by John Pearson
We can be sure of this because, no sooner were Boothby and his faithful butler Gordon Goodfellow safely ensconced in Barbados’s luxury Miramar Beach Hotel than one of their first priorities was to write a letter back to Ron, a missive that was mysteriously preserved and found its way into the National Archive at the Public Record Office where it is today. Judging from the tone of the letter Ron had already helped to blight the couple’s holiday by sending them a threatening message through a friend called John, complaining of the lack of action. Boothby was clearly so upset by this that he ordered Goodfellow to pen an immediate reply for him on hotel stationery; and like nothing else, this letter demonstrates the vicelike grip that Ron Kray exercised on Boothby and the extraordinary lengths to which the peer would go in order to placate him.
After saying how distressed he and LB (short for ‘Lord Boothby’) had been by Ronnie’s message, Goodfellow continued: ‘I have spoken to LB and he says that no living man could have done more for you than he has done. As regards the American visa, he has made personal representations to the American ambassador, who undertook to look into the matter himself.’
As for Ron’s complaints that he and Reg were being victimised by the police, Goodfellow wrote that ‘LB has spoken on your behalf to the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Joseph Simpson, and also to Chief Inspector Gerrard, who took down the statement that he made. In the course of this LB said that he had found you perfectly straightforward in any dealings he had had with you, and that he firmly believed you were now engaged in business which was absolutely legitimate. LB also said that he had reason to believe that the police were “hounding” you, and Chief Inspector Gerrard included this in the statement which he took down.’
After tactfully expressing LB’s ‘great regard’ for Ronnie Kray, Goodfellow ended by saying that ‘although LB of course has no control over the behaviour of either Scotland Yard or the American embassy, he is nevertheless a great friend of the editor of The Times, and if there is any further trouble from that quarter he will be glad to do what he can when he gets back.’
By this stage it’s hard to imagine either Twin being terribly impressed by Boothby’s ‘great regard’, still less by his promise of support from the editor of The Times. (Sir William Haley). After Ronnie’s failed trip to America, what the Twins really needed now was money. Which was why they had recently been taking so much interest in the appropriately named Hideaway Club in Gerrard Street, Soho, over which Chief Inspector Gerrard (no connection) had been making such a nuisance of himself.
Thanks to Ron’s gay information service the Twins had been among the first to hear that a ‘rich socialite’ called Hew McCowan had bought the club and was planning to turn it into a fashionable night spot for an upmarket clientele. They had been trying to use the same tactics on McCowan as they had when they took over Esmeralda’s Barn and since the Twins regarded Soho as their territory they were expecting a substantial slice of the action. The only question was how substantial. There had already been tentative discussions on the subject between Reg and Hew McCowan during which Reg had suggested they adopt their going rate and that out of estimated earnings from the club of £2,000 a week the Twins should start with thirty per cent of the profits, rising by monthly increments to fifty per cent. For this payment McCowan would be provided with a doorman, a ‘dedicated’ minder and an inclusive security service guaranteeing full immunity from any bother or aggravation from other criminals or random hooligans. Through his friendship with the film star George Raft, Reg also promised personal appearances at the club by Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.
Reg was all for patience and had everything been left to him he almost certainly would have worked things out with McCowan as he usually did. But since his return from New York Ron had been impossible. Frustration, sexual or otherwise, was bad for him, and no sooner had Reg mentioned Hew McCowan than Ron started breathing fire and fury. Reg was getting soft with all this women’s talk of negotiation. What McCowan needed was a fucking lesson that he would not forget.
While this was going on Teddy Smith, who was with them, was listening and getting very drunk. He decided it was time to do the Twins a favour.
Mad Teddy was in many ways an unusual character to have found in the company of the Twins. At barely five foot seven, he was really too small to be a villain, and had begun his life of crime as a burglar before gravitating to the Firm. Apart from the Twins he was one of the Firm’s few other homosexuals. He was also something of a fantasist and after winning a BBC writing competition with Top Bunk, a play he wrote in prison, he always claimed to be a writer.
