The Intrigues of Jennie Lee

by Alex Rosenberg

  None of the reporters noticed Nye’s double take. It had obviously been news to him, try as hard as he might to pretend otherwise to the reporters.

  * * *

  A quarter of an hour later, they were sitting at a table in The Ivy on West Street near Covent Garden, toasting the wedding with the two witnesses they’d found in the registry office.

  “Jennie, were you going to tell me about this trip to Switzerland?” Nye’s face betrayed a combination of pride and pain in her news.

  “Just heard this morning.” They’d both learned from the papers the previous day that the Prime Minister, Arthur Henderson, was going to Geneva to rally the League against Mussolini’s threats to Abyssinia. Departing from previous government policy, he had announced a demand that the League impose an oil embargo on Italy and offered the British Mediterranean fleet to back it up. Henderson was finally Labour prime minister, after serving as temporary leader of the party three times in the previous fifteen years. He had always been a stalwart for the League of Nations, even winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his support of the League’s disarmament work.

  “I’m glad he’s making a stand against Musso.” Nye paused.

  “But why take you?”

  “I have no idea, Nye.”

  * * *

  Sitting in the Prime Minister’s first class compartment, both Arthur Henderson and Jennie Lee felt slightly out of place. First class was a rare luxury for a Labour member of parliament. Worse, to be found out traveling first was a major embarrassment in the culture of the Labour Party. Henderson had not yet become entirely comfortable with the practice, despite a year or so in office. Jennie had only ever ridden first on Frank Wise’s largess.

  They were on the boat train rolling through Kent to the coast and a channel steamer at Folkestone. Just past Maidstone, Henderson had excused his parliamentary private secretary from the compartment and the permanent secretary as well. But then he remained silent for further minutes, watching the tidy pastureland glide by. For a change, Jennie did not think it her place to break the silence.

  This was to be their first conversation since Henderson had been appointed prime minister. His audible throat clearing announced that it was about to begin.

  “Miss Lee, you have no idea why I asked you to join me on this mission to the League Headquarters. You can’t have, as I have told almost no one.” Jennie could only nod. “Well, a little background. You know of course that Labour governments can have little confidence in our security services as presently constituted.”

  “Yes sir, everyone knows about the connivance of SIS in the Zinoviev letter.”

  This was the forgery of a letter of support for Labour from the Soviets in 1924. Jennie knew as well about how SIS had suppressed the evidence of Mosley’s treason, but she couldn’t reveal it. Probably Henderson didn’t know himself.

  “Alas, there are other examples. I won’t trouble you with them now. What it means, however, is that foreign governments and others friendly to the Labour government sometimes approach the prime minister’s office directly, avoiding all civil service contact. Sometimes, we learn things that way the permanent secretaries don’t want us to know.” He paused, awaiting a question.

  But Jennie understood. “I shan’t ask for any details, sir.”

  “I’m afraid I must put you in the picture, however.” He drew a breath. “There are people in the Soviet Commissariat for Foreign Affairs who have offered to provide us with information, secret information, about Italian and German policy. Do you know the name Kutuzov?”

  Jennie swallowed. She certainly did know that name and it frightened her immediately. This was the name of the Russian she’d met with Frank in Moscow, the man who had brought him the documents about Mosley that Dorothy Wise had found, the documents that led to his murder, the same documents Jennie had already had from the Duchess of York. What did Henderson know of the matter? Hoping the Prime Minister would not notice the sweat forming above her lip or the trembling his question had set in motion, Jennie had to lie.

  “Kutuzov... Kutuzov...No. I don’t think so.”

  “Well, Kutuzov is a member of the Soviet delegation coming to the League meeting next week.” The Russian government had joined the League of Nations only a fortnight before. “Rather a low level bureaucrat actually, but says he has documents about the Italian plans in Abyssinia and he says, about German violation of the Treaty of Versailles—rearming, with Russian connivance.”

  “And you credit him? You don’t think it’s a provocation, or a trap or even a plant, like the Zinoviev material?”

