by Ann Bridge
PERMISSION TO RESIGN
Goings-on in the corridors of power
Ann Bridge
Contents
Foreword
Part One
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Part Two
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Part Three
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Appendix: Extracts from the Report of the Board of Enquiry
A Note on the Author
Foreword
Some people sometimes wonder why the Government decides to do something, and to do it in a certain way. Speculation of this kind becomes more common as the authorities interfere, as they do, more and more frequently, and at more and more points, with the private lives of us all. We are all deluged, all day long, with speculation or explanations of the reasons for government action, some true, some false, put out in the Press and on the wireless, sometimes by officials, sometimes by journalists; and at the end of it all, we are often uncertain what to believe.
Now, I happen to have been involved, many years ago, in one Government decision which affected me and my family both closely and deeply: whether my husband was to be sacked with ignominy from the Diplomatic Service, in which he had served for over sixteen years, recently with immense distinction. In 1927, when in China, the negotiations concerning what came to be known as the O’Malley-Chen Agreement made world headlines for weeks on end. This because the occasion was the first major row for some time between England and China, Chinese forces having over-run the British Concession at Hankow, 800 miles inland from Shanghai. Owing to an interregnum between two British Ministers in Peking, my husband was in charge, and was sent to Hankow to learn what had happened and to sort out the situation. His success in doing this was loudly and generally acclaimed, not least in the House of Commons. That less than six months later his resignation should have been demanded is, on the face of it, distinctly peculiar.
Our own situation at this time was not very comfortable. When we left for China two years before we had let our house for three years, then the normal turn of duty in the Far East; we had to leave China suddenly owing to our son’s serious illness, but, as we could not resume possession of our house, we had no home of our own. The doctors insisted that the boy must spend the winter in Switzerland, so I took him to a small cheap pension in Chateau d’Oex, where there were good English schools. Our daughters were parked in houses of friends, Jane with a governess, the youngest, with her old Nannie. At this stage, our joint private income was about £300 a year. When we married, it had been nearly £600, modest enough in all conscience, but I had had to trench on my small capital to fit us out for China, and the subventions from my mother-in-law had been cut as her income fell away during the War. Now, with three children, two of school age, was not a good moment for my husband to lose his job and his salary.
Moreover, the misdemeanour for which the penalty of resignation was demanded had taken place four years earlier, and at the time it was perpetrated attracted no attention whatever. Early in 1923, my husband had speculated, in quite a small way, in French francs with a firm in the City; he had lost more often than he had gained, and had given it up. Unfortunately, the head of his department, Mr Don Gregory, also started speculating, with the same firm; he plunged heavily, and lost thousands of pounds. Still more unfortunately, he did not plunge alone; many of his transactions were undertaken jointly with a Mrs Aminta Bradley Dyne, the wife of a former school-friend. She also lost heavily, and worse still, when she could not meet her losses, pleaded the Gaming Act to escape her liabilities – whereupon the City firm sued her for over £38,000. She lost – and the resulting scandal was enormous. That she should have pleaded the Gaming Act was widely, and naturally, regarded as thoroughly disreputable, and brought all the transactions – hers, Mr Gregory’s, and my unfortunate husband’s – out of the relatively respectable area of ordinary speculation and under the blanket condemnation of ‘gambling in francs’; the Press seized on the ‘wickedness’, as they regarded it, of Foreign Office officials indulging in such practices, in view of their possible effect on Anglo-French relations.
The Government, of course, could not ignore all this, and on 1 February 1928, the Prime Minister, Mr Stanley Baldwin, directed that an enquiry should be held forthwith into ‘certain statements made in the course of the case Ironmonger v. Dyne affecting Civil Servants’. The Special Board of Enquiry was to consist of Sir Warren Fisher, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury; Sir Malcolm Ramsay, Comptroller and Auditor-General; and Mr Maurice Gwyer, H.M. Procurator-General and Solicitor to the Treasury.
From the outset, the Minute setting up the Board of Enquiry quoted above presented at least two peculiar features. One was the phrase ‘affecting Civil Servants’, since all the government employees referred to in the case of Ironmonger v. Dyne were in fact members of the Diplomatic Service, and not of the Home Civil Service, as commonly understood. The other peculiarity was the composition of the Board. Since its task was to enquire into the conduct of members of the Diplomatic Service, it might have been expected that some senior member of that Service would have been asked to serve on the Board – but not so. Sir Warren Fisher was Head of the Home Civil Service; Sir Malcolm Ramsay, an officer of the House of Commons; and Mr Gwyer, more commonly known as The Treasury Solicitor, the legal expert. Much has already been written, and more doubtless will be, about Sir Warren Fisher’s protracted struggle to extend his authority as Head of the Civil Service to include the Diplomatic Service as well, and the strong resistance put up by many senior members of that Service to what they regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment on a distinct body. This struggle should be borne in mind in considering what follows, since it illuminates the attitudes of most of the protagonists. Sir Warren Fisher certainly felt that he had gained an opening point by the use of the phrase ‘affecting Civil Servants’ in the Prime Minister’s Minute setting up the Board of Enquiry. (Much later, he told me this himself.)
