Maxwell, The Outsider

by Tom Bower

  Maxwell rebutted those criticisms from an industry which he condemned as ultra-conservative, uninnovative and self-destructive as 'sour grapes'. Both the professional institutes and traditional publishers had failed science and scientists, he said, and they were jealous about his personal and professional success. ‘I don't make a penny from any of the journals,' he told the Sunday Times, and when asked why he did it for nothing, he replied, 'I do it because it ought to be done.' Indeed, many of his authors felt genuinely grateful for his generous support. Among them was Sir Harold Tommy' Thompson, an eminent and highly decorated professor of organic chemistry and late Master of St John's College, Oxford. Thompson appreciated Maxwell's style since he also had wide-ranging interests, including the editorship of Pergamon's most prestigious journal, Spectrochimica Acta. Thompson was also a keen footballer and a chairman of the Football Association. During their many hours together, Thompson introduced Maxwell to the politics of the British sport and so stimulated his later interest.

  By the early 1960s, Maxwell felt that he could afford to ignore critics. He was a millionaire with a Rolls-Royce and a mansion. His family life was much closer than in the previous decade when Betty had relied upon nannies and a train of other employees to look after the home and all of her children. There would have been perfect contentment had Michael, his eldest son, not been critically injured in a motor accident in 1961. He would be kept alive on a support system in Oxford until 1968. A daughter had died of leukaemia in infancy. Seven children survived. He introduced into his home life the same mercurial discipline he imposed upon his employees. It was a homespun philosophy called 'The three Cs - consideration, concentration and conciseness'. Maxwell expected his children's behaviour to be in stark contrast to his own. Showing politeness, speaking in respectful tones and diligently obeying rules were precisely what Maxwell senior had steadfastly and proudly rejected. Yet he expected those qualities from both employees and his family. Betty Maxwell has described those years of running a home with seven children as 'always running behind [him] trying to catch up'. Psychologists describe that peculiar condition of demanding from others the opposite of your own character as 'projected identification'. Maxwell, one can assume, unconsciously disliked some aspects of his personality and reacted violently if he perceived it in others. In his children, he wanted to forestall the development of his own characteristics. Since by all accounts his children are in some respects the antithesis of their father, he was clearly successful. But he strove towards realising his ambitions, carried forward by the sheer individualism which he could not tolerate among others. His next goal was to fulfil the ambition he had confided to Betty in 1944 - to become a politician.

  5

  Anne Dove has no doubts why Maxwell became a Member of Parliament for the Labour Party: 'The Tories wouldn't have had him.' Although there is no evidence that he applied to join the Conservative Party, it would have seemed the natural citadel to match his lifestyle and business activities. Under Harold Macmillan, the nation was riding the crest of a boom which had enjoyed the innovation of jet airliners, LP records, transistors, sleek cars and the first computers. Maxwell was as enraptured by that era's affluence which was associated with the Conservatives as he was irritated by Labour's agonised doctrinal disputes about nationalisation and defence, its cloth-cap image and its Little Englander prejudice against business. Some interpreted his friendship with Peter Baker as a prelude to applying to Central Office to become a Conservative candidate. If he had been so minded, there would have been one insuperable obstacle: Harold Macmillan. The Prime Minister had vowed never to forgive or forget Maxwell's stewardship of Simpkin Marshall. If he was to become a politician, there was therefore no alternative but to join the Opposition.

  Maxwell's first approach to the Labour Party was in late spring 1959 when the newspapers had begun to speculate that a general election would be held in the autumn. He applied to the local party in Esher which, because of the overwhelming Conservative majority in the constituency, was a relatively moribund association. Paul Vanson, the nominated Labour candidate, remembers the 'big impression' Maxwell created when he first arrived because 'he was interested in being active'. The party's finances were precarious and Maxwell offered to organise a fund-raising dance. It lifted our eyes,' recalls Vanson, 'because we weren't used to it.' Vanson 'thinks' that he can recall enrolling Maxwell as a party member.