He was also something of a mystery. As well as being one of the very few West Londoners in the Firm he had no known dependants and, after starting off as one of Ron’s many boyfriends, had made him his hero and tried to model himself on him. Like Ron, he was probably psychotic and had earned his nickname ‘Mad’ from the way he spiralled out of all control when he was drunk. When drunk he could be dangerous and he loved mentioning the name of Kray to scare his enemies. He did so now and, thinking he was bigger and smarter than he was, went round to the Hideaway Club to teach Hew McCowan a lesson by smashing the place up.
As the full extent of the damage he inflicted on the club was subsequently valued at just twenty pounds, it would seem that the violence was mainly verbal. But since it was strongly spiced with threats and insults from the Krays it was enough to make McCowan summon the police, who soon arrived and promptly cautioned Edward Smith, writer, on suspicion of demanding money with menaces on behalf of Reginald and Ronald Kray.
For Chief Inspector Gerrard and Inspector ‘Nipper’ Read, the two Scotland Yard detectives who had been unsuccessfully targeting the Krays for several months, Mad Teddy’s antics at the Hideaway seemed something of a godsend. Unlike the Police Commissioner they were seriously concerned about the menace of the Twins and felt that this could be their chance to catch them before something worse occurred.
Of course, as we now know, they were absolutely right, but as an appropriate response by Scotland Yard to the threat of those who had only recently been called ‘the most dangerous organised criminals in London’ this case against the Twins for demanding money with menaces was somewhat flimsy, especially after all the information C11 had been gathering about the Twins’ involvement in blackmail, extortion, protection, large-scale fraud and connections with the US Mafia. Still, in the circumstances, anything was better than nothing, and there was a fighting chance that it might work. After all, after evading the FBI for years, even Al Capone was finally caught for tax evasion, and the fact was that Ron’s paranoia and Mad Teddy’s drunken idiocy had landed the Kray Twins in a potentially dangerous situation – just when they didn’t need it.
Even now it took a lot of effort from the two detectives before they received permission to pursue the case and there seemed little enthusiasm for it from their masters at the Yard. Remembering that the Commissioner, Sir Joseph Simpson, had only recently been telling the Home Secretary that C11’s investigation had not taken place and that organised crime in the capital was decreasing, Simpson was not over-anxious to be forced to eat his words. Also sensing, quite correctly, that no one in the new government wished to hear another word about the Kray Twins or Lord Boothby, his instinct was to let sleeping gangsters go on sleeping – so long as they didn’t cause him or his friendly politicians any trouble.
Gerrard and Read felt very differently. They were starting to believe that this time round they really had a chance and where there was a chance, they’d take it. They had several reasons to be optimistic. This was the first time for several years that the Twins had permitted such a breach in their defences, and Mad Teddy’s outburst had occurred in front of witnesses, including McCowan’s agent Sydney Vaughan and Peter Byrne, a smalltime villain who professed to hate the Krays. In addition both detectives had been favourably impressed by the club’s new owner, Hew Cargill McCowan. I suspect that this was largely down to their sense
of class. The police rarely found a man in McCowan’s position willing to stand up in court against the Krays but McCowan was unusual. The son and heir of Sir David McCowan, the putative second baronet and laird of Menzie Castle, Perthshire, Hew McCowan displayed all the self-assurance of his class and the detectives were particularly struck by the way that he refused the offer of police protection. Clearly he was wealthy, brave and a thorough gentleman, which might have made them underplay one further fact about him. As Inspector Read put it, ‘McCowan was an active homosexual but he did not dress flamboyantly, nor had he exaggerated effeminate gestures.’ In other words, he wasn’t camp but he was a gentleman.
