.teligenie il;;;;in which not only is the operatation featured but i"ts I don't know which book this is. oo"r anyone "il;;;;ireared., erse? Information dreadfur

on this and on Splinter Factor would be most welcome. Steve

Robin Ramsay

Dorril adds:

If we assume that o.peration sprinter Factor did take place, were tnis period part of it? the British raungn th.eir with soviet broc emigres k"o*ing lh;t while guerrilla operations they had no chance

the covert MI6 00eration, in tnL griti. 'Did

slfi ,TTt,'li,?#,.Ill,

ffi^uilr#5lri.g

j"J::iail:#trfl};,t,"',r+tH

explain why these operations were so inept.

Lobster22 page13

r

r ---'--'


Bran< t's, Bahr was believed to have contacts

in East Germany and other Eastern bloc states. one BND report showed that Brjndt,s advis rr, state secretary Leo Bauer, who had been condemned to death in Moscow in 1952 and later pardoned, had once been a comn,unist. shortly after becoming-Chancellor, Brandt publicly ridict led the idea that Bauer was a cdmmunist.s wl en Gerhard wessel became head of the BND in the late

, he arrived

determined to implement a policy of Wessel did-away with miny 6f tne ?ggnclt co:sf iratorial w-ayl of the BND and even pliced the agency,s sixtier

'recor struction' in the

ss in the telephone directory. He had many enemieJwitfiin the 9:ganisation.e some oppoied his destruciion of domestic intelli i-ence__ material; otheii were opposed on ideological

addre

grour

ds. His 'cautious attempts to reduie

the BND's fixatioil on

Russi L as the enemy offendql the c_old-war warriors, who already thoup ht that the Great Coalition's Eastern policy was

_[Brandt]

to fight off his own ,young Tuiks,.ro Brancit put the intelligence agencies under the supervis'ion of one going too

far.'

We-ssle had

co-or( inating authority. Eventually Brandt's nominee, professor Horst Ehmke, and wessel began to work together and wessel was

able

t

r

push through his reforms

numb tr of section heads.

in thJ BND and dismiss a

Altl Lough in the early seventies BND relations with Bonn did initial y improve, they fell back as old officers first undermined {re c} a.nges then began to openly broadcast their opposition to Ostoprlitik. -'T!"y also legred that an over-violent swing Eastw rrds by Bonn would scare away old friends. The! accorc ingly-allowed stories to filter through alleging that the BND was g adually losing credibility with its foreign fiieids.' MI6 was said tr regard the BND reports as unreliablelthe CIA was said 'to !l_"s iargely discontinued exchange of information with the BryP . Though untrue, such stories poisoned the atmosphere with the blame falling on the poiiticians (and Brandt in

partio rlar).11 Nor etheless ostpo_litik continued: Brandt signed treaties with the sc viet Union and Poland. The opposiuon"CDU attempted to block :atification of the treaties but,?aced with massive popular s-uppg rt for-Brandt: gey" way at the last moment. The run-up to the N rvember 1972 Election saw a series of scandals involving highly confidential leaks to-papers and magazines in the rightr wing lipringer group, and allegations of bribis, which shook"the Brand government. Even so, Brandt was re-elected Chancellor with a r increased majority for the-.SPD.12 Hov'ever, 1973was a difficult year for Brandt. During the yom

Sppy' war, after an outcry in the German press, th"e Federal Repub lic refused to allow arms to travel to Iiraer from United states bases in Germany. Brandt explained that 'we expressly

protes ed against the use of our territory without notification, let alone :onsultation, as if NATO did not exist., The Americans were rot pleased and viewed him as dangerously pro-Arab. Presid rnt Nixon openly alleged that his 'sciftness'- to*ards the Arabs ,gas an attempt go sg{gguard his ostpolitikby supporting the soviet union in the Middle East. Kissinger aira t is Natlonal S-"!ry,y Council aides 'hated' Brandt and -thought him and his chief a de, Egon-Bahr, 'pernicious' for pursuin goltoporitrk on their

The withdrawal of the Ameiican ,security shield, was threatr ned at one stage if West Germany broke ranki.ls _ Deslrite the economic difficulties caused by the oil price rise, Brandt's personal standing increased and political com^mentators began to predict an unending period of SpD rule. There was, howerer, increasing^ oppositionto Brandt within the party from people like Helmut sch;idt, and when Brandt celebrated his 60th birthdi y in December 1973, commentators dwelt on the 'weakr ess of his leadership'. Brandt fought back and in early 1974re fected any idea of re-igning to becorne president. politicjl moves to replace trim looked unlikely to succeed: an extra putsch would ce required. _ Accr rding to Peter Wright, code-breakers at GCHe broke into East G -arman Intelligence-ciphers and identified a woman spy. 'As a ;esult of this success, we had a conference with the'lifV [west ( ]erman security] who explained there was another agent in the tra'fic who appeared to be more important. I briefed 6CHe ...... th ey managed tq gg_t some more out which showed the ageni y-as v::ry close to Willy Brandt.' The agent had been ilso

own.

allegec [y identified by a soviet defector to Fre-nch intelligence.ra

A former officer in the East German army, Gunter Guillaume emigrated to the west in 1956. He joined the spD the following year and made steady progress through the party before bein[ |ppointed to his post in the chancellery in 197^0. ft was said thai his father, a doctbr, had treated Brandt's wounds and sheltered him during the war. wa.s 11',21 etriltaume had long been ft -alleged regarded as a security risk but lt as nonetheless taken" onto Brandt's personal staff. This is probablv untrue. Guillaume had never been seriously vetted, apparentlr'-because he 'seemed to be a commendable example of an ordinan, man who was overcoming

the shortcomings of

his_ backgrouna

and this required ui

unconventional approach by his emplovers'. white this hardly seems to be satisfactory, it appears thit none of the politicians hai been informed that he was h-security risk. It rvas bnly later that this was leaked to right-wing journalists and politicians.rs

During thg summer of 19ZB Guillame \\.as put under by. west German co,unter-intelligenie. 'They . reported their views to the Chancellor - amon{ other thingi surveillance

Guillaume had failed to state that he had been an East Germin officer when applying for west German citizenship and enrolling in goverment serviie. But the Office for the protection of the Federal Constitution recommended that Guillaume should be kept on in the Chancellery.' Terence prittie states that this was 'even after his guil! had been proved beyond doubt. Their argument was that Guillaume would incriminate his masters'. However, other sources suggest that ,enough evidence had emerged to raise serious doubts as to GuillaumeTs trustworthiness but not enough to secure his arrest'. Accordingly, Brandt'did not take these allegations very seriously and agreed-to keep the matter secret (even from his closest collaboratorsl and to act is "bait" for

A*y.

the German Secret Service'.16

This appâ‚Źars to be true: Guillaume was allowed to accompany ^Brandt on his annual holiday to Norwav in the summer of tgzz.' There is some debate, however, about what access Guillaume had to secret material during this period. one account suggests that the aide was allowed aicess to all communications reiEhing the Chancellor, but another that 'Brandt was advised to ..... exilude him from access to secret material'. According to British cold warriors Dobson and Payne, however, ,despiie the fact that Brandt had been informed, he continued to allor+'Guillaume sight of .importalt p1per9.'. This is-probably false. More likely"is Leigh's version that'when Brandt was eventually forced to reiign

as Chancellor, he said that Guillaume had inidvertently beEn

allowed to see secret material'.l7 Bttwhat kind of secret material did Guillaume actually see? Prittie claims that he'handled secret and confidential documents, and enjoyed Brandt's fullest

confidence. He was situated at the key, pivotal point for obtaining information on all policy maiters of crucial importance'. On the other hand, West Germany,s external

intelligence agency the BND, which did an exhaustive analysis of the case, concluded that'Guillaume's main ...... function evolved into spotting the specific organisational sources for important data rather than attempting to acquire the data itselfl. Did Guillaume in fact take any secret material?t8 Brandt returned to Bonn from a visit to Egypt on the morning of 24 ApnlDT4.tolearnthat Guillaume had b66n arrested as u sp| i.t the service of the GDR. Although initially there seemed to lie no cause for alarm, Brandt resigned on 6 May- 1974.

Brandt has said very little about the affair. ,It did not immediately occur to me that considerations of personal

responsibility would force me to resign ..,... my decision to resign matured without undue haste...... ftook advice which, lookiilg

back,

I

should not have taken.

I

was right to shoulder

thE

political responsibility ...... I could not have -soldiered on with an easy mind.' He was a sensitive person who placed a great deal on

personal integrity and loyalty. At the momeit of crisis 'government officia\and even Ministers, hastened to disassociate

themselves from the "Guillaume Affair".' One of his colleagues and rival - Herbert wehner felt that if the Chancellor remain"ed he 'might in future be open to blackmail'.1e

Brandt later wrote that there had been signs, '[his] private rife

would have been dragged into speculatiori,. In an ittempt to

garnâ‚Źr sufficient material in order tb arrest Guillaume, the sec^urity service kept members.of .his entourage under surveillance. They inspected his personal diaries, his personal life became the focus

LobsterZ2 page74


c

v

I close attention, and it became clear that ,real or alleged affairs

ith women journalists would be

revealed'.

"

German n ewspapers linked Brandt to a former journalist susanne sievers a'rd claimed that she had begn paid â‚Ź1b0,000 out of public funds n:t to publish alook about her affair with willy Brairdt. Brandt r.futed the lurid stories which were circulated'about nis f.i"ale li'e - 'one theory was that Guillaume had obtained information a >out it and had threatened toblackmail the Chancellor, denied tl at he had been subject to blackmail, and later protested that a ci mpaign of defamation had been set in motion asainst him. P *er lvrlsht later wrote: 'I believe Brancrt resigned tJstop further ir quiries into himself and his associates.,20 Brandt later compF+:a that the counter-intelligence services ct uld have informed him of their suspicions anE information al,out Guilllaume much earlier. Even ihe official inaepenJeni cr mmission of inquiry which looked into the affair,ug."ed on this p,intr and put the miin blame on those services'. It"is likely thai th e secrrrity services allowed Guillaume to see some secret

m lterial, or at least said that he had, as part not only of the ol'eration to entrap East German agents but also to ensnare Br andt himself. Having- app_arentry cSoperated with the security se rvices' wish to 'danglet Guillaume for as along as possibli Br andt ended up bein*b-rtrayed as lax with regardio the security

in plicationg

of the cuilaume affair. Finaily, when

Brandt

t9 Pldg",. a whispering campaign begin. Without the su pport

re used.

oj

lis

main ministers and coirea[ues Erandt felt isolated

ard decided to do the honourable thin{rather than fight ;hai w ruld have been a highly damaging andlirty battle. 21 Ihe parallels with the fate of Wilson are strikins. In his case - - nisters M ]udith Hart and |ohn stonehouse *"." i'"ft to ,dangle, MI5,in the hope that the prime Minister could subsequently"be It bl, med. for-apparent security lapses. There are, after ail, only so miiny intelligence operations that can be run and it is not zu:prising that_the were used against the social

T-me-techniques de nocratic leaders of both counti.ies.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

)avid Leigh, TheWilsonplof, (London, Heineman, lggg), p.231. )unday Times,

3tldy

1977.

bid.

