by Hugh Purcell
‘The Love Object’ ends with the man saying, ‘I adore you but I’m not in love with you. With my commitments I don’t think I could be in love with anyone.’ In real life, the commitments were that Freeman and his family were about to leave for India, news that he conveyed to Edna on a postcard. Gossip spread soon after publication among Washington high society that this very autobiographical story was about the British ambassador but no one ever said that to Catherine. As often, the wife was the last to know. Much later, she reproached him for not warning her about the book. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘I thought it was too trivial to mention.’
In her memoir, Country Girl, Edna O’Brien adds a small postscript. She remembers an unexpected ring of her doorbell one Monday evening. Standing on the doorstep was the actor Richard Burton. He had read ‘The Love Object’, which she describes as a story ‘in which the spiritual and carnal ramifications of a love affair were laid bare’, and ‘maybe because of this, he took me to be more libertine than I was’. I invited Edna O’Brien to contribute to Freeman’s biography. She replied: ‘I know it would be more generous, were I to say yes, but I am not the person I was then and therefore I am declining your invitation to contribute.’
In April 1963, Freeman was profiled in the News of the World by the popular columnist Nancy Spain in her article ‘Dish of the Week’:
Physically John Freeman is dishy. He has aggressively red hair, a fair skin burned brick red by the wild tropical suns of Hampstead Heath, his voice has the caressing, undeviating power of all male stars, whether of the theatre or screen, and his hands are beautiful – well-kept, and somehow ruthless.
Voice and hands, as all the girls will tell you, are very important in a Dish. The public knows very little about his private life. This is not a bad thing either. Women like a bit of mystery.
He is also gentle, very big both mentally and physically, and his probing kindliness, applied with such strength and power, is the quality that most of the public remember him for in Face to Face.
‘I believe in trying to find out the truth,’ he said, ‘and then in handing it on to the public analysed in such a way that it is easily understood by them.’
Charm, charm, charm … this is the thing that counts in a Dish. And when you get allied with it a passion for the truth that almost amounts to obsession, then, indeed, you have a Dish of the Day.
Freeman wrote the page ten column in the News of the World at this time, alternating with Randolph Churchill, so Nancy Spain’s gushing piece may partly be excused as a plug for the paper. He made two comments in the interview that are worth remembering: ‘I don’t see myself as a political figure; I am a journalist, pure and simple’ and ‘I would rather like to forget my time as a TV journalist. I found out everything I could about that medium, and now I’m much more interested in the old-fashioned, written word.’ Freeman, as always, had moved on, ‘closing each door firmly behind him’.
Explaining why he wrote for the mass-circulation, scandal-sheet News of the World, Freeman said, ‘it enabled my role at the New Statesman to be rather more episcopal than it might otherwise have been’. The delicious use of the word ‘episcopal’ shows his precision with words, his pomposity, but also a self-mockery. As usual, he added that he wrote for the money. He was paid a guaranteed minimum of £2,500 per year by the News of the World. Added to his New Statesman salary and his continuing broadcasting work as a freelance, he would have been earning £12,000–15,000 a year in the mid-’60s, a good income. His page ten column consisted of 1,000 words or so of comment on the week’s news. At best it was an opinion piece, popularly expressed. ‘Damaging Questions the Premier Must Answer’ referred to the Profumo scandal. In the article Freeman wrote that he had known, and liked, Jack Profumo since their first days at Oxford. ‘Empty Seats? Don’t Blame Your MP’ was an argument for more pay for MPs. ‘Why the Premier Won’t Hand Over’ referred to a failed putsch by the Tories to remove Macmillan. ‘This We Risk To Guard Freedom: the press must sometimes be ready to cause offence – and damn the consequences’ was an argument for press freedom in the light of the Vassall Report.17 Freeman’s reporting of the Vassall case landed him in trouble.
