by Anita Anand
Udham, we know, was only too happy to serve the Ghadars, not only because he regarded it as a noble calling, but also because he needed substantial amounts of cash. Not only did he have to pay for his complicated living arrangements, he had become a man who liked to show off to his friends, buy rounds of drinks, turn up to pedlar dinners with meat to cook; as Gurbachan said, Udham was a man ‘who had stuff’.
He appears to have been in a desperate hurry to travel to Germany and Russia in 1934. The urgency may in part have been due to the fact that Venkat had died suddenly in Berlin at the end of May and left numerous loose ends to tie up. When Udham turned up for his ‘Aliens’ interview in London in July, his itinerary, which on paper seemed suspicious, looked certifiably insane. He arrived for the appointment with his arm in a cast, announcing that not only did he still wish to make the journey, but also: ‘That he wished to travel by motorcycle.’18
In a wonderful example of British understatement, the official noted: ‘This was considered peculiar in view of the fact that he had recently broken his arm.’19
A one-armed man proposing to motorcycle through seven hostile countries would, one might think, be grounds for referral to the security services, but, in a spectacular lapse of judgement, the consular official would later say: ‘As he had not at that time been identified as Ude Singh, it was difficult to raise objections.’20
The whole process only fell apart when Udham made contradictory statements about how he was going to pay for his trip and was asked for further supporting documentation. He ‘ultimately withdrew his application’.21 Since no official refusal of his request had been issued, he was able to disappear into the fog again. Manjit Singh Kassid, Udham’s old friend in Sunam, would later provide a credible explanation for Udham’s battered appearance at his endorsement interview. He recalled that a mutual friend living in London, whom he did not name, telling him that Udham was desperately looking for cash in 1934. He said he needed to get to Russia urgently. With Venkat now dead, it would have made sense for the Ghadars to want to shore up their Russian connections: ‘To get the money [for the trip] he [Udham] staged an accident of his motorcycle. It was to get an insurance payout, he said.’22
The unnamed friend also confided something else to Kassid, which would never make it into any MI5’s files:
He [Udham] came to my house after that [motorbike accident], and left a bundle with me, documents he said, which he wanted to pick up when he got back from his trip to Russia . . . One day, while I was cleaning my house, I checked the bundle, and it fell open. I was stunned to find a pistol wrapped in paper. I moved the whole lot somewhere safer and waited in fury for Udham to come back. When he did, I really gave it to him, told him he could have got me arrested. I asked him what on earth he had been thinking? He just laughed and made the whole thing a big joke. ‘Relax,’ he said, ‘It cost you nothing, it’s not as if my bundle was eating your food while I was away’23
Seeing his unabating anger, Udham modulated his tone: ‘Do you know what this pistol is going to do?’
Kassid’s friend was in no mood to hear anything more from a man who had put him in such danger: ‘I told him to shut up – told him I did not want to know. He said, “One day all the world will know what I’m going to do with it. You’ll see.’ ”24
Sir Michael had spent more than two decades since his return to the United Kingdom cultivating the ‘hard and austere’ persona of a doomsday preacher. Regularly he warned receptive audiences about the imminent collapse of the British Empire. Fleet Street editors lapped up his fire-and-brimstone observations, regularly giving him column inches from which he could thump his pulpit. Press barons like Viscount Rothermere, proprietor of the influential Daily Mail, went further still. Like Sir Michael, he too despised the idea of power-sharing in India and published whole booklets against the idea.
One, in 1931, had been filled with articles written by Sir Michael O’Dwyer and Rothermere himself. It contained arresting headlines like: ‘The Truth About This Indian Trouble’, ‘Vital Indian Facts and Figures’ and ‘If We Lose India!’ The little blue pamphlet garnered an enormous readership, and in it Sir Michael had been encouraged to give full vent to his theories on racial superiority:25
The British Empire in India is the greatest achievement of our race. It has been built up by the blood, the brains and the energy of our ancestors. During 150 years it has given peace, security, increasing well-being and honest administration of a medley of hostile races, conflicting creeds and jarring casts who had never, but for a few brief periods, known those conditions before.26
WHAT IS INDIA? Not a Country but a Continent. Not a Nation, but a Noah’s ark of races religions and tongues. INDIA NEVER HAD – Unity, security, peace, justice, communications, public health – until the British came.27
Sir Michael’s time in India had ended in 1919, yet he remained utterly defined by it. In speeches, articles, even the reviews of other people’s books, he raked over the events of his time in India and justified his actions in Punjab.