'}rittie (1979) p. 160. 5. .,eigtrp. 152 seealsowright, spycatcher. Ihaveusedtheacronl,mCANZAB ratf er than the more comrnon CAZA-B. peter wright, for exampru, irru, cazAB but the rpdated edition of Richelson and Ball'sTheri,:inm BindssisCANZAB, and cA {zAB - canada, Australia and NZ for New Zealand makes mo." ,u"r". 6. ,eigh p. 231; Mangold pp. 280-1.

7.

Brandt himself has w_ritten: 'It goes without saying that my so-called ostopolitik was not first develop:q i" 1966. The Adenauer and rin"ia corr"irrrr,u.,t, t ua uotr,, i., tnerr owrl way, striven to ease our relations with the soviet union and Eastern Europe.' There are obvious parallels here with wilron,r ,.rppo.t oiincreasing traae with the sovietbloc. Thi_s had been encouraged by the theri bo"rl*uti"" p.irrr"

Mnister, winston Churchill - but wilson wai attaiked r", it, n"f ct (197e)pp.168t9.

rr.t itt. pritti"

8. Hohne and Zolling pp. 265-29. 9. IInd.p.250. 10. Ihid.p.2$.

ll. 12.

Ibid.,p.274. Barley p.248. P.rittie

see also Brandt, and Ma-rshan , p.gB. For Kissinger on During the same war prime Minister'Edward Heaih refused to allowtheus to use CypruJas a base for airborne missions. seeNan statesman,25 April1985.

]3' Q?7a)-p.194. Brandt, see Hersh.

14' L.eigh p. 231; Dobson and payne p. 125. Guinaume's name had cropped up when s99y1!y ilvgstigated a woman seiretary to two of west Germany's forerfi poliry including Egon Bahr, who we have seen was a target of the ,ul#s, within 9Lfi.i*, West German security. 15. Marshall p. 1.00. Most of the accusations that Brandt failed to heed the supposed security wamings were detailed in the newsletter of Frank Cupett, an am".icur, elfremp rig:tt-winger. see, for example, his Confdential rntelrigence Report of the Herurd

of

Freeilom,lune1974.

16. Priftie (1974)p.t98; Marshall p. 101. 17. Dobson and Payne p. 126; Leigh p. ?-30. 18. Prittie g9@ p. 19[ Corson and Crowley p. 261. 19. Prittie g97a) pp.198/9; Marshall p. 101. 20. Marshall p. 101; prittie (1929p.198; Leigh p. 231; Capell , op. cit.. 21.. Prittie(l92! p. lW. In 1990 Guillaume was still a staunch communist, living in what was then East Germ1"I. H: told-the joumalist Tom s"*". thut h" is wriurig the 'complete story'. See the Independent Magazine, LZ l3lg0.

Bibliography Stephen - Double Cross, (London, Coronet, 1976) I*l? Brandt, W_illy - People and politics, (London, Collins, 19lg) corson, w. R. and crowley, R. T. - The New KGB (London, Harvester press, 19g5) Dobson, Christopher and payne, R6nald The Dictionary of Espionage, (London, Grafton, 1.986) Hersh, sey,mour - The Price of power: Kissinger in the white House, (washington, Summit,1983) Hohne, Hei.az and Zolling, Hermann, The General was A spy: the truth about General Gehlen and his spy ring, (London, pan, 1972) pp. zosLi.This bool was originally published as N etwork. plot, (Heinemann, London, 19g8) lgrSt , 9q"ia - The Wilson Mangold,Tom - Cold warrior: Iames lesus Angleton, 'irre cie,s Master spy Hunter, (London, Simon and Shuster, 1991) Barbara - Willy Brandt, (London, Cardinal, 1990) YlTht, Prittie, Terence Willy Brandt, (London, 1974) TheVelvet Chancellors: A History of post-war Gerrnany, (London, Frederick Muller, 1979)

Lobstar22 page75

*


SPOOKS Stephen Bel< w is a list of spooks, both dead and alive, I have spotted over.tlre last eighteen months. Full biographical details will be publis hed in an updated Spooks Who,s-Wlio.

]ohn_Hay: MI6 (C) (Diplomatic List 1990).

].A. Noakes: MI6 (C) @iplomatic List

9.-? !Vy"ne: GCHQ Principal Establishment Officer 1990. C.M. Smith: GCHQ Manager BGWS, Darwin, Australia, 1990. H.P. Kos, R.D.H Preston, D.F. Rigden, Ms B.H. Dunlop K.P' Thomas - all IRD special Editorial unit, early r9z0,s.

ret Bradfield: MI5 Chief of stockholm 19g9 (lntelligence f{arg-a N ewsk tter 6 December 1989). John ( tuine: MI6 40s and 50s ended as Head of Counter= Frpr:, a.ge De-partment (sundayTelegraph L5 September 1990).

Ian Cr chley: MI6 40s and 50s,-endel a's Deputy Head of Persor n_el_ pepartm ent (Sunday Telegraph rcOfiOy . ,Y_r5ft"ighn: MI6 invoived ilritir Crabb uifai, (Sunday |Irlrra Telegra,th

6May

7990).

John E yereth GCHQ lmportant scientist 70s and gOs (H.E.E. 'l.gL, pt.1, Proceec ings,

vol.

No. 4, July 19g9). viscou nt Ruthven:_s^ection D (MI6) eairo with Freya stark (sunday Telegra rh 5 August1990). Comm rnder Bill Emmet MI5 Italy I{W2 (Daily Telegraph2

Noven Lber 1985). G.J.

D.verell: MI6 station chief Budapest

22 Apr

ll99l).

1941 (Letter,TheTimes,

Dougl; s_Gordon: British Consul-General Aden, expelled for gpJine (Sunday Correspndent 26 Augast 1990). I. Iohn iton: Radio SgglLty Service-in V\tWl(letter, Sunday Telegra th12 Augast 1990).

Gloup 9lt_tli" william Cross: Expelred Algeria (rndependent 15

Apr

17991).

]ohn P,:sketh 'Former Intelligence officer' (letter, sunday Telegraph 16 Sepl

ember 1990). lt"ph." r Wordswg*h:_ M!6 Bonn (priaate Eye L9luly 1991). Dennis Keefe: MI6 at the Foreign- office (piioate'Eyi to 1"iy tggt).' .XHSI S4gflt novelist, worked during the war foi tt oftice in 'one of those hush-hush intelligence places,."'roieign (lndep"endent on Sunt ay23September 1990). Arthur Neah MI6 20s and 30s, travelled through the Balkans and Centra, Egrgpe (Tomes Rozec and Valentin Tirrkin ,Wanted, Progrer s Publishers, Moscow,lgBB, p. 105). 9upt. I onald Nutting: MIS 30s and early 40s (Baigent, Leigh and

Lincolr,

The Messinnic Legacy,

Corgi, London,'l 9gY, pp. 325/4).

9tanlgy {!ags. SoE and MI6 WW2 (tbid. p. ase. John sr rith (?): MI6, HQ of Director of op'erations Borneo lgzo-71, (_B.ulry t'etersen, Tiger Men, Macmillan, Australia, 19gg). Dick N,one: MI6 commanding the special operations base in Sabah, )orneo, 7970-Zl, diedilg:?.. (ibid.). Peter L: rngan:IJsed as an MI5 agent against the IRA in 60s 9:"g3,,, -A Lif! W ith F ood, Bloorisburf, Lond on, lgg0).

Mike

]_e Efrgy_iMangger of |imi_He1drix, MI5 counter-intelligence agent 5tts. 1r'"aor Sampson , Hendrix, proteus, London, pplf Ot_Z;.

Michae, stokes: MI6 involved with penkovsky (BBC TV g/s191). ]ohn Cc llins: MI6 London 1961,-62(BBC TV AiSbtl. Terrenc : Bennetft died 1978. Probably MI6 (personal informa fion), taught in Malaya in the 50s and dropped out; moved rromco rntry to country - 60s Middle East, vietnam to Cambodia; and the r in the 70s Latin America. Rev. Da rid Caskie: MI6 during the war, died 19g3 (personal informa ion). Barbara M. Shoud:MI6 50s and 60s (personal information). Alan Ct arles Andrews: MI6 technical sidelg61-74(personal informa.ion). Denis ]a ckson: MI6 under Andrews. Derek S rlmon: MI6 under Andrews. ]ohn Far vceth Ml5liaison officer with New Zealandlggsll (Inform; tion from Owen Wilkes).

tful.

R.G. Graham:,Ml6 (C) (Diplomatic List 199b)

(C) - :ontroversial. Assessment based on career details. (-IRD) - Information Research Department, usually given in diplor ntic lists of the period.

,

Dorril

Obituaries Richard Lowenthal the influential former German social democrat died in Berlin 10 August 1991. An anti-na zi, he came to B.itui., in 1938 where he attracted the attention of the intellige.,ce serrrices. worked with sefton Delmer and others on propag"anda work. In 1948 worked for Reuters and then The ouyni uiaer iormer soE operative David Astor. (The rndependent 31 August r9g7).

Holme,.RadioThree producer, died 20 |une 1991. worked for Reuters in the thirties, spent the war ur ir"uti. Information officer in palestine, joining Chatham uous e tn7946 1ld lpending a year as Foreign News E"ditor of the rt i-oun*r, \I he tndependent 15 August l99l). -9l,.i.rtop!,er

Terence

Kilmartin

(rh

e

and Daily T eregraph

79 r B r

91)

-!1!.eperyeyt worked in section D (MI6) and soE, as did f,is sis'te.i After the war worked for a short time on Edward Hulton,s worlit Reoiew (a ioul1{ which deserves-investigation) and as a lournalist in the Middle East, on an Arab Radio-station, almost iertainlv one of those set up !y g9r and later taken over by rrruo anJif,p. rn1949 he was recruited byJoreign Editor David Astor into the Foreign dep_artment of the obserair, which we now know was zubsidiled by IRD. Later Literary Editor. Lt-Col. I{,rgt Rose, soldier and exprorer (Daily Telesraph 73 September 1991). vice-consul at Meshe.i i" ,io.tr,-?uJt F".riu he organised the escape of white Russians across the .whe-re border. He also helped to oiganise e-spionage, including the robbingof the safe in the Ruslian Ernbassy. "tn the Curkhas during the second world war. In 1950 came out of retirement to act as.Deputy Director of operations against Coptic and Muslim ,F'erret guerrillas in Eritrea. There he introduied the Force, system, later adoptgd by Templer in Malaya. In 1954 went to Srngapore to work for the |oint Intelligence Committee, Far East. Commander Edward Hok, Naval Intefligenc e, (Daily Telegraph 29

luly

1991) led the section of

GCHe (GC Xnd CS) d#;

th"

*u.

which-produced the recoding tabres at Mansfieia CollJe; oxford. (The code b_ooks wEre printed u/o*ir.a unif,lisitv Press. Are they still?) Terence Latham, folmel Headmaster, died 11 september 1991,. senior member of the ultra group at Bletchley paik during the war. Head of the army section in Hut g,1g4i to 1945. Dr Dennis Babbage, mathematician at Magadalene College, Cambridge, who helped crack the Enigma"code at GCHef @ied some time 1991.) Robin Burn: Greek-scholar at Oxford, lDaily Telegraph3l July 1991). In 1940 worked for the British Couricil inlAtiiens 6efb.e joining MI6. rn1944he was made second secretary in Athens. Godfrey Paul_son: former senior manager in MI6 and Consul-

General forNice. (lndependenf 5Januiry 1ggl.) MichaelGlgroy, translator of Boris yeltsin's autobiography, died August 1990. In the late forties he worked in intellig"erd" ih

Berlin. Later business manager of the Obseruer cololr supplement. In

Lobster22 page76

1962

joined Sunday Telegraphand St. Antony,s


4

( ollege

Oxford. (Daity Telegraph Z August 1990.) ,,..Fltrllr." Whyte, diplomat, died20l7l90. Served in MI6 from 1 )49 to1954. A social dtmocrat, he was friends*itn in" o*""

'Crucial contact between the BBC, the Foreign and Commonwealth office and the Treasury atitime when the Coporation's External services *"r" ,rni". r"r,"*"i thilat., (Daily T el e gr aph 24 | anuary 19 g9) Donald wright overseas manager of Reuters. set up nationar I news agencies in Africa. (Datry Teregraph2LJanuaryr'qsgj. - I sir Christopher Chanceflor: 'Mr Reuter', died 9 September 19g9.

s

f

ction in the SDP.