It will perhaps be convenient at this point to quote from a couple of paragraphs in the Report presented by the Board of Enquiry to the Prime Minister on 28 February.
Paragraph 2
‘The case of Ironmonger & Company v. Dyne was heard in the King’s Bench Division of the High Court of Justice... The Plaintiffs, who are foreign bankers, carrying on business in the City of London, obtained judgement against the Defendant, Mrs A. Bradley Dyne, for £38,938 in respect of foreign currency bought and sold by her. Statements were made in the course of the case to the effect that three Civil Servants, Mr J. D. Gregory, Mr O. St C. O’Malley and Lieut-Commander H. F. B. Maxse, all employed in the Foreign Office, had been engaged in speculative transactions in foreign currencies with the same firm, though admittedly none of these transactions were in any way connected with the subject-matter of the proceedings in the High Court. We have interpreted our terms of reference as requiring us to investigate the truth of these statements, to ascertain the nature of the transactions referred to, and to consider whether the three persons above named made use of any official knowledge in these transactions for the purpose of private profit, and whether, even if they did not, the transactions were proper and becoming in the case of a Civil Servant...’
Paragraph 3 lists the names of the large number of witnesses interviewed
. (The Report is printed as an Appendix at the end of this book.) Paragraph 4 proceeds
‘We had, of course, no power to compel the attendance of any witness, to hear evidence on oath, or to insist upon an answer to any question. But we are glad to be able to say that in no single instance has the absence of these powers limited our enquiry in the slightest degree, and that no material information or document for which we asked has been withheld by any witness. We are in these circumstances reasonably assured that we have been able to elicit all the facts which are or may be relevant to the subject-matter of our investigation, and we desire to express our appreciation of the assistance which has throughout been afforded to us.’
This paragraph is rather revealing in its distinct complacency of tone; it is interesting to note that despite this complacency, so far as I can ascertain, no subsequent enquiry, by any Government, has been conducted on these lines.
Following the introductory paragraphs, the Report was divided into three parts. Part I dealt with the cases of Mr Gregory, my husband, and Lt Comd. Maxse; Part II enquired into speculation in francs by ‘other Civil Servants’, especially Mr Villiers and Miles Lampson (afterwards Lord Killearn) who, in fact, were both diplomats. But Part III of the Report of the Board of Enquiry dealt at some length with the now almost forgotten, but still mysterious, subject of ‘The Zinoviev Letter’, as it came to be called. (No one that I have ever encountered knows for certain whether the original document was a forgery or not.) This occurred in 1924, when the first Labour Government was in power. By a perfectly normal chain of circumstances, Mr Gregory, as Head of the Northern Department in the Foreign Office, in the absence from London of the Secretary of State, signed a letter on the subject to the Soviet Charge d’Affaires; and someone in the Department, on the instructions of Sir Eyre Crowe, the Permanent Undersecretary of State, handed a copy to the Press for publication. After the Labour Government lost the next General Election, the sending, and, still more, the publication of this letter became the subject of ‘acute political controversy’, in the words of the Report. When the resounding scandal of Mrs Bradley Dyne’s lawsuit broke early in 1928, Mr Gregory’s involvement with it sent Labour’s memories back to 1924, and Mr Ramsay MacDonald and Mr J. H. Thomas communicated to the Board of Enquiry all that they had heard or suspected of Mr Gregory four years before. The Board felt it incumbent on them to go into this matter very fully; in fact, it did Mr Gregory no particular harm, since even the Board had to recognize that as far as the Zinoviev letter was concerned he had only acted in the normal course of his duty, and that the furore about it had no possible connection with his speculations in foreign currencies; though they took upon themselves to ‘regret his reticence’.
But the Labour Party’s deep concern with Part III of the Report was very useful to us, as things turned out. That Part I might possibly be discredited as factually incorrect was obviously in their interest, since this would throw doubt on the accuracy of Part III. Hence they pursued my husband with requests for an interview or a statement; all these he refused. Hence, also, their summons, indirect, but none the less urgent, to me to return from Switzerland at once. Nor could the Conservative Government themselves be unaware of this aspect – and they were not.
Before leaving the subject of the Report, it is worth considering the closing paragraphs, Nos 54 to 59, embodying the Board’s conclusions. Paragraph 54 states: ‘We think in conclusion that we shall not be travelling outside our terms of reference if, as three Civil Servants of some experience and jealous for the honour and traditions of the Service, we indicate what we conceive to be the principles which should regulate the conduct of Civil Servants – whether engaged in Home Departments or on diplomatic missions – in their relations to the public.’ (Note that home departments merit capitals, while diplomatic missions do not!)