He said the things that Die Hards loved to hear: power-sharing initiatives were dangerous; Indians lacked the racial sophistication, temperament and intelligence to govern themselves; Gandhi was a villain; if India gained its freedom, Britain would lose its empire; Westminster was filled with weaklings.
Sir Michael was such a bastion of the establishment that in the mid-1930s, the Spectator magazine argued against the banning of the infamous Mosley Blackshirts, on the grounds that they shared some of the same political beliefs as respected men like Sir Michael:
So far as that [Oswald Mosley’s political doctrine] has been defined there seems to be nothing very new or very striking about it. On tariffs Sir Oswald is a Die Hard like Sir Henry Page Croft. On India he is a Die Hard like Sir Michael O’Dwyer. On Empire Free Trade he appears to be a follower of Lord Beaverbrook; on armaments a follower of Lord Rothermere.
There can of course, be no question of banning the fascists as a political organisation. They have as much right to exist as Conservatives or Liberals.28
Sir Michael was now a poster boy for the far right, and his name was mentioned in the same breath as some of the most influential people of the day. Popular men were harder to murder. They were rarely alone.
Though Udham never mentioned O’Dwyer by name, he did talk to Gurbachan about the Jallianwala Bagh massacre: ‘He would ask me, “Do you know how thirsty a person gets after they’ve been shot? So . . . so . . . thirsty . . . even if you had the water . . . it would never be enough.’ ” He told Gurbachan he had been serving water in the garden that day. ‘What happened in Jallianwala Bagh left a real mental scar on him.’29
Pedlar get-togethers remained the highlight of the week for Udham and his friends. Years later, Gurbachan would remember nostalgically:
We used to laugh so much, and we all had nicknames for each other. There was one little guy we used to call ‘Swaga’, you know, after that thick plank of wood that farmers back home pull after their plough and plant, to flatten the earth. Another used to boast about the land he had at home and the well in the middle of it, so we called him ‘bottom-of-the-well’. Udham we used to call ‘Sadh’ [the wise man], or ‘Bawa’ [the sage]. He used to act like he knew everything . . . it was funny but also kind of true.30
Udham was fond of his nicknames; not only were they far less mocking than others doled out in his circle, but ‘Sadh’ was also a shortened version of the name of his dead brother, Sadhu Singh. Perhaps it was comforting.
Undeterred by his previous failure to get travel endorsements to Eastern Europe, in 1936 Udham went back to try his luck again. This time, looking respectable and with two working arms, he applied for and was given endorsements to Holland, Germany, Poland, Austria, Hungary and Italy.
Since Russia and Turkey were now off his list and he seemed to have his finances sorted out, the application looked far less suspicious than before. On 12 May 1936, ‘the application was granted’.31
Udha
m must have left England as soon as the ink was dry, because on 16 May, just four days later, he was in Germany, asking the British consulate in Berlin for further endorsements. These would have allowed him to get to where he really needed to be: Russia. The passport official in Berlin was not impressed: ‘In view of the fact that he had not asked for these at the time of his application in London . . . he was informed that his case would have to be referred, whereupon he withdrew his applications.’32
Udham’s case was now sufficiently odd to merit an enquiry further up the line. The Berlin passport office raised a question with London. If they came across this man again, what should they do? The memo found its way right to the top of the Indian Political Intelligence (IPI) and the desk of Philip Vickery, the same young Irish policeman who had once guarded the king’s bedchamber in India. He sent this advice to his colleagues in Germany: ‘I agree that this case has some curious features, but I do not think the endorsements should be refused if the applicant, Udham Singh, applies again.’33
Udham never did go back to the consulate in Berlin for his endorsements. He made it to Russia without them.