I\ lajolfat Reid: the famous Corditz escaper and autho r, died22 I\ tay 7990. Served in MI9 and in MI6 ashssistant Mihiury ettr.n" ir Berne at the end of the war. post-war, spent several vlu., u, a r adminishator at the Marshall plan head{uart".r i" Fi.ir. (r tdependent 28 May 1990.)

.T

Qndependenf 11 September 19g9)

Major-General D'ck secretary of the Defence Intelligence staff in the MoD andllgya, then deputy head of the Arms Contror and Disarmament Unit. (Daily Telegiaphlg April 19tir- ---' George Bolsover: known as ,Mr Russia,, died 15 April 1990. During the-war 1st secretary in Moscow and post-;;; piiecto, -School of Slavonic and East European Studie;, io"ao" University. On many similar bodies. sirlohn Richmond: died 6luly 1990. Lecturer on the Middle East

rny simcox: in SoE in Albania during the war. After the war Nazi war criirinals until tsaw. loaity

a sisted.inhunting down T 'legraph 10 June 1991)

roup Captainlohn selby: joined soE in Cairo and worked as air officer to Fitzroy Maclean anci then as station commander ir the Middle East. After the war with the BBC with the or"rruu, S, 'rvice as director of European programmes. (Daily rekgraph20 C

li, rison

F,

bruary 1991)

:",1,:Tl,:-".1,T_gi."Lr"l^sludie.s3t?"r$rnu"i"9;riry1tn"poo.

qtj Intelligence il ;;i; T1l:,".91'-"*I :1 n?, +i,""y,?): "iil;i la ter p olitical of ficEr rra q;;; g jf, y_u' --r ;;;i r t:1 diplomat. i" 1y -senior (lndependeit 11 luly 1990)

Lt slie wood: engineer who ran dirty tricks centres for the soE.

(r eily T elegraph

13 Aprll 1991)

Lt Col. Richard Broad: worked for soE in Madaga scar (Daily Te

egraph2lMay 1997).

Col. Terence MaxwelL died 1991

Cyril-Mills (Daily

Er c Gray: taught an_ci-91t history at Oxford, died 26 July SC ved as a Liaison Officer in SOE in Greece. CT ristoph.erBlathwayt: served with speciar Forces on operation Ie. Durgh rn bnttany, Iater with soE in the Far East. A ciartered

ountant, he died 3 April 1990. (lndependent2S April 1990) F. lhalmers-wright worked for both the poritical warfare Ex :cutive and SOE in Bucharest, France, poland una Spuin. In tht 60s a respected economic adviser in the Third worrd. l0r:ld 't aCl

(D tty etegraph 27 luly 7990) Ch ristopher Serpell: pre-war Times iournalist, BBC foreisn cor respondent; died 3|une 1991. During the war worke? in Na ral Intelligence lTZon political warfaie with ran Flemi"l u"a Do rald Tyerman.

I

r

rce

Thirkell :senior administrator in the post-war

BBC.

Tel egraph

22

luty 1991)

a* (b/ty Taigrapi 1 Augusi tsst) Shr{:r-gt, Tieldi

Ian David

ng (r ndepi

Howirth

nd

enl aid D ailyi ere gr aph' 20 Augu st t 99 1 ) in& ritrgffiiiury 199r)

undependent 4lury'199r

Sir Ashton Roskill, ai"a za;r., i iwi{ Wilfred Dunderdale (Timesi6 November 1990) H;rd e (tndependent'!, August,89) I Y:llgg3ery(Independent 6 November tUrO; P?vilsqrfing

fgttn- gari \$on-(D ai\T el eg r aph 30 April 1 99 1 ) Sir Herbert Marchan y ( Oyity_ f eie gr aph i au gr ri t f m; -' (Guardian 13 Septe"mber'89) !!o-ya Sir David Stephens (lndependent 6 Apnl t990) Sir James Blair-Cunygha_m e (Times ti January 1 990) c

Y'Ih

"

Cedric Belfrage, died 21|une 1990

Jasper Rootham (sunday Telegraph3]une 1990) Duke of Portland (Daily f ele{r alh Z7' luty 1990i

Another Pinay sighting 'There was another institution which ga,ve Bily pleasure. It was cfll-ed Le Cercle, and outs"id"1n"-.i.r6particurar

was known about it but the name. Its. origins u"J-"*u"rrt ";th;;ifi were (and still are) as deeply coc_ooned in niystery-ur-iiior" of the most exclusive Masonic rodle. It appears to tra,Je been founded by the French statesman, xntoine'fi.,uy, ;"d ;h"; he retired ]ulian **ury took over the chairmanship.' itr;";; ; have been

a

assembly of- European and hmerican--ctr,r"*utirru, un ad hoc basis once or twice a year, for two or three i::_rTg days at a ?l time, to exchange views on world affairs. Because of his lnowle{g.-9 and understinding of the rtaiaai" -rrri La North most u".ufltubr" candidate ro. _emUership, *.[iff, wnlcfi, PI,L-yr:-a rn due coursâ‚Ź he acquired. He had already attended ::_v,e1ul,*","Irgr - in Bonn, Munich, Washingto;;;a;lr"*here _ _small

and looked forward to attending more.,

Ilgryp' ?.9s--"1 one Man rn His time: The Lrfe of Lieutenant-Colonel y L P (',li!ty') McLean, DSo, by xan-ii"iad;" iilacmi,an, London, 1990).

So who hasn't been reading-his Lobster, then? Not onry is the story out, there is much, muih more to come. David reaiher has

F hnguage book on the pinay Circle o"t and an lEng,sn-ta.nguagg :.":h. ""*t-V"ii, version should follow. (In ; telephone

conversation with me Brian Crozier described oui version ofni"uy mixfure of fact and fiction. I invited him to .o.r".iu.y errors we had made but have heard nothing.) Fielding's__account of Mclean's life makes it plain that Mclean was an MI6 officer for-most,_if not ail, of the p'ort-*ur p".i"a. If true, Fielding's claim above aboutlulian Amery is ,,ew. ' ' as a

RR

Lobster22 page77


q

-

ELF update The story so far

rn Lobster 19 I tried to convey some sense_of a very compricated a ea I had come across which concerned the use-si -ir.rr", u.,d er fects of electromagnetic fields. artr,r"gh Lobster,s tt rritory (which is?)"- and weil.buyo.,a ".I."irv'in i'o.np"t"r,.u -ft".n"i."r very imp_ortant: if t'rue, thi', i, tn" .""ri important ll: _r:"*"d w lapons story since 1945. I mentioned an American _ Harlan G rard - I had met who claimed tnui tr." cra haJleen using him at

an involuntary experimental subject, Uo-Uu.ai"g him with -ers'uler, ir',stru.tions and pain.

te epathically hansmiti"a

:{arlan Girard's craims are extremery difficurt to dear with. on or e hand, the CIA has already ,r"d i""otu.,turv -Jxperimental

t" iil-ld50l iand 60s. Ar yone who has reid fuarter Bowart's operatiin t tiii cortror and be ieved, quarter of it would not find Girard,s claims about ? ""\ !tu wry the CIA is behaving difficult to believe. ih" Cil has been he 'e before. on su

of

rjects

in other

programs it'funded

the otlrei hand, foi most peopre

:he medical and psychiatric piofession

-

and for most

'voices in the head, is prt na facie evidence oi mentar-inness. Claims rike Harlan,s are .9. to ap.pear incredible in the absence of evidence of the Fo to what he (and otn".rf .ruirn -namery, to :""iT]:il:?11,-? anddo instructions subvocaily B:l quency f::-ri:"_qh!r !,si,g Extremety,Low irr fields as the carrier, the iredium. 'He.e, -magnetic ho vever, all is not as reassuringry brack and white u, iiupp"u.r.

less' rational because in their isoration and terror the victims I have spoken to have deveroped t; thui.tt,i.,ti.rg fir."ora

"dg"r in their cirrui.ri".,.ur.) This woman has not fldly.surprising been given the 'voices_p-rrt

of the treatment but, like Girard and Anthony verney (see Lbbsterlg), reforts apparentrv meaningress break-ins of hef flat in which ot *.ii,r" ri i;t"" but some trivial domestic item - a bar "oft,irlg of chdolate, a tooth-brush, to,et tissues, for example_ _ is stolen or switched. (Harlan Girard,s story first rang a 6eil for ." *t mentioned that one of the side-effects of this bombardmu"i-*u, ".r^he terribre troubre nith his

tggLh . .Anthony Vemey Fa aheady ,""t o""J'1,i, dental difficulties. In fhe midsi of these nigh'tmarislL,t".",

such little

correspondences loom large.)

Somethilg y"ry strange.and very ugly is going on out there. A "[u'u of journaristi from th-e fiigr,u." .n8ai" made forays. into this fierd but have vet to find it sufficentry llelimilav put before persuas.ive an editor. This is !o .number

""a".rL.,auur". But

something rs going

on. If it may be safety most of the people who repolj heging voices are"r;;!JH;t menta,r' in, it is no l9"s9r safe to uss*rie that this i: Th"."i., lies the difficulty.

tr;;oiril,".i'.#.tf'

Th :re.fppeared to be some to support sub-vocal ELF prr jection in a Defence Intelligence "fidu.,." Agency (DIA) ,r.*r"v -^ '"' of work in t ris field in what used to be"caled th"e so'"iLi

Robin Ramsay

bl;..

Since then....

I request was made, by a British researcher, under the united ^ es Freedom sta of Information legisratio" io.i .rpr-.r that DIA rep rrt. Some months later a c6py duly ;pp"#e _ with

the which appeared- to supfort Girarils- aiegations now mis;ing. The repoit has been ririitir"a. rrrir .."-r?.-s reports dat ng back to the late 7970s that materiar in this field which was onc : in the 'ooen' scientific riterature was being reciassified and gf*ti"g. .f.of - -ti"*. why would knoi,ledge of soaiet 9l:: acti 'ities in this field be worthy of us .rrrriri.rtiJfr-.o* if not pas ;ages

ther

?