What the detectives failed to realise was that there could be more complexities to Hew McCowan’s sexual history than flamboyant dress and effeminate gestures, and that by failing to discover them they were in danger of overvaluing him as a witness. This was to prove a serious mistake once they had the go-ahead for their investigation, particularly as the case continued with a health warning from the powers above that this time they were on their own and if they failed there’d be no second chance. This was a risk they had to take, and on 18 December the Kray Twins were arrested at the Glenrae, a residential hotel in Seven Sisters Road, Islington where they often stayed in order to escape police surveillance or the cramped surroundings back at Vallance Road.
Together with Edward Smith, ‘writer’, they were charged with demanding money with menaces. When they appeared before the stipendiary magistrate he refused them bail and sent them up for trial at the Old Bailey at the end of January.
Gerrard and Read would have been encouraged had they known of the anxiety this caused the Twins. Reg was particularly incensed and said that he had no intention of having his private life destroyed by a further spell in prison, thanks to the behaviour of Ron’s drunken so-called ‘writer’ friend ‘Mad’ Teddy Smith. Ron stuck up for him and after several fairly bitter arguments on the subject they agreed on one thing. They would move heaven and earth to avoid the hefty prison sentence that was almost certainly awaiting them if they didn’t take things very seriously indeed.
Their first requirement was to get out of prison on bail fast and start sorting out the hostile witnesses, but even this was proving difficult. After the magistrate’s refusal of their bail application they applied to the high court, followed by the Lord Chief Justice, without success. Once more the time had come to apply a little pressure on their old friend Bob Boothby, and see if he could fix it.
As luck would have it, Boothby and his butler had just returned from Barbados and Ron ordered his brother Charles to pay what proved to be the first of several visits to the flat in Eaton Square. From his prison cell Ron briefed his brother on what to say. This time he must really scare the daylights out of Boothby. He must emphasise that he and Reg meant business and that, after screwing up with the American ambassador and the Police Commissioner, it was up to him to get them bail through the House of Lords.
Boothby was many things, but he was not entirely a fool and he knew quite well that the Twins’ request was theoretically impossible, and that as a member of the House of Lords he had absolutely no right to speak in parliament on a case that was still sub judice. To do so, and particularly on the Twins’ behalf, could land him in serious trouble.
But thanks to the contents of Violet Kray’s small brown suitcase he had to do something, and faced with the alternative of total ruin he assured Charlie he would do his best. Two days later he tabled a question in the House of Lords asking the Lord Chancellor if it was the Government’s intention to keep the Kray Twins and Edward Smith in prison on remand indefinitely.
After forty years in parliament Boothby knew, if anyone did, that since it was parliament’s job to make the laws, and the judges’ to enforce them, members of parliament had no right to question a judge’s decision, particularly in a case like this where there was really nothing to object to in the courts’ behaviour. Since the Twins and Teddy Smith were down for trial in three weeks’ time, it was hard to claim that they were suffering undue hardship and to speak as if the judges were keeping them on remand ‘indefinitely’ was ridiculous.
So Boothby was not just breaking the rules of parliament when he lumbered to his feet and in that famous voice of his put his question to the Lord Chancellor. He was also being fairly fatuous. Even as he started speaking he was met with cries of ‘Order, order’ from his fellow lords and a swift rebuke from Lord Dillhorne, the former Lord Chancellor, for asking a question on a matter which was still sub judice. Lord Rea, the Liberal spokesman, observed that the noble lord’s question was not in accordance with the traditions of the House. And saintly Lord Longford, who could forgive almost anyone anything, including the moors murderer Myra Hindley, warned that ‘his noble friend was going to regret this intervention when he reads it afterwards in cold blood.’ The Lord Chancellor, Lord Gardiner, in his role of Speaker of the House, did not deign to pronounce.
And that it seemed, was that. Lord Boothby had once more acted under orders from the Krays, finally in parliament itself. He had been expecting an uncomfortable ride but it could have been far worse, and as the owner of one of the thickest skins in politics he made a show of saying that he had nothing to regret, and left the chamber.