Travelling on unknown papers, Udham had pushed his luck. Vickery now had him in his sights, and when Udham popped up in Poland, Latvia and finally Russia, the British knew about it. They did not immediately pick him up, rather they watched and waited to see what he would do. We can assume it was sufficiently ‘interesting’ for Udham’s name and photograph to be circulated to British port authorities. One officer in Dover notified his superiors when Udham came back into the country, from Leningrad. Though he was allowed back into Britain unhindered, he was now a marked man.
British security services would keep a close eye on the ‘curious’ Udham Singh. They would also spend the next few months excavating his ‘true’ identity.
* * *
* Vilayat – the Indian interpretation of the word ‘Blighty’ used by white members of the Raj to describe their homeland.
CHAPTER 19
SHADOWS
NEW SCOTLAND YARD REPORT
No. 76, Dated 4 November 1936
Udham SINGH
This Indian, to whose arrival from Leningrad reference was made in Report No. 67 (page 5), has been heard to express subversive views and to boast that he has smuggled revolvers into India.
He declared that he was residing at 30, Church Lane E, but subsequent enquiries disclosed that the address is occupied by the firm of C. L. NAYYAR Brothers, merchants and general warehouseman, who supply pedlars (mainly Indians, Arabs, etc.) with underwear and other articles for their packs. Although SINGH has from time to time purchased goods from this firm, he has never resided there and his whereabouts are unknown to the company.
It is believed that he is co-habiting with a white woman somewhere in the West End of London and working at intervals on ‘crowd scenes’ at film studios.1
Udham had well and truly blown his cover. Shortly after his return to England, the IPI had not only uncovered his movements around Eastern Europe, but also infiltrated his circle of friends. Though they had yet to tie his identity to that of ‘Sher Singh’, the known Ghadar with the conviction for gun-running, one of his close acquaintances had clearly been pulled in by police because they now knew about him smuggling ‘revolvers into India’.
Having discovered his bogus address, Scotland Yard was trying desperately to pin down where he was actually living. It was proving more than a little difficult. Udham seemed to be in so many different places at once. In the months after his return from Leningrad, Udham would claim to be living at 4 Duke Street, Spitalfields,2 and also at the Manor House in Northolt.3 The first of these addresses was in east London, the second in Middlesex. The electoral roll would later also have him registered at 4 Crispin Street in London, where he appeared to be living in cramped quarters with thirteen other pedlars. A pedlar at another house in Adler Street, just behind Nayyar’s warehouse, believed he lived with them,4 as did those who lived at 15 Artillery Passage, London WC1, in the heart of the city.
Housemates at these addresses were completely ignorant of Udham’s multiple residencies, and put his long absences down to the demands of peddling or the pursuit of pretty girls. Udham had an eye for the ladies, and they reciprocated. Of course, it did not hurt that he was their resident ‘movie star’.
Though it would have prudent for a would-be assassin to keep a low profile, the show-off in Udham simply could not help himself. He had been taking roles as an extra in big-budget movies since 1936, brazenly appearing under bright studio lights.
Denham Studios, a hub of British film-making, was not far from one of his residences in Northolt. The studio belonged to Alexander Korda, an award-winning, Hungarian-born film director. Korda ploughed both his fortune and reputation into lavish facilities in Buckinghamshire and promised ‘prestige, pomp, magic and madness’.
Towards the end of 1936, Korda’s studios started casting for a film set in India. It was to be called Elephant Boy, based on Rudyard Kipling’s short story ‘Toomai of the Elephants’. The plot revolved around a young Indian mahout who harboured ambitions of becoming a great hunter. A thirteen-year-old Indian child actor named Sabu became the eponymous ‘elephant boy’ of the film, and the movie would turn out to be a huge success, making Sabu a Hollywood star. The making of Elephant Boy, however, had been a nightmare.