John Vassall was an admiralty clerk caught spying for the Russians and sentenced to eighteen years in prison in 1962. He was a known homosexual rumoured to be having an affair with his boss, Tam Galbraith, Civil Lord of the Admiralty. This gave rise to rumours that despite going through the normal security procedures, Vassall had been protected by someone in the admiralty with the result that he had got away with his treachery for many years. In November 1962 Freeman wrote an unsigned article for the News of the World to this effect: ‘Is it possible, MPs are asking, that somewhere among senior officials lurks a Mr Big who is able to protect homosexuals from the stringent enquiry to which others are subject when they take over secret jobs?’ The Radcliffe Tribunal, conducted by three judges, was set up to investigate the supposed lapses in security. Freeman was summoned to appear. Anthony Howard remembers him slipping out of the New Statesman office ‘looking a bit sheepish’. Freeman agreed that a ‘legitimate inference’ of his article was that there was a person in the admiralty or security services protecting homosexuals, but his language had been, perhaps, ‘over-colourful’. In any event, he said, he was only expressing the concern of MPs. The tribunal concluded that Vassall had not been helped, shielded or favoured by anybody in government. Freeman had got it wrong.
In May 1963, after Parliament had debated the Radcliffe Report, Freeman wrote ‘This We Risk to Guard Freedom’. It was a provocative piece that has resonance today. He hoped that ‘we’ve now heard the last of this squalid little traitor [Vassall]’ and he admitted that the press ‘didn’t emerge from the trial with much credit’. Nevertheless, he argued, ‘There are times when the press must cause both scandal and offence – and damn the consequences.’ The alternative was a ‘press condemned to have its face washed by a government nanny’ – in other words, some form of state control. He implied that this had happened to the BBC already, despite Panorama being ‘good and responsible’: ‘The TV channels are run by men who are virtually civil servants. Their first concern is not to cause offence, not to create scandal.’ He recommended an independent chairman – perhaps Lord Radcliffe himself – for the press council. History has shown that this innovation has not worked either.18
At the general election in October 1964, the first Labour government for thirteen years was voted into power. Freeman, who had been sounded out for office in it (see Chapter 4), placed the New Statesman firmly behind new Prime Minister Harold Wilson in his efforts to modernise the party and turn it into ‘the natural governing party of Britain’. In December, Wilson visited the White House for talks with President Johnson and Freeman was in the press corps. He wrote a long New Statesman article ‘Wilson at the White House’ on 11 December. It was very complimentary: ‘Wilson certainly won the respect of his host – and probably his liking. The acceptance of Wilson as a responsible statesman is the first achievement of this week’s talks.’ Anthony Howard thought that Freeman was ‘trailing his coat’ for a diplomatic appointment and therefore directing his well-known charm at Wilson, although it was common knowledge in the New Statesman offices that the editor had little time for the Prime Minister. He once said, to approval from his fellow writers, ‘If there were a word “aprincipled” as there is a word “amoral” it would describe Wilson perfectly.’ It was nothing new for him to praise in public and criticise in private, but probably Howard was wrong on this occasion.
A few months later Wilson did invite Freeman to be the High Commissioner in India (the title equivalent in Commonwealth countries to ambassador elsewhere). Freeman said he had gone along to 10 Downing Street with his notebook expecting that he had been summoned for interview. Then the Prime Minister ‘took the wind out of my sails completely by asking me whether I would go and lead our diplomatic mission in India. I was absolutely flabbergasted and said that with his permission I would lik
e a little time to take it over.’19 This has the ring of truth about it.
Why did Freeman leave the New Statesman after only four years as editor for a completely different assignment? – advertiser, soldier, politician, broadcaster and now diplomat? Richard Crossman said that, having ‘seen through’ politics and journalism, Freeman said to himself: ‘Let me find a career so chilly and austere that I can never see through it or be bored by success.’20 How wrong he was! MacKenzie agreed that Freeman was bored by the New Statesman and no longer enjoyed it. Driberg saw Freeman more as a good citizen answering the Prime Minister’s call to undertake a task for his country. Freeman himself might well have said that although the invitation to become a diplomat came out of the blue, he had made it perfectly clear in 1961 that he saw his editorship as a consolidation of Kingsley Martin’s rule and had always intended to put a younger editor in place after a few years. Paul Johnson was the man he had in mind.