  Henderson shook his head. “No, Miss Lee. He’s already provided some startling information to prove his bona fides.” Jennie waited in apprehension. Now her fears were to be realised. He went on. “Evidence that Mosley was in the pay of the government of Italy and of German industrialists. Slipped it to our League representative when he was here last month arranging the Soviets’ membership terms.”

  Does the PM know? About Frank, about me? The questions absorbed her so completely she’d stopped listening. Now Henderson leaned forward, breaking the reverie.

  “That brings us to you, Miss Lee.”

  She looked up at his rather kind grey face, readying herself for his revelation.

  “What’s it to do with me, sir?”

  “That’s the odd part of the story. This Kutuzov fellow sent word that he will give the documents only to you. Said to tell you he’s sure you’ll know what to do with them.”

  “So, that’s why I’ve been put in the delegation going to Geneva.” Jennie felt relief. “What exactly am I to do, sir?”

  “Make yourself conspicuous.” He chortled. “That should be no trouble, Miss Lee. Kutuzov’ll find you. If you can get the papers and they tell us what I think they will, I may be able to use them to get the League to take action, not just against Mussolini, but against this Hitler fellow too. Nip his adventurism in the bud.” Smiling broadly, he patted her knee in a fatherly way. “Who knows, Miss Lee, you might just change the course of history.”

  Jennie beamed and then she said something Henderson never understood at all.

  “Third time lucky.”

  The End

  Dramatis Personae

  Almost all persons mentioned in this work really lived. Most actually did a good deal of what is credited to them in the narrative, at least before the British political crisis of August 1931. In that month the Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald switched sides, joined with Tories to impose a harsh austerity on his country and embarked on a half dozen years of appeasement.

  All these persons are now long dead. A brief description of each of them is provided below in roughly the order of their appearance in the narrative. The major events in the narrative described in the book depart from actual history as from August 23, 1931. The descriptions below do not reflect those departures.

  Ramsay MacDonald, leader of the Labour Party, Prime Minister of Great Britain, 1924, 1929-35

  Euphemia Lee, mother of Jennie Lee, member of the Independent Labour Party

  James Lee, father of Jennie Lee, mine safety officer, member of the Independent Labour Party

  Jennie Lee, born 1904-1988, MP 1929-1931, 1945-1970, married to Aneurin Bevan 1935, Minister for the Arts, 1964-70

  Sir Charles Philip Trevelyan, 3d baronet, Liberal and then Labour MP, President of the Board of Education (Minister of Education) Labour government of 1924, 1929-1931

  Lady Mary Katherine Trevelyan, Charles Trevelyan’s wife, half sister of Gertrude Bell, influential British Arabist

  Lady Nancy Astor, Viscountess, American, married Waldorf Astor, 2d Viscount, first woman to sit in the British House of Commons

  Henry “Chips” Channon, American expatriate, social climber and diarist, Conservative MP, 1935-1950, identified by W. Somerset Maugham as the model for Elliot Templeton in The Razor’s Edge. His diaries were expurgated when published.

  Ellen Wilkinson, Labour MP for Middlesbrough, 1924-1931, Jarr
ow, 1935-1947, Minister of Education in the Atlee Labour government, 1945-1947, chairman of the Labour Party, 1944-1945, labour union organiser and founder member of British Communist Party in 1920, left party 1924.

  Winston Churchill, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1924-1929, out of office thereafter until 1939

  Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons, daughter of the Earl of Strathmore, raised at Glamis Castle in Scotland, subsequently the Duchess of York, married to Albert, second son of King George V, became Queen on the accession of Albert as George VI, after the abdication of her brother-in-law, David, later styled Edward VIII, mother of Elizabeth II and queen mother until her death at 102 in 2002

  Oswald Mosley, 6th baronet of Ancoats, officer, British Army, Royal Flying Corps, Conservative MP 1918-22, independent MP, 1922-24, Labour MP, 1926-31, member of Ramsay MacDonald’s cabinet as Chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster, 1929-1930. Founder of New Party, 1931 and leader, British Union of Fascists, 1932-1940, received subsidies for party from Italian Fascist government from 1931 onward, married his lover Diana Mitford 1936 (witnesses to marriage included Adolf Hitler), interned by British government during WW2, unsuccessful parliamentary candidate for fascist and racist parties until his death in 1980.