C rard is no longer the only person.telling this strange story. Har

an himself has come acrois another American, a woman,

is uncannity tike his own. After;tp,d; to the CrA Xl.r:^:l"T ror r lob as a psychologist, she wa-s intervieiv'ed, cianged her min l, and dectin:g ,\" iositton. eftu, *f,i.n,';;;";;" from her lette : of complaint to the Inspector_Ceneral of tf,u Cie, ,n"

'u ent on a week-rong canoe trip in the Thousand

Nev York. There, mdst of my io.,scious thougr.rirIsrand area of *"." sexuar fant; sies. I have never had srlch an episode in my Iife......, A

.;r; ;y _iia.... Voice ll]l Tuesday evening, January io, l-fiag the voices lli1l.:_tt,lg ..,o1. oega r to roentrtv themselves. They explained to me devr oped a technology *hi.r' -io"ia stimuiate the CIA had ihought by ,,1:::,hougirts.that people could

broa lcasting.radio tranimissions ......-I afso began to experience episr des

which

can. orrly

described as ,7pry.f,oti.,,.....My

routr re and driving habiis -be began t9.b." daysl I had wo automobil-e accidents"in *ni"n I_erratic.i..li;';" totalled four cars. For

Whafs in a name?

abou 30 minutes prior to the first accident I underwent a beha 'iour modification. progam in which the voice my head told me to drive throtrlgh stop signs in a.in unfamilar

No 327: Chapman pincher

comr runity....'.

Of course, I hear- the sceptics saying to themselves, there is not! 1q going on here, qr'e1ely ui. atcor.,t of a psychlogist :P::t rting on her own break-down. But this rt.il.irijry si-ftu, P .ll experience of Girard. (And those *h;" h;;;Eia ro"y

Collir s' account o{ the strange deaths u British "r ""-ber-of will hear in this certai"n obvious resonances with some of the's dcides'in that story.) scien, ists

I r'cently talked to

A Chapman, lhe Oxford-English Dictionary tells us, was an itinerant peddlerwho sord c"heap tracts u"i upn"-".riiit".rt ." (chap-books, that is). A Pincher, according th9^pgnguin Dictionary of Surnames (Harmondsworth 1187-\op. z9a) ii anickname or irriaat" *' English origm meaning'grumbler, fault-finder, haggler;. ---So there we have

another victim

of this stuff. Again, appar rntly intelligent and (more or less) .utio,ai. ii;;t ,moie or Lobster22 pageTB

it: a grumbler, flogging cheap literature! Anthony EdwardWeeks


Plottin gfor peace and war

Ten Days that Saved the West John Costello Bantam press 1991 J rhn Costello has set out to provide, in the pul li-qhsyr blurb, 'the first behiird tr,u 'r"".,"r words of the 1.."""t of the agc nizing history of 1940'. His aim is to debunk the Cirurchillian my h that in tg40 Britain was u.,iieJ i" its aete.."i"aLn to fight Na: ism to the bitter end. Churchili may have be".."sotute but Hal fax, the Foreign secretary u.,a nuiler, the second in command in..tre Foreign oific"^;;;;i;; b come to an accommodation witl' Germany. with the conapse of France urtr, the var was unwinnabre. ro.6"ti"ue hostilities .""#ered that in the absence of a-ny allies outside the Commomwearth and Empire risked a sha tering defeat. Rather th; foir,o; ;-r#i5;i', course, nati rnal and imoerial interest dictated a deal with Hitler which left Brit. in and its Emoire

to

p

intact;hil" ;i;"ltaneousry ailowing Hitrer

oceed on his drusade

enemy, the USSR. This "grir_iilreal by powerful sections of the i and the Royal Family, all of w.hc n were dispoied on ideorogicailnd/or.;.il';;;;is to take a far rurable view of Nazism. " defe

rtism was

".,.or*gEd Con ;ervative Party, ,I" cll, ,lrd;rt

sc it was that C-hurcrril had to fight on two fronts: against Hitrer and rgainst the reactionary .uurfi*iJ;il';;;t.i"t y. The war rgainst Hitrer was coniucted partly uy,iliiriy i","u^r, but it waged with Machiavelrian cunning. yu: ?l:o that -yler Kent, a coding clerk at tr,e usr*ua'sry Churchil knew i.r'iorraon, had stole r copies of his cdrrepondence with Roosevert. Had the

detai

s of

Kent's.

treacherir-;;;; released the full extent of

Roos rvelt's departure

from'strict neutrality *;;ih;"e become appa'ent to the American peopre and the hr"riJ""is chances of secur:ng re-election in November r94}would rrr"" u""" seriously dama ged. Churchill used this ir,r"rt to blackmail Roosevert into provi ling_ material support for the British *u; ;;fo.t - with the ultim rte objective of diagg"g a*".i.a into the conflict.

Alt roug\Churchill succeeded in squashing the peace feelers put.o. rt by Butler

and Halifax during the summer of 1940 he was unabl:.to-suppress alr treasonable uiti"ity. r".Jrotnian and sir Samu:l

Hoare, Ambassadors

in

WJshingto"- u"a Madrid respe' tivelv, the Minister in Switzerrand, si. duuia r"iry, and the Duke cf windsormaintaingg highry irregurar u.,J .o*p.omising contar ts with the Germans throu"ghbut ttie p".i.a ri"June 1940

ffi'[,13f"t#:i""'x,t#:l",lrlt*iH*r:*j:fl"?ilJ conclt sion that there was a sizeable group inside Britain

was p "epared to overthrow the prime" Minister u.,J

rli:'T;til;ffi

,t;f;

which

*atu p";;

:tydil*$::,JJ#ttti j*i:.J.ffi i

by.Mrs who ture'd him io n'r.itain in May re+r. H::: '( H:f:11"^d ness mved oroposing- an_ understanding betwee_n Britain and Germa ny which '*orrli utto* uitier to commence operation Barbar tssa without.having to worryrabout a war om two fronts. Churcl Lill was unwiling t"o tell it J t*tn about Hess in case his mission

evoked domestic political ,rpro.t. In ?"prty Fuhrer had been.ri_rilk"d fo. valuab e information (which )a"iy-doctored, *u, purr"J to stalin) he was locked away and the'whJl" ;ffrt;;;, b^;JJ"ii"r"".""y i., case it Peace

conseq

h.u".

;l:"

rence, once the

lamaged morale. Even after rg+s succeJr-"]*".rr-".,t, the truth because it wourd reveal is fiction the :. n at Britain stood alone and uniteJ G;i*; e;;;y in 1e40_ .pp_re.ssed

such is Costello's thesis. His book has considerabre merits. It is well researched, drawing.lp;; wide selectio" of primary

sources raLrqrng

i

_from official archives in tf," Df, France, Germar y,ltaly, Canada and the usA to pr1"rl"ioii"Jtio.,, ur,a even th: records of the KGB (mostry used in the section devoted

to the I:ess affair). Costello'i ussid'rou, pursuit of documentary evidenr : and his winingness, for the sake Lr nisto.icar ai..rru.y, to

Lobster22 79

discuss events long considered officiar secrets in many of his professionar academic contemporaries Britain puts in this country to shame. He shourd arso be credit for quoting KGB files, in 6ven so doing discardin-g cord war (stil prl;;i;;i;f the officiar reaction to Costeilo's coup iifiaranoia any guide) iiiirr"-"r"s" or sound scholarship. Despite ail this it is difficurt to avoid finishing

the book without feeling disappointed. there- are some irritating mistakes. Helmut wohitat, the senioi c"...,u., civ, servant from the Economics, is throughout calred wohrtart. Yiijrg-qr The head of the SIS from lg3g_52, Si. S?ewa.t Menzies, il;i one point named as sir Robert Menzies. More seriousry, b"rt"rr. too often

writes as if he is providing-revelations when fi"

in laborio"r-J"[,

i,l"iv'

are alread,

*-",i"iillIlt

"pir3a"r';i;;i, Chapters 7-17, for exampre, te, the story of the government,s reaction to the falr of France and discuss the acrimonious meetings which debated whether Britain,ho;ld-;;;k'i, Cabinet urmisuce or fight on alone. yet there ir very new here; the ground has been covered by G,bert "o*rir,g i" nir monumental

Churchill,

biography of bv sir Edrvard sp"u* i" his .ro -o*,s nment to "iri""'rn"f."r"", more .t.""tri^ti

Catastrophe (igsq), and Myth and Reality (tgg}).

in

1940:

Another chapter is

devoted to thr o"r"?w*ir"".',"_sp"i"",..d}"Hs:iHlil.T,ffi:HHl; and earry autumn of ,,qo arthoueh;ist of *,irl, iu*iliar, having not long ago been aired bv Anth?nv Cave Brow" biography of Stewart Menzies. elra-**?;;;ltyi"'Lr?rgsg), the f"l"rrrry ,o give a blow-bv-brow account of the il northern -iiiirry.u-;;il F during May and iild;;',J"r',ltX'5"1'il

June 31.. mish*,ur" .u'["i .',e pu,Luis # ffiffi,Ufl #f"T,';l",ffi,H::iT at Dunkirk because he thought tn" siitirh;;r;;Iil;ii u" .rrurrr hostages in a peace. negoEation? S" ;;.h"rplJ"*r,u, u""., devoted to this reworkinglr orJ""*r that a fair amount of more interesting. material is. rJregatea tn" ,ppili.J;here it is 1. presented in a rather abbreilated forr a" a;-y; activities u,,J ;o;l;..1*:ffTIH'tJ?H:

;*"

more significant figures on the British nig.f,!, in the pJace feelers

vr/ "i

ll;.1"",

""i

;;;;;

rias deeply

1""" rgao;;ff"r, thil

This is not to deny that the book-contains which genuinerv add to o,r. kno*ieG;;ilrtvery usefur sections

lilffi"a

in 1940Costello i3 o" the pro_Nazi machinations :g""jlji1g of Joseph Kennedv, the US aYruu*rJlr'i" i;;1..."'ii"

47.

provides

Hrl{}',nlHni:t*

is#rmu;r::;;jlil;r#fi

r,[]li:r;ij the swedes as intermediaries. Th'" ,rgg"stion that Lord Lothian might have been behind the san Fiansisco meetings in rate 1940 between sir william wireman, Fil;-w;;d;i"l""""ria stefanie Hohenlohe-wardenberg is suppoit"a uy ro'," [rr.irury shong circumstantiar evidenc6.2 nrif in view of the collected during the course of his researches materiar Costelro there shourd have been more. For exampre, the venlo ,ifrir (d;iui-Nor"-u". 1939) when two sIS officers, wno naa u""" appeared to be an anti-Hitrer faction in ""L.tt ti"g with what the N;ir"r;;?ship, were abducted from Holand into G"*ur,y, is only

mentioned in passing; and there is no reference to the'sim;r;;a;;;lr.ussions between Max Hohenrohe and Marclh christie, rgit both for sIS and for Sir Robert vansittart, despite "" the suggestive evidence that thev

might be connected.3 Did ih;;;;r#i.ur.i'L attempt to assassinate Hitler, as the Nazis claimed? It would have been good to have been told more about this episod; _ because it is suggested that the Hess affair *u, i., M15 il^ilt ,sting, operation with the intention of making;p i;; il; v""i.uairlo"r

ffJr:"d

1p.