Korda’s director, Robert J. Flaherty, who made his name in wildlife documentaries, spent hours on location in India filming animals, but hardly any time on his human characters. Blowing the budget on beautiful backgrounds, he left gaping holes in the film’s storyline. Back in England, Korda was incandescent when he saw the rushes. Flaherty was fired and it was left to Korda’s brother, Zoltan, to shoot the missing material.
With no money or time left to go back to India, the brothers used Denham Studios, dressing it to look like the jungle. They rounded up as many London Indians as they could to play incidental ‘natives’. Sabu aside, principal Indian parts had all been filled by white men in blackface.
Wearing a loosely tied turban, Udham Singh can be seen in the background of a couple of scenes: a real Indian in a British studio, pretending to be an Indian jungle-man. Bizarre as this might sound, it was not the most extraordinary thing his friends remembered about him from that time in his life.
Gurbachan recalled that, one day shortly after his return from Russia, Udham did what no other pedlar had ever done before. He brought a pretty white woman with him to one of their Punjabi dinners. Most of the men were already sitting cross-legged on the floor, preparing to eat, when he drifted in with a grin. ‘He told us to bow down at this lady’s feet because she was “Sadhini” – you know – “a wise woman”.’5
Gurbachan heard from other pedlars that her name may have been Irene Palmer.6 It was a name the security services would also discover when they looked into Udham’s mysterious ‘girlfriend’.
Even though the IPI, MI5 and police would all hear Irene Palmer’s name a number of times in relation to their investigation into Udham Singh, scant detail about her is appended to his files. The police appear to have made no effort to establish who she was or what she did. Perhaps it was because MI5 and the IPI knew quite a lot about the mysterious Ms Palmer already.
Looking into the name decades later, one finds no trace of an Irene Palmer living in London in the census, electoral record or residential records for that time. There is an Irene Palmer with the correct age profile listed in Wales, but according to her descendants, one of whom is an amateur genealogist, she was a troubled soul who never left the country and certainly never mixed with Indians. Could it be that ‘Irene’ Palmer was in fact ‘Eileen’ Palmer?
If that is the case, it would explain why her name was excluded from Udham’s file after the initial report, and why the police were pulled from investigating her any further. Too many eyes had access to the thickening Udham Singh file, and by 1937 there was growing and not entirely misplaced paranoia that government departments were bei
ng infiltrated by Soviet spies. Knowledge of Eileen was too precious to leak. She was a link to an even greater prize than Udham Singh. Eileen was a direct link to a man named Benjamin Francis Bradley, and that made her invaluable to the security services.
Bradley was a Communist metalworker from east London who travelled to India promoting militant trade unionism in 1927, the same year Udham was arrested for gun-running. Bradley had organised a successful wave of strikes on the Indian Railways and was eventually arrested and jailed in 1929 for his part in the so-called Meerut Conspiracy, a plot to destabilise the Raj with a workers’ uprising on the behest of the USSR.
He and his co-conspirators were accused of depriving: ‘[t]he King Emperor of the sovereignty of British India, and for such purpose to use the methods and carry out the programme and plan of campaign outlined and ordained by the Communist International.’7 At the time, Eileen, an idealistic and passionate young woman, did not even know Bradley’s name. She was in London, busy falling in love with her future husband, a man named Horace Palmer.
Horace was a schoolteacher, sometime antiques dealer, and talented violinist. He was also a marked man. Both MI5 and Special Branch had him under surveillance thanks to his active involvement with the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). Eileen adored Horace but was seduced by his politics even more. She learned everything she could from her husband and, if anything, hardened his commitment to the cause.
In 1935, Eileen travelled to India, ostensibly acting as a secretary for the renowned American birth control activist Margaret Sanger, however she was simultaneously pursuing new communist interests.8 This is what brought her to the attention of the IPI. They began keeping an eye on Eileen, and when the IPI momentarily lost track of her in December 1936, they seemed desperate to find out where she was: ‘IPI – HOW [request for special surveillance] on Horace Palmer, with a view to discovering the whereabouts of his wife, Eileen Palmer, who is travelling in India, probably on a Communist Mission.’9