  John Maynard Keynes, world famous economist, associated with Liberal party, author of two influential works in the period: the bestselling The Economic Consequences of the Peace, and the subsequent tract, The Economic Consequences of Mr Churchill, echoing the title of its predecessor

  Lydia Lepokova, Russian ballerina, married to Keynes

  Harold Macmillan, unorthodox Conservative MP for Stockton, 1924-29, 31-45, and for Bromley, 1945-1964, early supporter of Sir Oswald Mosley, subsequently Foreign Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister of Great Britain, 1957-1963.

  Dorothy Macmillan, wife of Harold, involved for over thirty years in an affair with Macmillan’s friend and ally, Robert Boothby, MP

  Frank Wise, barrister, civil servant, economic adviser to Prime Minister Lloyd George, then Labour MP, 1929-1931, from 1923 representative of the Soviet Union Cooperative Foreign Trade bureau in Great Britain

  Aneurin Bevan, after Clement Atlee, most important Labour politician of his time. MP for Ebbw Vale (South Wales) from 1929 to his death in 1960. On the left of the Labour Party, was the sole sustained opposition to the Churchill wartime government. As Minister of Health and concurrently Minister of Housing, established the NHS and organised the greatest home building programme in British history after the Second World War. Married Jennie Lee in 1934.

  Walter Reuther, American union organiser, and liberal leader, president of United Automobile Workers, after 1940 a leader of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, from whom he expelled members of the Communist party in the late ‘40s, probably joined Communist party briefly in the early 1930s, travelled to Europe in 1933 and worked in Soviet auto plant, Gorky, 1933-1935

  George V, King and Emperor from his father’s death in 1910 until his own in 1936, famously predicted of his son David, Prince of Wales, and afterward King Edward VIII, “After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself within twelve months,” he is also known to have said, “I pray to God my eldest son [David, afterward Edward VIII] will never marry and have children, and that nothing will come between Bertie [his second son Albert, afterward George VI] and Lilibet [his eldest grandchild Elizabeth, afterward Queen Elizabeth II] and the throne.”

  David Lloyd George, MP, 1890-1945, Cabinet Minister and then Prime Minister of Great Britain 1916-1922, leader of the Liberal Party. 1926-1931. Widely suspected of selling titles to secure financial support for his party during and after the war, so widely reputed to be a womaniser that he was called “the goat.”

  Cynthia (Cimmie) Mosley, wife of Sir Oswald Mosley, Labour Party MP, 1929-1931, daughter of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India and Foreign Secretary, 1919-1924, in despair about her husband’s infidelity during their marriage, not sympathetic to her husband’s politics after 1931, died after surgery for appendicitis 1933.

  Edward Fitzroy, Conservative MP for Northamptonshire North, 1900-1918 and for Daventry, 1918-1943, Speaker of the House of Commons, 1928-1943, captain in British Army during WW1.

  Malcolm MacDonald, MP for Bassetlaw, 1929-1935, son of Ramsay MacDonald, Minister of Health, 1940-41 and other offices mainly in foreign affairs, including last colonial governor and only governor general of Kenya, 1963-1964

  Arthur Henderson, MP, three separate times leader of the Labour Party, 1908-10, 1914-17, 1931-32, Foreign Minister in MacDonald’s 1929-31 government, recognised Soviet Union, chaired League of Nations Disarmament Conference 1932-34, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, 1934

  About the Author

  In addition to The Intrigues of Jennie Lee, Alex Rosenberg is the author of two other historical novels, The Girl from Krakow and Autumn in Oxford, as well as many books of non-fiction, mainly philosophy. He is the R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. He lives there in the winter. In the summer he’s in France, near Geneva, Switzerland. Some of Alex’s writing, for The New York Times, Time Magazine, Salon.com, 3AM, and other media can be found at his website, www.alexrose46.com.

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