In fact Johnson’s appointment stalled at the last moment. Kingsley Martin, exhibiting his customary indecision, was worried at the prospect of a Roman Catholic editing a traditionally agnostic paper. It was left to Freeman to find a choice of words that augured well for his next role as diplomat: ‘The board has unanimously decided to appoint Mr Paul Johnson acting editor, with full editorial responsibility.’ Johnson accepted this and said he had no doubt that the position would soon be ‘regularised’. It was and he remained editor until 1970.21
Freeman’s move from Great Turnstile to Whitehall caught the attention of the press. Particularly perceptive was this profile in the Daily Mail by Marshall Pugh:
Mr Freeman was in High Wycombe yesterday, bringing out his last edition of the New Statesman with his usual gun-drill efficiency.
I don’t know who his close friends are and I don’t know anyone who does. But the mention of his name is guaranteed to start a debate among people who know him slightly.
Some say he is cold, yet he has a very warm manner, and I know of his kindness. It was Freeman who visited a dying colleague in hospital when the jollier lads couldn’t face it. He is a courteous man who can be suddenly cruel. He is a shy man who can stand around in chilling silence or suddenly expand on any subject, except John Freeman. He is a highly disciplined man who can suddenly explode. He is diffident, with enormous reserves of self-confidence.
I have drunk with him for many an hour and I am not certain I know the man at all.22
Notes
1 Quoted in Rolph, op. cit., pp. 334–5
2 Hyams, op. cit., p. xi
3 Ibid., p. 303
4 The Scotsman, June 1961
5 ‘Meet the Man from London’ by Francis Hope, New York Times, January 1969
6 For full account of this episode see Rolph, op. cit., pp. 335–42
7 Norman MacKenzie interview with the author, 2004
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Hope, op. cit.
11 MacKenzie interview with the author, 2004
12 John Freeman interview with William Hardcastle, The Listener, 12 December 1968
13 ‘Learning to Love the Bomb’ by Hugh Purcell, New Statesman, 21 March 2014
14 New Statesman, 25 October 1962
15 Norman MacKenzie to Paul Johnson (letter in possession of the author)
16 The Love Object by Edna O’Brien, Jonathan Cape, London, 1968, pp. 13–46
17 ‘Obituary of John Vassall’ by David Leitch, The Independent, 9 December 1996
18 News of the World, 12 May 1963
19 Freeman interview with Hardcastle, 1968
20 Diary of a Cabinet Minister by Richard Crossman, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1977, p. 280
21 ‘New (Acting) Statesman’ by Nicholas Tomalin, Sunday Times, December 1968
22 Daily Mail, 7 January 1965
Chapter 9
Diplomat – High Commissioner to India
THE FREEMANS SPENT the eight days over Christmas and the New Year deciding whether to accept the India posting. Civil servants in the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO), probably regarding him as a typical journalist in their eyes – that is, superficial and untrustworthy – sent Freeman a few files. Then he asked for more. Then he asked for a full background briefing to extend over Christmas. Perhaps it was the army that had drummed into him the necessity of ‘prior preparation’ and he followed that order ever after. Freeman was not a career diplomat, of course, but his previous careers had all trained him for the job in hand. He was well organised, could assimilate a brief quickly and speak to it, was a good listener and judge of character and, above all, he was a precise and fluent communicator. Over the next seven years it was to be the writing of despatches that would give him most pleasure. ‘I don’t think I would have been too ashamed’, he said later in his self-deprecating way, ‘to send a newspaper some of my despatches from India.’1
The round of press interviews he gave in January 1965 showed that Freeman the role player was perfectly capable of turning from journalist to diplomat overnight. He drew the curtain on one interview with the courteous put down: ‘Any such opinions that I do form are then the property of Her Majesty’s government [HMG].’2 Wilson wanted an independent High Commissioner who would work to him more directly than a career diplomat who had progressed through the Foreign Office. He knew since his school days that Freeman had been a believer in Indian independence and his previous job as editor of the New Statesman would serve him well in India because of the reputation of Kingsley Martin as an ardent anti-imperialist. All in all, Freeman was one of Wilson’s astute appointments.