approach to the subject adopted by the author. n/.o"""r,trating so much on high.politics ur,d rtrut"gy h" ;;r#ar,""'.tance to produce an incisive anarysis of wfit reaily *;;;- th" p"u."


plo ters tick, of

yhat they believed and of where they were True, Costeilo does wheel out some (tiy now :o.{ly.located. fa_n iliar)

conversations with Max von Hohenlohe? There is still enough obscurity here to make Costello's claims rather premafure.

names such as the Duke of Buccleugh, Lord Holden, the Ma'quis of Tavistock and the worthies of thE Right Club (though eve r this information is left until the uppe.,ii*;. There a"re refe rences to anti-war opinion in the city 'and in industry but har lly anyone in this category is identified: ttre anti-Communism anc the anti-semitism of the ionspirators is acknowledged; but it is a I rather superficial. Did these people represent a f,andful of fading aristocrats and eccentric M.Ps oi fo.ces which were much mor e powerfully rooted in the structure of the British state? \Arh rt was their relationship security and intelligence .y1th sen ices? why did Churchill feel-the the need to have his"own

It may of course be argued that whether the man was Hess or not is irrelevant: what is interesting is why he came here. This is nor realty re?lly gogq gggq enough. enough.. Historical aicu.acy accuracy iis one issue. *ot Beyond this, il the man who came to Britain *ul not Hess but a double, the implications for our understanding of internal politics within the-Nazi regime and of the relationshiibetween dissident German factions and influen"rI cirdes inside the British

establishment might be profound. Nevertheless Costello,s researches have left the in an awkward spot. Its -go-vernment story is obviously not oedible. It is doubtful whether any foreign administrations believe it now if thev r+.ere inclined to befo.". "L it too much to expect that logic will pievail and cause the files to be released? we should be grateful_io Costello for achieving even this much despite his rathei overblown claims. But there iI still a lot of work to be done.

inte ligence adviser, Sir Desmond Morton? C rstello seems to believe that the pro-appeasement faction was porn erful enough to represent a- real ihreat to Churchill,s gov ]rnment but he does not p_roduce the evidence to support this clair r. He could only have done so if he had spent more time unp cking the_networks_of power and interest which tied together

$9"

kott

like Halifax, Hoaie, Butler, loseph Ball, de C6urry,

Mer "" zies,.Montagu Norman and Lord Aberionway. It may even be p rssible to argue that these men were broadly representative of the rredominant views held within the Conserva'tive party, the secu rity_ and intelligence services, the City of London and the Banl..of England_a1d large-scale industry. Together with a hanr lful of renegade LabouiM.ps like Richard stok"es, they might havt formed a National Government committed to a non-

Neuston

Notes

cgr:y has featured in severar Lobster articres on the British Right. see .t:, I-"-"""Ih.d," Stephen Dorril , ,Rothschitd, the righr, the far ri[ht and 1n$ Yorris i:i"J:IpF the lrtth vtal', p!: fiJgy 7-7 inLobster 1,6,May 1999.

aggr:ssion pact with Germany and the pursuit of a managed c-api alism at home: a British veision of vichy, in fact. A glancE at the I ind of deal being offered to Germany.rght through i"he 193g39 p:riod, all the way to the outbreak of wlr and ev"en beyond, Xo" q. suggest the plausibility of such a thesis. Unfortunately

Costello is one olonlv a handiul who have appreciated that de Courry had any serious significance at all.

fhe subjectwas thepossibility of a compromise peace, leaving Germanv the negemoruc conhnental European p-ower, to be agreed following the simultaneous replacement of Hitler and Churchill. l----------------

1 TI" christie

Cost:llo does not cover the immediate pre-war period at all and as rer ult the continuity. between peacetime and wartime Anglo-

October 1939.

a

papers in Churchill College, Cambridge, lsolllz},document 28, 13

4.

For an attempt at such an exercise see my'The economic background to appeasement and the sear_ch fo-r Anglo-German entente befor" u.r"d d,r.ir,g

Gerr ran conversations is missed-a-

world war

Two', in lnbster20, pp.25-31,, November 1990. Letter from Eden to simon of 28 May 194r, New Bodleian Library, oxford, simon

Cr stello finishes

his book rather abruptly with a discussion of the I less affair. He claims that his .erea.thes have at long last uncc vered the truth and that in these circumstances it is poiitless

5.

MSS 39-40.

for tl e British government to continue suppression of the relevant docu ments until 2017. while thes'e- strictures must be wholeheartedly supported, there must be some doubt about whelher Costello's version of the Hess story is the correct one. It is gc od to have the KGB documents, and the declassified US plPe .s which show that Moscow and washington were told that Hess had come to Britain with Hitler's supporito offer peace and an ar ti-soviet alliance. such unanimity bi6ws an irrepaiable hole in th: official British version of the siga, namely that the Hess flig! was the one,off act of a maverick Nazi losing hir i.rflr"nce in the P rrty hierarchy. Th:re are, however, problems with the way Costello handles -

the e vidence. Fo1 a stirt he ignores the question of identity,

prese nting

Hugh Thomas' arguments dead-pin in a footnote and Secondly, the sources upon which his argument are second-hand. The'papers of 19:" .Cadogan.(the Permanent under-secretary at ttre toreign o_ffic,;) a1d of ]ohn simon (the Lord Chanceilor, #ho interrogatEd

lg no contrary view. Costr llo bases gfferi

'Hess') all show that the goverrrment was concealing a very great . As Eden told simon on May 281941,, a few d"ays beioie he went off-to_question the prisoner, Cadogan'alone heie knows of secre

proje:t'.s This does tend to narrow-the field of potentially

accur rte informr.,!?.

It suggests that even Ivone Kirkpatric(

who rctually supplied_ lri-efing notes for simon's 'Hess , was kept in the dark.

questio^ning oi

wh at does this imply for the status of the information Tom Dupr )e gave to-Kim Philby not later than May 18? Why should news that was being passed along whitehall-corridors ind was even. the subject (admittedly highly classified) dipromatic -of circul rrs have suddenly become so secietihat only the heid of the Forei1," OffiS" was allowed to know what was happening? Did somerhing happen between 18 and 27 May 'to thrdw the gover rment into confusion? Could Churchill, regardless of the prisol er's identity, have used his arrival to convinc-e stalin that he woul< soon be under attack? what happened to the members of th"^p:ace partlr'when the crisis erupted? And why did Hess fly to scr tland at great risk when he iould have gon-e to spain iir securi y to meet Sir Samuel Hoare, a leading appeaser who only eight weeks earlier had been engagid- -in treasonablL

Contributors to this issue |ohn Hope is researching Right 1915-1990'.

PhDthesis on'Fascism and the British

Peter E. Newell is a retired civil servant. Scott Newton teaches history at the University of Wales.

Inbster22 page20 l,,\

a


ft-

Books Contemporary British History 1931.-G'l,z politics and the limits of policy

England and the And then s/he could begin to consider why this has not -City.' been done before.

Edited by Anthony Gorst, Lewislohnman and W. Scott Lucas. Pinterllnstitute of Contemporary British History

Puppet Masters:

*n"n'"'::;:iiiifit'lffi

London, 1991, f35 Goodnesl o.ly knows what'politics and the limits of poliry, in tl- e subtitle is supposed to mean. This is just a collection of -

e

says on recent British history and was initially of interest b, ,cause of the essay byBlg,lrard Aldrich, 'Unquiet in death: the p rst-war survival of Executive , lg4rs-sl, .

tfie@t6pffiiibns

A drich shows how, despite the organisation's formal demise, st ctions of SOE

survived to be absorbed into SIS to play a part in

tl e anti-Soviet operations of the early years of Cold Wir 1 - the sl rall-scale

British version of the conversion of the CIA from

an

.,

J..

ir telligenc:3ge_ngy into a covert operations adjunct to US foreign]6' p rlicy. (Aldrich is one of the handful of British academics wnd , y I

a e trying to incorporate the activities of the British secret stateel

ir to ourpost-war hlstory tr history and teaches a post-gradui post-graduate course on tl e intelligence services et al at Salford Univeisity.) [ust how important the secret intelligence dimension to postw rr history-can be is illustrated by Frank Ferudi's essay on the war a[ ain-st the Mau Mau in Kenya. Ferudi calls his essay-,Kenya: D :colonization through counterinsurgency', but comes nowhere nr ar making that apparent paradox intelligible. Ferudi dodges br th the main issues. First, while this may have been calledln 'e nergency'-bf 1h9 British state, on the ground it was a bloody w rr, which the British did not win despite killing huge numbers ol Kenyans. Figures vary but maybe more than 30,0b0 died. (F :rudi is unable to completely conceal this from his reader and nr tes that in 1956'the kill rate remained high'.) Secondly, he has nr thing at all to_say about the British secref state,s attempts to cc rtain and deflect Kenyan nationalism. In other wordi: he ig rores the question of which of the post-colonial leaders had be en bought. (This question appeari to be the main reason for th : extreme sensitivity of the wai in current Kenyan politics.) It is pr ssible that Ferudi actually knows all this. In his lait paragraph hr writes 'Radical nationalism could only be contained iftrritiin sh rwed that it was prepary! to hand over power to a new group of African collaborators.' (My emphases.) ls that not simply a et phemism for'we put in a bunch of our stooges?,

:J

di ,tinct sig-nq oJ a revival of some of the old agenda for what might be ;t be called the Politics of British Economic?o[cy. It does seem

I

I

I

to re dawning - again - that it is not possible to talk simply of ,the Br tish economy' without acknowledging the structuralidnflict be ween the makers of things and the movers of money. But, oh de rr, this is so slow. Richard Roberts' 'The City of London as a fir ancial centre in the era of the depression, the Second World w rr and-po-st-war official controls'huffs and puffs merely to show th, t while the City was sat on betweenl939 and 1951, asioo., as th, Conservative Party got intopffice, it got its hands back on e! ,nomic policy. Notice how Roberts puts this: ,Two decades of ch :ap money came to an end in November 1951when the New Cc nservative Chancellor revived the use of interest rates ss an ins'rument of-economicpolicy.', 'An instrument of economic poliry,, m. foot. All that happened was that the Tory Chancellor iut the ini :restrates up for the money-lenders who ran the party. In n-r ting his essay Roberts cites not one of the writers who have be 'n working in this field since the early 1970s. Do we really ha 'e to reinvent the wheel? r feeble creature though it is, Roberts' essay makes an ap rropriate scene-setter for Scott Newton's sharp little piece on cu rent views of Keynes. (Keynesians appear have the same rel rtionship to Keynes' writing that Marxists do to Marx's. So nervhere, surely, Keynes said, '|e ne suis pas Keynesian,.) Nc tingthecentral role in the imposition of eionomic orthodoxy pla ved by jhe Treasury, Newton bells the cat, suggesting that ,ihe ecr nomic historian should study the Treasury asipolitiial sor iologist, finding out about the recruitmeni of staff, social and ed rcational backgrounds, the connections with the Bank of