One wonders if he realised how fortunate he had been to have got away with it so lightly. For while they were shouting ‘Order, order’ none of his fellow lords could have possibly been ignorant of his recent case against the Sunday Mirror. To hear him pleading now for the very criminals concerning whom he had recently been awarded £40,000 for maintaining that he had met them on only two occasions meant that something very strange indeed was going on. And unless the noble lord was off his head – which in the circumstances just might have been possible – Lord Boothby had committed something so outrageous that it struck at the very heart of parliament itself.
There were no ifs and buts about it. By asking his question in the House of Lords over the bail application of the Krays and Teddy Smith, Boothby had not been raising any question of principle about the rights of prisoners on remand. He had been acting as a parliamentary spokesman for the Krays and as such had been in serious contempt of parliament. The strong likelihood that he had been doing this because he was being blackmailed only made the situation worse.
This should have been a matter of profound concern to Gerald Gardiner, the Lord High Chancellor, who was not only Speaker of the House of Lords and as such responsible for the integrity of the House but was also head of the judiciary with a similar responsibility for the judges. So one must wonder why the Lord High Chancellor stayed silent, why Lord Boothby was permitted to depart, and why nothing was ever done about it.
Since the answer goes to the very heart of the story of the Krays and explains much about the nature of their future crimes, their mythic status in the years ahead and the invulnerability that would soon surround them it is important that we understand it.
Let us begin with the behaviour of Lord Gardiner. The son of a rich Midlands businessman, educated at Harrow and Magdalen College, Oxford he had served in the Coldstream Guards at the end of the first world war; he was also an honourable, heterosexual, upper-class Englishman. Far from being a stuffy old reactionary he was slightly to the left of centre and a paid-up member of the Labour Party. As a lawyer he had successfully led the campaign against capital punishment. It was this combination of legal eminence and left-wing credentials that explains why Arnold Goodman had been anxious to involve him in Boothby’s case against the Sunday Mirror, and why, after Labour won that autumn’s general election, Harold Wilson had appointed him Lord Chancellor.
Unlike Boothby he was not a rogue, and unlike Goodman he was not a hypocritical old fixer. But remembering that, as Lord Chancellor, he was also an important member of Harold Wilson’s cabinet, one begins to see the dilemma he was in. It was in many ways a similar dilemma to that faced by his Conservative predecessor as Lord Chancellor, Lord Dillhorne.
On
e should not insult the memory of either of these politicians by suggesting that they sat through Boothby’s intervention unaware of what was going on. But they also knew quite well that as soon as either of them questioned the relationship between Boothby and the Krays the whole elaborate stitch-up that had been so deftly woven by Arnold Goodman round the Boothby scandal would have started to unravel. They also knew that, once this happened, the political mayhem that had followed John Profumo’s admission that he had lied to parliament about sleeping with a call girl would have been a minor storm in a relatively small teacup compared with the hurricane that would have struck the Wilson government – and also the opposition – once the whole truth of the Boothby scandal was revealed.
Cover-ups frequently occur in politics and are usually forgotten. What was so unusual about Goodman’s cover-up of the Boothby scandal was that so many people knew about it from the start and that the stakes were so enormous, especially now that, with Ronnie Kray actively blackmailing Lord Boothby, there was a very real danger of the whole thing cracking open.
This could well have happened after Boothby’s intervention in the House of Lords had the consequences not been so alarming and posed such a a profound threat to the Establishment itself. All political establishments, the world over, are ultimately concerned with power and share a tendency to close ranks in an emergency. The British Establishment was no exception. Faced with a direct threat to important members of the government and opposition, it now retreated into what amounted to collective denial over this whole extremely dangerous affair.
One sees this happening even as the two lord chancellors backed off from initiating an investigation of the intrusion of the Krays into the business of the House of Lords. One also sees it with the press, where a sudden blanket of discretion stopped any comment in the media on Boothby’s highly suspect behaviour. Once again the contrast with the Profumo scandal is revealing. In the Profumo scandal it was the press, and not the politicians, who performed what should always be the duty of the media, namely to expose serious corruption even in the highest ranks of society and government. But at this point in the Boothby scandal the opposite was taking place.