  Cyril Smith, the local party's chairman, relates a very different account of Maxwell's first appearance at the Esher party: 'The rumbustious Ian Maxwell got up to make a point at a pre-election debate in the King George's Hall and just didn't stop speaking, which made me intensely annoyed.' Smith does not believe that Maxwell became a member of the Esher party. Certainly, Maxwell never produced his Esher membership card.

  In summer 1959, Maxwell was therefore possibly not a member. It was at this time that an employee confided to him that she was pregnant and, although unmarried, intended to have the child. The father was an American who had been temporarily employed by Pergamon and was returning home. She further told Maxwell that her decision to become a single parent would prevent her remaining as the prospective Labour candidate for Aylesbury and she was resigning her candidature.

  Maxwell encouraged the employee to marry the recently divorced American, requesting her to recommend him to the Aylesbury Selection Committee. She agreed but the Committee did not put Maxwell on the short-list. According to Albert Birch and Freda Roberts, both members, the committee had already made alternative arrangements. But Maxwell clearly made a good impression because an Aylesbury official suggested that he might try for the seat in the neighbouring constituency of North Buckinghamshire where the Labour candidate, Dr Gordon Evans, had just resigned after a serious road accident.

  North Buckinghamshire, which was a mixture of 'hunting, shooting and fishing' villages, plus the towns of Bletchley and Wolverton, was an attractive proposition. The sitting Tory member had won in 1955 by only 1,140 votes, making it one of the country's most marginal seats. With the election announcement imminent, there was already a rush of applicants for the nomination although the national polls pointed to the Tories as favourites to win. First reports in Buckinghamshire's local papers spoke of a short-list of fifteen, but only five, including

  Maxwell, were finally interviewed when the party executive met on Saturday 22 August 1959. Four were local men who represented the constituency's two major industries, farming and the railways; among them was the party's vice-president, who could boast a long record of service in the constituency. In every sense, Maxwell was the outsider.

  In the week before the selection, Maxwell gave local newspapers the material for a short biographical profile. As has been the case throughout Maxwell's perception of himself -he regularly introduces new interpretations of identical events.

  In the summer of 1959, Maxwell described himself as a publisher, speaking nine languages, who employed five hundred people and produced 250 books and 50 journals a year. There was mention of the Pergamon Institute, which disseminated 'research carried out in Russia and other people's democratic republics' and a statement that he had produced a film of the Bolshoi ballet. The full account of his war record was: 'got into the army when he was 16, was wounded in the battle of France in 1940, escaped from a POW camp, was commissioned in the field for bravery during the Normandy invasion and awarded the MC in 1945. He was later with the Foreign Office in West Berlin and helped launch three socialist democrat newspapers [sic].’ To the uninformed, it would seem that Maxwell had fought throughout the war in the British army.

  Persuading the committee was not an easy task for Maxwell. Candidates normally must show long membership and a laudable record of working for the party. He could show neither. According to the local newspaper, he told the committee that the Esher Labour Party was dormant but he had become a member 'twelve months' earlier. In 1973 he said that he joined 'some time after the war. I don't have any specific time or date.' He also agreed that it 'may
well be true' that he joined 'only a few weeks before nomination'. Since he was not officially registered at Esher or at Aylesbury, and certainly did not apply for membership just before the selection meeting, it is probable that Maxwell was not even a member when he faced the committee. He did assure its members, however, that he had been 'an active supporter of the party since 1945' and a Fabian since 1956.

  The opposition against him was vocal. Some were frankly unsympathetic to a foreign-born millionaire as a Labour Member, while others clearly favoured one of the local candidates. The day before the selection, the sitting Tory MP Sir Frank Markham advised the Labour committee to choose a local man because 'This constituency has never yet been won in any contested election other than by a North Bucks man.' Most of the committee probably agreed with him. But after the five candidates had made their speeches and had been questioned, the stalwarts were deeply divided. Maxwell had, according to Bryan Barnard, the constituency's agent, 'outshone them all by his delivery, the content of the speech and the way he dealt with questions'. Frank Atter, a fitter from Wolverton, a member of the committee and later a bitter opponent, remembers that Maxwell spoke 'very well'. After a marathon eleven hours and three ballots the committee announced that 'Captain Ian Robert Maxwell MC was their choice.