H;J''

Hats off. A British journalist, living in Italy, Willan has produced that sy-nthesis of the Italian materia[ on the 'strategy of te^nsion, and related parapolitical activity which people likehe, without Italian or access to the Italian press, hav-e been waiting for. This is one of those books that has waiting to be written. . Fqr 40 years l!a.ly's political system has been subverted by USfunded parapolitics, demonstrating the universal application of the late Ralph ). Gleason's First La* of American p6fitics After Watergate: no matter how paranoid you are, what they,re acfually doing is worse than you could possibly imagine. In Italy,s case, not only was it worse, it is also infinitely more complicat-ed. fryl"g to recount the highlights of this; Willan has produced a book which is practically falling over itself to tell evir more astounding (and dreadful) tales of plots, 'red' and ,black, terror *_. by spooks, bombings, coup plans, assassinations and all the other goodies the Americans bbught with the $100 million dollars or so they have spent there since the war. On second reading two things emerged from the welter of new names. First, various participants in the plots refer repeatedly not to the United States.or its agencies, but to NATO. -NATOls d_ominated Pf tnt USA, of course, but still is not quite merely the USA. 'Look at the NATO dimension' is one of the messagis of the Gladio network story - which is a chapter in this book] What do we know of NATO intelligence-gathering and covert operations? Is there'NATolntelligence'somewhere? (Brian Crozier-- writing as John Rossiter' - has NATO intelligence in his novel The Andropoa Deception.) If so, where? How orfanised? How managed?

if -Second, ]ames Angleton's famous expression,the wilderness of mirrors'.applie_sanywhere, it is in Italy, where he played a major role in establishing the covert American role in Itilian politics just after the war. The USA destroyed Italian democracy in order to save it (from the Italian Communist Party). As the ryajor media celebrat6 the 'triumph of the West', Wilian,s book shows that the USA's only commitment is to US capital. Though a commonplacefo_r those on the left, the forceful wly this message comes across in Willan's book may explain why it has had such i thin reception in this country. For the most part willan is careful not to overwork his evidence and is gpenly speculative in places; and while experts on Italian parapolitics will quarrel witfrbits of this, for the non-specialist reader this is unreservedly recommended.

. On things Angleton, Tom Mangold's Cold Warrior: james Jesus Angleton (Simon and Schuster, London and New york , 1991i is very good but is not the biography it pretends to be. There is nothing on Angleton's tirne in Italy after the war; and, even more extra-ordinlry, nothing on Angleton's relationship with the Israelis. Mangold tells us (p. 28) that the 'Israeli iccount.... stayed under Angleton's tight, zealous control for the next twenty year-s'- and never mentions it again. Mangold tries to explain Ang-leton's enormous power wholly by his being head of eounter Intelligence. This is not convincing. Surely pait of Angleton,s bureaucratic power came preciselyfrom the-'Israeli accoirnt,. The book is essentially an account of the disastrous effects of the {lgleton-Coltisyn relationship and subsequent mole-hunts. (The latter first appears on p. 49.) Crudely summarised, the book showsthat for 20 years Angleton and his fins (peter wright, for example) believed complete crap for which they had noti shred of evidence - and were no1 challenged by the CIA's senior management. This latter point has yet to be explained by anybody.

Lobster22 page27

RR


Ratlines: how the Vatican,s Nazi networks betrayed Western intelligenc"

American hands, an-d a few were sent on to the soviets. one or two were discovered with distin.ti"L ss tattoo marks. The catholic Church did a, it coua io save what it.rJi"Jinese ,poor

ti" Slii"r, :i#lS#H,l",ITi,, to

""yx*ffi

retugees': Bishop r"an

lff,t55l,",t1ffX,:^" ,,-*-";;;;

l {ark Aarons, autlrgr of Sanctuary! Nayi Fugitiaes in Australia, responsibr"

ro. 11:hrs"ll to r ropen their war-c?_*", "o""i"i"g The Belarus secret is a

rr.

acted on

did with

jrrt

f*il8?ft

c.ii'fr#i",*"u,

w"rtlJ

,"'*f:*:Bi:i:1f,"*rjfl

iil;fnunist organisations working ro. w;r[u;; ;:H#f"",,1.scribe ;;"iiig"".".

A

o.,g",Ijc

i"^tl" sun,.in Italv for two years, ^ arranged for the g,p, members oitfr" Galizien the British SS to move to Britain' Then, with more n"rp nr* rrrnuentiar Cathorics in Britain and Canada, most or tiu.r.*"re sent to Austraria and Canada' onrv 200 *ur" u.t uuy r*1""g u"ro.u--oiriig from Italy and.becoming ,poo,,"iffiJ' no*, many of them were war criminars nobody knew -"or .u."a. n the soviet Union and the b.gun in" earnest u^i ,.ru.ry Ukranians were soon to become r"ti*o*-unist,freedom fighters'. some were sent by uo*r ilritain into western Ukraine and rister" p""iu"a and the United states as agents and would_be saboteurs' Most w.ere immeairiliy --r ."ptured, partrr. through the -' activities of Kim philby.

the Austrarian government

investigauil;;J;h;ffi.Jr,Ea.,tt,o, or former attorriey

com

rather

After'basking

iri"uiJ"rai." Del'a11pur'rt office sp""irii""""riiguuor," ;h; il;;;tigated the acti zities and war crimes "r of Byelorussian Nazi co,aborators. In Rnhines thev describg, in;;"Jt;;;fie detail, how the Vatican esta blished'a network Na2i war criminars and East Eur rpean collaborators out or Ei.ofie, mainry to Argentina; and horn Britain, and, tut"., tnu u"itlJ5trte, reciuited fir.,y of them 33ilf

fr;;ii;i#,

nucko,i*iir,i"rp

the end of world war II, the American, British and French zon( s of Austria and Germa"y, u, *lff ur j.::1*g with Dispraced persJns.- tvtost of them were fbrmer srave worl ers, inmates of Nazi concentration camps_and ordinary peop le whose countries *".".uy tt'r"i, ,rd". Soviet contror and did r ot wish to return. ur"y *"i"-cutr-,ori"r.-il;;;g these peop [e' however' were many Nazis and Baltir states, Byeiorussia, U(rainel,a collaborators from the croutiu - -Ti;;;ilir'rllention hu'd to g"t awa) - and as far and as fast the p rpular Nazi-smuggrers ry_p_oggiur". oriESSa and Die spinne and other groups, Eilt.o*p*eJio the Vatican these were 5::: mere amateurs. The (Cathofic) croatian ustashi were the first to

r.,o.tf**;;i; *"."

The authors have chapters on,The philby Connection, and Klaus Barbie and the ,air"ri.r" .o"iu.tio., , , but,lareelv rehashi ng the work of Cos telrf pi".n a Martin, Thomas powers et al, tieseare "f,.8" ", unsatisfactory. Neverthetess, whethe.r o. .,oi ;;;;;;;", with the auihors, political iudgements, they are to u"iorgruturated ;;-;;;;r"ring a Iot of new informrtlon orithe i;t;t*" from Europe of thousands of Nazi war criminuf r'u"i .ofh;;;;;;"' ",

A;;;;;;

"^ii,;

Peter E. Naaell.

!".yn

j*;'lu*,trruil

ri'*#::::r,',x i:id again ;ti.lt,d serbs, Jews ahd Gypsies *"ru ro horrific that all known would be hand#""", io rito, this;;;;;;;u.*utty il#'ers

Lundy:The Deskuction

'

A F rther Dragonovic

Ratlin:s' at*rJudr

yls the keyman

of Scotland yard,s Finest Detective, Martin Short Grafton, London, 1991

in setting up the

*",-t"o*., id w"rt"rn dipromats as a fanati,:al Ustashi, gave Amer;cans gave him US t.r""i?r."ments him cartebranche; the and the use of one of their c rrs' He made contact -itnLtrrhi leaders in Northern Italy a rd on the Austrian_iuS9rir.)Uqd".rr-;-;"ll'as'with pro_ Ustast i priests who.organir"E tii" Ratlines.. ih; ,_irggrirg operat on besan in AuJtria. prrr" iJ""ti,y'.r.a, to fugitive Ustast i war iriminars were pii"i"Jrt the'F.ancis.uriiii.,airg press i r Rome. Both the us c"""i"' CrC) and Britain s militarv intelligence ut was happeniirg. CIC agentRob&ilra"aata a spy within Dragonovic,s organir ation. The grc arranged, b,l;gflrliffi;;;;Bvic,s office u".+ p.h rtographed

iri"Ji"i"ll,gffi

Scotland yard,s Cocaine Connection AndrewJennings, paul Lashmar and Vyv Simson Arrow, London, 1991

rrffi

t"J*'*t

ll*::,

h;iilil.ta;#r

h-is recordS. vrraa concluded ihut,a, this activity stems from the Vatican, . Aaro rs and Loftus, however, demonstrate that Father Dragorr ovic, and 9F". ;ppg;;d ;ti_communist activists workin l for the v-atican ,i& w"rt"i., ir',turtrg"*u, iere not quite what j.h ey seemed to be. ilt;iiiem served two, and sometir res three or more masters. ln1967 Drigor.,"JrrL,'an" ,rrur., wh o kn rw everythi"grUo"iih" Vutlu.,," .a tlin-eE sual".,ry disappe ared from tt Jvrti"r" ui.alrr.,"d up in yugoslavia, where he gave a press i.-*r,i.itn" praised Tito and his "or,r"r"r,." governr rent, and settred quietry in Saraievo. rn" r"ii"rs arso detail th e activiti"s of p.i.,le Ai ;;Vrrilevich Turkur, a Russian noblemr n who was a read";.f ;;;;rous anti-Bolshevik and anticommur rist orsanisations. He is now t"o*" to nr"l;;;" probabl' the s"oviets'most J.;il;o.ubl9 agent, fooling the German ;, the Britisfr,

tf*

a-"ri*i

r"a,

of course, the Vatican.