The press approved of Freeman: ‘Tall, red-haired, powerfully built, he radiates from behind a manner of winning charm an aura of drive and effortless executive ability’3 was one press description. Another was more physically descriptive: ‘Freeman’s face has the ruddiness of a yeoman farmer. His close-cut hair is pale ginger. He stands 6 ft 2 – taller than you imagine.’4 It was his connection with India’s nationalist politicians that Freeman was most keen to talk about. On 11 January he was interviewed on the BBC Home Service Ten O’Clock News:
When I was at university in the middle of the ’30s I became acquainted with Krishna Menon who was a rather prickly political agitator for Indian independence living in London. I absorbed all his thinking. I am clear in my own mind that one of the tasks I must now address is to make certain that we in Britain understand the mood and aspirations of the younger generation of Indian politicians and also the writers and artists.5
This would become the theme of the High Commissioner’s parties at the residence.
On 31 January Freeman gave a speech at India House on the seventeenth anniversary of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. He recalled their meeting in 1932 at Westminster School: ‘How many converts to the cause of Indian independence the Mahatma made that evening I’ll never know. But I remember the sense of surprise, awe and – perhaps “melting” is the word – which his visit evoked.’ He concluded: ‘I talked to him [Gandhi] for a few minutes in private as he left and from that day on the cause of Indian independence concerned me.’6 What a pompous assertion! Freeman may have been a precocious schoolboy but he was no more than seventeen at the time!
Soon after, the High Commissioner designate took the sea route for India on the P & O liner Chusan, arriving in Bombay on 26 March. It so happened that another new member of the High Commission arrived the same way and nearly at the same time. He was John Rimington, newly appointed First Secretary of Economic Affairs, travelling with his young wife Stella, who would eventually become the first female director-general of MI5. In fact she was recruited into the spy world while in Delhi. In Open Secret she describes arriving at the very end of the Raj. The British Empire in India had formally ended in 1947 but the Raj, as it became known after Indian independence, had enjoyed an ‘Indian summer’ through the 1950s, extending though diminishing until the death of Prime Minister Nehru in 1964. An ‘Indian summer’ stands for the unexpected warmth after the season has ended. Applied to the
British Raj, it means the continuing privileged, un-‘Indianised’ lifestyle of the remaining 18,000 or so UK citizens resident in India in 1965. This became one of Freeman’s main concerns as High Commissioner. Stella Rimington observed them on her ship the RMS Caledonia:
Underneath an awning at the stern a cast of traditional characters assembled at noon each day to drink their chota pegs [measures of whisky or gin]. There were planters in knee-length khaki shorts, going back from leave to their lonely lives in the hills round Darjeeling or Assam, businessmen and engineers bound for Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi and upcountry too. There were missionaries, lots of them, travelling on the bottom decks of the boat but joining us in the evenings to watch films under the stars or make up bridge fours, playing interminably in a smoky lounge. At Port Said the magic man, the goolie-goolie man, boarded the ship and travelled with us through the Suez Canal, with white chickens up his sleeves, making them and various watches or rings disappear and reappear, just as he had done for forty years. But in 1969, when we returned from India, the Suez Canal was closed, the British businessmen and tea planters were leaving forever and India had shifted the whole direction of her diplomacy and industrial development.7
This was on Freeman’s watch: it would be a traumatic four years.
After the Chusan docked at the Gateway of India on the Bombay waterfront, Freeman flew to Delhi. The Rimingtons, fresh off the Caledonia, travelled by train:
We were met by a superior-seeming person from the Deputy High Commissioner’s office, whose job was to put us safely on the train for the 24-hour journey to Delhi. I was taken aback by what seemed to me the immense luxury of his style of life – servants in cockaded hats and long sashes offering tea and whiskies in cut tumblers, in surroundings of opulent furnishings and oriental rugs. We were further amazed on being presented with a hamper of provisions for the train journey. There was everything in there, whole chickens, pudding in a tin, and the inevitable bottle of whisky. We were told on no account to touch a morsel of food or drink offered us on the train; that way lay certain death.8