  Hours later Maxwell made a rousing speech, commenting on the 'magnificent turnout of delegates' and defiantly declaring war against his opponent: 'From here on Sir Frank can expect unrelentless [sic] trouble and fight. He had better get up early in the morning if he wants to hold on to his seat. Due to Gordon Evans's dreadful accident, he [Sir Frank] has been feeling pretty sure he will walk away once again by fooling the people as he usually does at election time by talking our kind of philosophy and selling the socialist line to the people. But let us not forget that he was a turncoat.' The meaning of the last comment was unclear. After predicting a 'four to six thousand majority' at the election, he promised to 'hold on to the seat for an eternity'. At a press conference on the same day, he handed out a release in which his background was described as a man 'of farm labouring stock [who], with only his army gratuity behind him, started a scientific publishing business'. His brief membership of the party was not mentioned and, when asked about the recent purchase of Headington Hall, he replied that they were 'business premises and I shall not live there'.

  The controversy about Maxwell's nomination broke nationally within hours of its announcement. The Daily Telegraph reported a NEC meeting at Transport House where Dan McGarvey, a trade union leader, and Tom Agar, a Co-Op representative, allegedly moved motions to oppose Maxwell's candidature because it broke the rule that candidates needed two years' membership of the party to qualify for nomination. James Callaghan was also reported to be critical that Maxwell had not served 'an apprenticeship the hard way', but the party leader Hugh Gaitskell marshalled the majority to approve Maxwell's candidature. Since James Callaghan cannot recollect the meeting and since the others mentioned are dead, it is impossible to confirm the report's accuracy. But, inevitably, the Conservative newspapers saw political capital in the new candidate's background - he was foreign, rich and lived in a mansion in Oxford.

  The second source of discord was more wounding. His biographical sketches had not mentioned his birthplace and the local newspapers carried articles suggesting that his foreign background had been concealed even from the selection committee. Atter believes that Maxwell's Czech birth was not known at the meeting but is equally certain that it would have made no difference. Barnard believes that the committee knew. Maxwell admitted to the local newspaper that he had not mentioned his past publicly because 'I have come to look on Britain as my country and did not think it worth mentioning,' and he insisted that the selection committee possessed 'all my antecedents'. The local paper was properly sympathetic to the omission, quoting a supporter: 'Captain Maxwell is no more a foreigner than Prince Philip. Like him he was born abroad, came here as a boy, fought for this country and has been working for its interests ever since.'

  At his adoption meeting in Wilton Hall, three hundred Labour supporters stood and applauded their candidate. Gordon Evans, despite his injuries, spoke for Maxwell in a tape-recording and praised the party for choosing a candidate 'from another small country' who had risked his life for Britain. Maxwell responded with a grand gesture, the 'Buckingham Plan for Nuclear Disarmament', which proposed that the nuclear powers should place their weapons 'in trust for the United Nations' and that they should pledge themselves not to test or use their bombs and ultimately to hand them over to the UN. Copies of his anti-unilateralist plan, he told his new supporters, had already been sent to President Eisenhower, Nikita Khrushchev and Hugh Gaitskell. North Bucks had not previously been a launching pad for the world stage but its new Labour candidate was ambitious. The following day, the election was called for 8 October.