To me the most interesting section of Ratrinesis the account how the

vatican, with consiE"irur"-*ristance

r--

of

tr* nritish, a.*y .i tr.," iJi.ui.,",; or, to gil e them their correct titre, wrn* dii"iai*'ijiriirn der ss (Galizien, As NaziG".."u"y.oiiipJ;a,the Garizien sS made for Austria a nd surrendered t. t'n" riiifiri e.*y. irr" its name :o the saved wl rat the authors cail 'The{ath-oric

Nuuo"ur airy, removed a, "ltirichanged its insignia and Gerr ran SS officers, u"a r.l"iiuJ'u r,"* Ukranian comman( rer, 'Generaf paver Shindruk. The British aia rrotput put them in a Powcage, but r"toutt-y guve them some additionar weapons and sent,lr"* to Rimini _3t*" 'separate I Enemy p"rro.,r,"ii. Lrthe Ukranian

i"itZiy,lo;; #, f*

I

ukranians feil into

The sixties media guru Marshall Mcluhan is nowadays generally derided as-a fru.rd. I suspect thr;;;;;lli" *orfa found it difficurt to accept his stateinent that terevisioh is not a visual medium- Howeier, tr*-"ig one thinks about that bizarre idea the more its truth ir r"""ri"awatch ant;;;"tary or news item on terevision and you wiil b;h;;

i##ffi find a visual iTuS: that is not signposi";;y dialogu.e. i"liriri." retuses to alow its audien"c" to ri-pry *;i.fl;h;,-"*1, it must always be interpret"4 by, .o**"itutor. so what d6es that have to do with the books i"

u..T

1

,rrr-,"

Ronnie I(ray. The ; ili""s.;; ti o n th a t " were homosJxrurrl n'*tn'rv tliJr"-o., ur. in a riber case. n..ir,uy - ,t

sa-zi ne s er n irs i I maboth noted that me_n G

t

e

ih

astonishingE40,000 photograph- was totally innocent and that homosexual relationship.

ffiiilJ#

"rr,'i{"i,iu, tir"* *r,

".

2. Deputy Chief ConstableJohn Stalj parry*i*iuu.,"r,esterbusinessmanr:Ti"xlij:oifl

"

[",1il.:,

used as part-of the basis of an invesi(auo^ into Stalker because it was alleged by the porice that Tavror'*u, u member of the ,euarity Street Gang', an aileged criminar'fraternity i" rururr.t urtui. Both stalker and-Ta vr or .rxi-.Jir",l i,r,"i"-ru rion ship was innocent.

They-did *""t'ut parties ,.ra o""iriorruffy went out to dinner together, but that was all. 3. The Scotland yard Detective Tony

partv.Arsoinihe'photographis.RoyL:lg,llx,Y::f,fr'..H',itf massive cocaine buit, and'two othertriminars. The authors of ther cocaine Connectionrcapuon tn;;I;"grrph Just good friends,.

Lobster22 page22

[ '.*-

("Ji""i--in"

p.;.;;;, work when it comes to photogrupnr. Consider three relatively famous photographs. 1. In 1964 the Daily Mirror published a photogragh the Tory peer Lord Boothbyiitting nlar the -of gangster


I lthough they do not add a question mark at the end, it is clear f om the tone of the book which way we are supposed to read that

his plans in the early 1980s to search for the US personnel believed by some on the American right to be still alive in

r irrase.

vietnam/Cambodia/Laos. Gritz has now turned himself into

a

Itwould app:1, to be rather simple. Tony Lundy, assumed by n any to be the Yard's most successful thief-iaker, *as in fact

conspiracy theorist, producing magazines, books, pamphlets, audio and video tapes from hii Ceiter for Action , io* 472, ]HCR Sa.ndy Valley, NEV 89019, USA. Gritz covers the spectrum 11, fron the Iunatic right - tryirg to show that the number 666 ,makes up the frameworlf.or.,rrio.,Io a[ EAN, UpC, bar code marking systems'- to information on covert operations in Central Ame?ca in the 1970s in which he was involved.

with no specialised knowledge of this area all I can do is confine

once tpon u tirl" there was a magazine called Counterpoint, produced here in Canterbury, devoled to the exposure oi soviet disinformation (or alleged disinformation). Then a small article appeared in the now defunct British magazine The Digger pointing outCounterpoint's existence and wondering who *urTindi.,g it. " Now there isNew counterpoinf, published iot in the uK but i-n washingto.,- DC, like is p-redeceisor devoted to the exposure of Soviet disinformaqion, e{i_t-ed by - fronted by, atur,y.ut" _ stanislav Levchenko and Herbert Romerstein. New Counterpoint is very.chelp - 11 issues per US $2''5 so is clearly still being ' subsidised by somebodlnot a million miles u*iy from the"us Government. PO Box 23721, Washington D.C.,"20026_g751, U.S.A.

c rrrupt. After five years of_in1s.r. investigation, three of the top ir vestigative journalists on world in Action(wn) nail their mun in a lelevision programme and book which details Lundy,s c, rnnections to Garner. when Lundy retires on health grounds a rd then refuses to issue libel procee'edirrgs the case,""-*, p'oved. Is it that simple?

n yself to the two books: the wIA updated and revised paperback, 2t'0 pages long with no notes and no index; and the Shoit-book, 3l 0 pages with some notes and an index. On the basis of this e' idence there really is little competition. Short effectively d ,molishes the WIA book, pulling it apart piece by piece, e; posing the wild assumptions which permeate the text. He then dr sposes oj the assumptions of guilt by association which at first glrnce looked so damaging. sliort mikes us aware of something w l are all guilty of - making charges based on too little in iormation. It may be thal Lundy ls corrupt but not on the er idence of these two books. It would realiy be interesting to see

tA reply. I sometimes had niggling doubts about Lundy's defence that it w rs part of-his job to mingle with the criminal fraiernity in order lg gui. intelligenc-e and develop his strategy of using informers. Tl ese are relatively minor doubts, though-,-since 'Mo." his record on cc rvictions does look highly impressivef suspect is his ap parent naivety. In_ways that parallel the intelligence world's us: of defectors, Luldy used informers. But thisls a notoriously di ficult game. Defectors can be false; sometimes, drained of 14

us:fulinformation, they peddle disinformation for profit. In this

ht thouse atmosphere pararoia develops and conspiracies are er -.rvwhere, often inspired by supposdd colleaguei. Just as Ja nes Algleton was accused of b6ing a KGB ag"ent because of his or :rly close relationship to Golitsyn, so Lundy"was smeared be :ause of his working relationship with Garner. for innocents and in many ways Lundy was just ., i ir not a gamecopper ,h who thought they should playby the rules j,.,u".hgnest ar l that the corrupt should be sought out. Lundy,s fali was rn, r-itable. Too many toes were stepped on, there were too many br rised egos and too many raised jeiiousies to allow Lundy to J co rtinue. I do not buy Lundy's theory that it was the Fr' emasonuy.ilg inside the-force that brought him down there is ' Lot enough evidence - but short's book dois convince me that Lu rdv was hung out to dry once the media scented corruption. rttempting to answer all the world in Action allegations, ^. Sh rrt's account is occasionally hard going. HowevEr, it is a fine ex, mple of investigative journalism 6y our best writer on the pg i!" and corru-ption. It is thus rather disturbing to discover that thi ; is only the third review the book has attractef. SD

1

( 'wen wilkes has ceased production of weilingtonpacific Reoiew (IS: N 0135-5619), the New zeahnd newsletter o"n eventJ in that

par of the Pacific, but it continues under the control of Iain $14

for

10

issues, wpR should be on the

list rf anyone with even a passing interest in events on the socall rd Pacific

Rim.

'Geheim works closely with a network of publications in other countries that frequently carry soviet disjnformation themes, particularly directed against the CIA. These are: Lobsterin Great Britain; Inte-lligenceNewsletter, formerly lntelligencelparapolitics, in France; andCoaert Action lnformation Bultetini"n the Uni'ted states., p. of Romerstein's Soaiet Agents of lnfluence, Centre for _ ?-4 Intelligence Studies, Alexandrii, USA, |irne 1991. This was bound to happen one day, and in a sense it is rather flattering to be of such interest to the US intelligence community. The comment makes it sound as though this qtiartet of magazines and news letters are an active networl :'Geheimworks closlely with.. ..Lobster' . The tmth is more prosaic. Lobster d,oes exchange subscriptions with lnt ellijence N ero sletter, Coo ert Action androp secret, and has plugged all of them in its columns over the Ie-ars: ,I have been called once on the telephone by Olivier schmidt in Paris and once by Michael opferskab(i from Geheim. when I remember, I send newspaper clippings to olivier, few of which seem to be of any interesi, tb iudg;by"*t at he prints. so close is Lobster to Cooeri Action that tfiey"waiied until is'sue 33? 34? before referring to us at all.

we certainly would not print anything we knew to be soviet propaganda; and, to our knowledge, haire never done so. Indeed, we would not print anything we knew to be anybody,s propaganda. We would be fascinated to see - and *o.rld certainly plint - evidence showing the clandestine sources of any of our stories.

.

Magazines, journals etc.

\[a :Dougall. AtfT}lus

Ncw Counterpoint's Herbert Romerstein is the author of the

following paragraph.

PO Box %14;Wellington, New Zealand.

.l re first eight Lobsfers have not been kept in print for a number of r :asons. Reprinting costs for one: they were A5 format and rati er poorly produced by current standards; and some of them cor ain material which we learned subsequently was dis: rformation. At some point we will pioduce a 'Best of early Lob ter ...' but in the meantime Lobster is being included in thebngor_ g micro-fiche collection from Research prlbhcations, 'The Left ' itt E 'itain,'and the first 8 issues can be consulted there. Researih Put lications, PO Box 45, Reading RGl 8HF, telephone 0734 583 {7.

The single most interesting-catalogrre of deviant, marginal,

alterna.tive a nd j u st down-rifht, harl-core wierd rrm gu ('zines') is Factsheet Fiue. _Now up -to issue 45, and wi'th a print run of over 10,000, Factsheet Fiae pr.oides a brief description, price and 1d-{ress of every 'zine' sent tb it, r6gardless of contLnt _ about 2,000 each- issue. (Those of an ideoilogicaily sensitive disposition be warned that there is certain to be sdmething in every issue

iir",

which will offend.) The quality of the,zines, is extremely varied. of the five I sent -off foi two turned out to be complete grap. Even so, for anyone interested in the stranger alleyi of

human consciousn esi Factsheet Ffue willbe a blastl Fac9heet Fiae, Mike Gunderloy, 6 AizonaAvenue, Rensselaer, Ny 12144-4502 YS.l 99 50 qe-r is-sug Qn the USA), so better add a couple of dollars if outside the US to cover postage.

S rme readers may remember US Colonel ]ames ,Bo, Gritz and Lobster22 page23

RR


A review of the (bad) reviews of

_ The lndependenf review

Smear!Wilson and the Secret State

appeared

on

9

Iargely sympathetic feature. (Donald Mclntyre got very worked up about accusations that Tony Crosland could stoop to dirty politics and may well have been a CIA 'agent of influence'.) In response to the Ian Mctntyre review I wrote a letter which included this.

Robin Ramsay

It was very interesting being reviewed by the major media. Whil, r the left press - New Statesman, Tribune, Socialist et al - Times Literay Supplement, the London Reaiew of Books and the nonTeg, politan eind Irish papers liked it, we were slagged-off by the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, the Sunday Times, thi Obsenter tirre lndep, ndent; and by Joe Haines in the Daily Mirror. (As we went to press the Guardian had not reviewed it.)

first go in the Daily ^ Phi'!U Z5:igl9r had working on his

by Ian Mclntyre

September after Donald Mclntyre had earlier written a long and

Telegraph

(August

17).