These final paragraphs are interesting for the further light they throw on Sir Warren Fisher’s determination to extend his empire, and on his passion for sermonizing! The words ‘Diplomatic Service’ do not once occur in them, although they purport to lay down rules for the conduct of the private affairs of diplomats. Their general sermonizing tone aroused very great resentment, among senior diplomatic officials especially: such phrases as ‘The public expects from their Civil Servants a standard of integrity and conduct not only inflexible but fastidious’, smacking, as it does, more of the Headmaster of a public school addressing his upper forms than of an official exhorting members of a service which did not even recognize his authority, exasperated the older members of that Service, and aroused the derision of their juniors; all felt that the Board was, indeed, travelling a long way outside its terms of reference. One diplomat, the late Sir Percy Loraine, actually sent in a memorandum saying that he had always understood that he owed allegiance and obedience to two masters only, the Sovereign and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; was he now to understand that he owed them also to the Head of the Treasury? The answer, an official one, was an elliptical but unmistakable negative. In effect, the whole Report, from the Minute setting it up to its closing paragraphs, leaves a strong impression that the main preoccupation of at least one member of the Board was quite as much to establish a new principle in the administration as to seek out the facts.
Part One
Chapter I
The story that follows is a highly personal account of the impact made by the Report of the Board of Enquiry on the family of one of the members of the Diplomatic Service whose actions it enquired into, and of the judgement based upon it – namely, a demand for his resignation. This story was written within a few months of the events it records, when all encounters, and even the details of conversations, were still indelibly imprinted on my mind. It would be possible, of course, to re-tell it with, perhaps, greater clarity for the reader, to whom all the events and persons referred to are unfamiliar; if one were writing a novel one would do so. But this is not a work of fiction; it is the plain, sometimes the bitter, truth; I feel that any value it may have must lie, precisely, in its immediacy. So I have decided to leave it as it stands. Even so, it seems to me to throw a lot of light, unsuspected by most people, on the degree to which the quite little things – the quirks of character, the accidental happenings, the personal emotions – may, in the end, affect even governmental decisions.
But, before coming to the actual account, which I wrote in the autumn of 1928, I would like to recreate, if I can, my husband’s frame of mind before this crushing blow fell. Fortunately, there is plenty of contemporary evidence; I set out for Switzerland with John Patrick, our boy, in the middle of January, leaving Owen (my husband), Grania and Nannie at Denton, and Jane in the Acland Nursing Home in Oxford after an accident to her leg – I was of course anxious about her, as Owen was about how John would stand the journey (he was as fragile as that, after his illness) so we wrote to one another almost every day. Owen’s letters display an acute concern about the children’s health, both John’s and Jane’s, and, at first, very little about the impending Ironmonger v. Dyne case, which everyone knew was coming off towards the end of the month. Owen was still on leave, so was able to devote himself to the home section of our now separated family.
18.1.28.
Denton
‘My dear. Jane is home. Wagstaffe took the stitches out on Monday not hurting her much; the scar is now all closed up. She is allowed to put her foot to the ground and to walk a few steps, but she won’t be able to walk up and down stairs for another week, but she sat comfortably in the back of the car with her leg up, and we got home in triumph by lunchtime.
I haven’t heard from Nevile yet.
Nanny can’t find Jane’s brown shoes. Can you think of anywhere where they can be?
We were glad to get your letter from Dover. Love from us all.
Your O.’
19.1.28.
Denton
‘My dear
We were excited to get your letters from Dover and on arrival. I gather that the journey and its effect
on Pat was not quite as bad as might have been. I have sent Dr Cameron the pathologist’s report and given him a summary of recent temperatures. This brings his casebook up to date and will enable him to give intelligent advice on any letters you or the Swiss Dr may have to write to him. I said you were going on with glucose.
I have now seen Jane’s leg. It’s the neatest scar you ever saw – just a red line with stitch holes. I am just going to take her out in the car.’
21st.
Denton
‘I have just got your letters of 18th and 19th and am immensely relieved that John seems to have recovered from the journey all right. But keep me au fait with temperatures and other symptoms if any.
Take care of your own scar if you do any skiing yourself and always wear a tightish belt for it. [I had had my appendix out six months before.]
It’s a good thing to live as cheap as poss:, but don’t stint yourselves unduly – you get the sun and the sparkling nights for nothing anyhow...
Jane is getting on fine and we’ve started lessons together. Next week I go to London to see a gov: called Denham. I am impatient to get the governess fixed and Jane to Pendell and then start work.’
This is hardly the letter of a man expecting to see his job imperilled. The next, on 24 January, mentions a friend having interviewed another governess called Bichard and reporting favourably. Owen says he has offered her £125 a year, and ends – ‘Much love and mind you and P don’t strain yourselves or break yourselves.’ Another, on 29 January, mentions that he is, himself, giving Jane lessons in history, maths, and Latin. He notes, ‘She does the Latin exercises very carefully and translates Caesar intelligently; if Bichard is any good she ought to get onto Livy before long. I find teaching very interesting.’ On 31 January he says he is going to see another governess in Oxford, as Bichard hasn’t replied. On 1 February he is glad of John’s progress in skiing but urges me not to let him strain his heart, ‘remembering his size and weight and the immense strain that climbing on ski is on the heart’. He also wonders what to say if Bichard asks £150: ‘If she really were the goods 10/– a week more or less isn’t here or there – but it’s all a gamble.’ He ends with the news that Kate and Nannie are to go to my sister Helen, in mid-February, for an indefinite time.