  Barnard describes the party's organisation as 'poor'. The constituency covered a large area containing the two towns, Bletchley and Wolverton, and dozens of villages. Over the previous years, canvassing of the electorate to discover Labour supporters had been patchy and the organisation of the party in the villages was practically non-existent. For a marginal, where every vote counted, it was a serious handicap. But Maxwell was undaunted and set off in military style, driving a Humber Super Snipe, with his headquarters, a caravan, trailing behind. At night, a tent could be attached to provide sleeping accommodation. His campaign would not suffer from a lack of energy or determination, but any aspirations to lofty ideals were dashed within the first twenty-four hours. Maxwell's ambitious peace initiative was buried and forgotten beneath an onslaught against his personal credibility. He became the victim of unadulterated racial prejudice.

  The first intimation of trouble was the news that Tom Mitchinson, the vice-president of the local Labour Party who had been rejected as the candidate, had signed the nomination papers of the Conservative MP, Frank Markham. Mitchinson claimed that Maxwell had definitely not told the selection committee that he was born in Czechoslovakia and that he, Mitchinson, was therefore 'dissatisfied' with the procedures. The Tories naturally jumped for joy over the defection and began openly to solicit support for their candidate on the basis that he was 'English through and through'.

  By the second day, Mitchinson's desertion sparked a wider whispering campaign which questioned Maxwell's business reputation and the collapse of Simpkin Marshall, and even raised doubts whether he had really won the MC. By the third day, a printed list of questions had been compiled by Markham's team which Tory supporters were urged to put to Maxwell at his meetings. All were personally damaging - about his experiences in the Czech army, his name when he won the MC, about Simpkins, and why he employed non-union labour at Pergamon. Wounded, Maxwell protested that he was the helpless 'victim of a smear campaign', but clearly his original autobiographical account had contributed to the suspicion.

  His quickly prepared rebuttal fuelled the controversy. The Military Cross, he explained, was awarded when serving in the 7th Armoured Division (the Desert Rats)'; he obtained a letter from James Pitman declaring that there was 'no blemish attached to Captain Maxwell's career in the matter of his scientific book career', which was not relevant to the collapse of Simpkins; and he said that Pergamon's staff were 'all encouraged to join their trade unions', which the Tories disputed. The election campaign degenerated into what was politely described as a 'fierce' fight and by locals as a brawl, since Maxwell took his defence into his enemies' camp by personally attending Markham's meetings to hurl questions at his detractor. Their battle formally ended at the count in Buckingham's council chamber, the day after the election, amid 'unprecedented . . . noise and din'.

  Since Harold Macmillan's Conservative government was returned to office with an increased majority, Maxwell had no chance of winning his own election. Sir Frank Markham was re-elected with a slightly increased majority of 1,746 votes, although proportionately the vote for both Markham and Maxwell fell. But Maxwell could console himself with th
e knowledge that while nationally the swing to the Tories was just over 1 per cent, in North Bucks it was less at 0.6 per cent - which was a positive reflection of the campaign he had fought. At the end of the count, Maxwell was undaunted, but he was still bitter and refused to shake the victor's hand. To loud cheers and even louder boos he tried to make the traditional thanks but his voice was drowned when he claimed that victory would have belonged to him 'had the Tories fought cleanly'. When the uproar finally subsided, Maxwell shouted, 'Long live socialism and victory!', and after revealing that he had served writs alleging defamation on three Conservatives attending the count, he went to a meeting of rail-workers where he pledged himself to 'stick with you’

  Like all defeated candidates, Maxwell suffered an anti-climax after the defeat but it was brief. Barnard recalls that 'Elisabeth was particularly hurt but the bitterness had made him more determined than ever.' The prospect of waiting four years for another election was not a depressing one since, unlike most aspiring candidates, he had not had to suffer the tedious process of establishing his credentials with successive constituency associations and with the party leaders. He had started at the top and needed only to fertilise his new roots in Bucks and at Transport House.

  By the turn of the year he had found a small house in the constituency and with Barnard's guidance began attending the necessary functions to court his supporters and to prove that he would be a worthy candidate at the next election. Simultaneously, he and Barnard organised an elaborate canvass of every voter; it would take four years to complete but could be guaranteed to pay rich dividends. Under Maxwell, the constituency would be managed like all his other businesses.