Since Mr Zeigler is

own biography of Loid Wilson - son ething he omitted to tell Sunday Telegraph readers - we may presu me he read the book, if only to check for useable material. He dt scribed us as 'orthodox hard-left'- the lndependenthadus as 'Benr ite' - which is amusing but entirely false. Au contraire, Dorri is a Freudo-anarchist, with Situationist tendencies; and Rams ry is a premature anti-Militant member of the soft left of the Labor r Party. For Zeigler we had produced'the same old stew of facts, half-facts and wild surmises....precious little added in he way ( f new ingredients.....a dull book, badly written and at times

near ncomprehensible.' (Dorril wrote a letter to the

Telegraph

point ng out the factual mistakes in the review which was not printt d.)

'I would have taken Mr Mclntwe's analysis more seriously, however, if his specific charges against us had not consisted 6f r-hury men^entirely of his own construction. He has us stating that Lord Chalfont was 'brought into the Cabinet from The Timis for his anti-independent deterrent views', and points out that Chalfont was never in the Cabinet. What rt'e actually wrote (p. 55) was that Chalfont'had been knighted by Wilson to enable him to sit in the Lords and thus be Minister for

Disarmament'. (Incidentally, our use of 'knighted' is wrong: it should have been 'ennobled'.) Mclntyre asks: 'What precisely was the nature of the "Orwellian disinformation" to which we were exposed during the

Thatcher administrations?' Our answer follows in the final paragrqph of the book, immediately after our use of the phrase 'Orwellian disinformation': aiz.'promising to "put Britain back to work" yet tripling unemployment', and so forth. He asks 'Who are the mysterious "survivors of the Heath goverrnent who dominate the Major Cabinet"?' Well, off the topof mv head this morning there are Kenneth Clarke, Michael Heseltine, Kenneth Baker, Tom King and Douglas Hurd.' The letter was not published.

Phiiip Ziegler (Eton, Oxford, Brooks) was in the Foreign Service

1952-t7. Having written the official biography of Lord

Mour tbatten and now doing the same for Lord Wilson, Ziegler is a matcr historical gatekeeper. The outrage he expressed at the accou nt we gave of Tony Benn and his battle with the Permanent Gove 'nment in 197415, and his assertion that the civil service just does rot behave like this, warn us not to expect anything from his biogr, rphy of Lord Wilson.

Tht following week (August 25) it was the turn of the Sunday Telegryh. They gave it to Auberon Waugh, who, nothing if not consir,tent, devoted four fifths of his text (in one of the biggest

revier r's seen in the Telegraph in recent years) to running all the anti-! /ilson smears again. In the last fifth the book got a couple of de ogatory asides, with 'babyish drivel' being the highlight. Thou;h he gave no inkling of having actually read the book, Waug h did admit his role in spreading what he called 'subversive gossil" against Wilson, the origin of which he declined to acknc wledge. Hopefully he will reveal a little more in his own autob ography. Ne; t was Tom Bower in the Sunday Times (September 1). If Zeigkr and Waugh's reactions were predictable, Bower's was not. \either of us know Bower but we have several of his books (Klau: Barbie; Butcher of Lyons, Pledge Betrayed and Red Web, for examrrle). Where Waugh is essentially a joke (albeit a joke wrapl,ed round a very nasty and effective disinformationist), and Zeigl< r an establishment 'gatekeeper', Bower is a serious writer, resear cher and film-maker. In theevent Bower put his foot in his moutlr. He had Colin Wallace's allegations coming 'shortly after Spyca'cher's prtblication' (emphasis added), when even we had

_ Best of all, there was |oe Haines in the Daily Minor (2 September) for whom we had produced a'ragbag of ipelling and

factual errors....a regurgitation of the wildeifantasies ol P:riaate Eye, Auberon Waugh, Spycatcher Peter Wright, Colin Wallace and Tony Benn'. |oe Haines first attacked us in 1986 when Tribune printed an abbreviated version of Lobster 11. Since then he has rubbished everyone who has supported the idea that there

were covert operations against the Labour Governments he supported. His motives for this irrational stand are unknown.

_ Finally there was Robin Lustig in The Obseraer on 15 September. For Lustig our book was 'a story we have read befoie, most notably in David Leigh's The Wilson Plot' , and we did 'little more than rehash everything....that's available from material already published'. Lustig's memory of Leigh's book is mistaken. We have taken a good deal from Leigtr- - all acknowledged - but

Leigh's account was much more narrowly focused than ours. In Leigh, for example, there is only one reference to BOSS; Colin Wallace received only 7 (misleading) lines; there was nothing on the Ulster Workers' Council strike; one page on Rhodesia, alew

lines on Cecil King, nothing on Wilsonrs economic policies,

nothing on the Heath period etc. etc. The last third of our book, for example, occupies only a few pages in Leigh's.

them over a year before, and No 10 Downing St. two years beforr

. He attributed to us a

'conviction' ('that disloyal

intelli lence officers wgre behind every humiliation that Wilson suffer:d') which we don't have, and announced, as if it were a revela Lion, that the rumours about Wilson and Marcia had first come from Wilson's colleagues in the Labour Party - something we n( te on pages 25-6 and 33-4. Bower's final judgement was this: ' n elevating playground whispers into major conspiracies, Dorri] and Ramsay have minimised the real state-threhtening plots that were being hatched by Arthur Scargill and othe-r milita rt trade unionists, Ulster paramilitarists and international terror

sts.' Had you

realised that Arthur Scargill, Ulster

paran ilatarists (unspecified, but presumably the IRA) and intern ational terrorists (unspecified any candidates?) had threat:ned the British state? (Our own assessment is that there hasn', been a serious threat from the left to the British state since

Smear!Wilson and the Secret State Copies of Smear!are available from Lobster at

uK-

f1,6.25

Non-UK (surface mail) - â‚Ź16.50 Non-UK (airmail) Europe -819.00, elsewhere -f,26.00 If ordering from outside the UK please note that only cheques drawn on a British bank or International Money Orders made out in pounds sterling will be accepted. Cheques, made payable to Lobster, should be sent to the address on the rear cover.

1919.)

Lobster22 page24


_

-a

Previous Lobsters

\T

Copies of issues 1-8 are not available.

es 17 onwards are type-set; previous issues have been produced on va; ety of electronic key-boards.

lss

a

9

Who's Who of British spooks, part 1; KAL 007; Watergate revisited Secret Agenda reviewed; Trying to kill Nasser; Falklands cor ;piracy theories; Jonathan Bloch on the overseas rePression business 791 i,24pages. [NB personnel listed in the Who's Who in this issue and in Nc 10 are included in the Special Issue, tNho's Who of the British Secret State

Jin Hougan's

lisl

rd

below.l

Spooks Who's Who, part 2; Kitson, Kincora and Counter-insurgency; Ar hony Summers and 'Maurice Bishop'; Jim Hougan on Frank Terpil and ,Dr :p Throat'; statement from Fred Holroyd on Northern Ireland, 'dirty trir <s' and Colin Wa11ace. Early 1,986,24pages. NB Tftis issue is now out of, int and aoailable only as a photocopy 10

Wilson, Ml5 and the rise of Thatchel - the start of the 'Wilson plots' stc yi the fusi attempt to understand and explain what Colin Wallace was sal ng. Published April 1986, before Peter Wright appeared on the 77

sc(

re.56pages.

72 Pqter Dale Scott on Transnational Repression - the major previously un rublished essav bv this American master; Notes On the British Right' 19r 1,42pages.

The Rhodes-ivlilner Group (Round Table); Two Sides of Ireland; Colin W lace's 197-1 notes on MI5's plots to smear British politicians; more ,ot .ngs on the Bntish Right. 1,987, 24pages. 73

.I "i* i

20

Peter Dale Scott's 'The United States and the overthrow of Sukarno, 1965-67'; Clay Shaw's United Kingdom contacts analysed; Dean Andrew's

testimony to the Warren Commission; Scott Newton's'The Economic background to appeasement and the search for Anglo-German detente before and during World War 2'; an extract from Hugh Thomas' response to the 'Timewatch' hatchet job on his research about Hesb; the text of David Calcutt QC's judgement on Colin Wallace's appearance before the Civil Service Appeal Board in 1975. 36 pages: 1990.

27

JeffreyBale's 'Heavenly Deceptions: the Moonies, WACL and the Korean CIA'; Colin Wallace on Chapman Pincher's version of Colin Wallace; Western Goals (UK) 28 pages: 1991.

Issue

Dorril;

110 pages, 2000

75

9,1,0,1,3, are €1.25 each (UK); $3.00 (Us/Canada/Asia); €2.00 (Europe,

lnside lnside lntelligence - Steve Dorril on Anthony Cavendish; The InL 1tg,1ils,rs't smearing of Wallace and Holroyd; Christic Institute on r' 1 63; the Tory Right between the wars - review essay; Fiji coup update; re, eh- essay on Geheim. 1987 ,34 pages

l:

|

79 The final testimony of George Kennedy Young; Common Cause: the CIA and the British trade unions; Supplement to spooks'Who's Who; Hugh Thomas on Fred Holroyd; Jeffrey Bale on Shooting the Pope; Dsinformation; ELF; Obituaries of Michael Stewart, Stanley Mayne, Greville Wynne; Conspirary theories reconsidered. 42 pages, 1990

Special

lI

lIn ,

Jeffrey Bale's 'Right-wing Terrorists and the Extraparliamentary Left 2 Europe: Collusion of Manipulation?'; Covert Propaganda and the Right - more on the Pinay Circle; a Short History of the SAS in Northern lreland; Inside BOSS and after - Gordon Winter. 1989, 36 pages.

U.S. invoivement in the Fiji coup; Colin Wallace update - and the UI :er Citizens Army smear decoded; Irangate - the 'October surprise'; Mi 'tin Walker on Policing the Future. 1987, 46pages. 74

i-.

78

in Post-World War

Rothschild, the right, the far-right and the Fifth Man; death of Hilda rel; French Vendetta - from Rainbow Warrior to the Iranian hostages; L 007; Ken Livingstone's questions; Philby names namesi overthrowing :ch \!hitlam. 1988,40 pages. Five at Eye: Private Eye and the Wilson smears; Colin Wallace and

,nnation Policy in fiction; disinformation and the new'terrorist threat';

th, London CIA station; Crozier, Goldsmith and the Pinay Circle; more -Labour forgeries; the death of Zia. 1988, 24pages.

,.

AWho's Who of the British Secret State, compiled by Steve (approximately) names and briefbiographies.

1989.

cosr Australia, New zealand) 11,,12, 1,4,15, 16, 17, 18,20 and2'J. are €2.25 each (UK); $+.SO (US/Canada/Asia); f3.50 (Europe, Australia, New Zealand). 19 is

f4.50 (UK); $9.00 (US/Canada/Asia); f5.50 (Europe, Australia, New

Zealand) The Who's Who is f5.50 (UK); $10.00 (US and Canada); f,6.50 (Europe,

Australasia) These prices include postage

- airmail

to overseas.

NB outside the UK please send either International Money Orders, cheques drawn on UK banks or cash. Orders to: Iobsier,2l-4Westboume Avenue, Hull HU5 3JB, UK.


ISSN 0964_0436

Lobster is Robin Ramsay (0492 447559) and Stephen Dorril (Mg4 6g13gg)

Lobster 22,

Lobster

November

1991

is published by Robin Ramsay at 214 westbourne Avenue, Huil, HU5

3JB.


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