Commando General

by Richard B Mead

  In his letter to the Permanent Secretary at the Colonial Office agreeing to the extension of his term, Bob had written, ‘I do not think that it will be a very happy one!’4 So, indeed, it turned out. He was in London for talks at the Colonial Office early in the New Year, when he also met the new Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan. After a summer of little progress but increasingly rude letters from Mintoff, who went down with a bad case of jaundice, which did nothing to improve his mood, Bob was back in London again in October. Mintoff proved to be as difficult as ever and the talks dragged on for four weeks without any definite conclusion, Bob writing at one stage to Angie:

  God knows how long this farce will continue & yet I don’t see how Mintoff can go back to Malta with nothing. He MUST go back soon as the Legislative Assemble opens on 4 Nov. All we have done is get various things accepted in principle but Mintoff has kicked violently at any suggestions for putting them into practice!

  The discussions were led on the British side by the Earl of Perth, the Minister of State for the Colonies and became particularly acrimonious when Mintoff flatly refused to consider raising loans or putting up taxes, let alone reducing subsidies.

  It was the dockyard which had emerged as the major problem between the two sides. It was becoming apparent that the British Government was unable to guarantee work from the Royal Navy for more than a very limited period, and efforts to replace this with commercial contracts were not likely to cover the shortfall. Mintoff ’s own power base derived in large measure from the dockyard unions, although he fell out with them in the autumn of 1957, as a result of which he resigned temporarily as Prime Minister in favour of his deputy, Ellul Mercer, only to make up with them shortly afterwards.

  The atmosphere deteriorated further as it became clear that the British Government was not prepared to accede to Mintoff ’s proposal that any dockyard worker laid off should be guaranteed alternative employment. Threats were made of reprisals, such as cutting off supplies and services to British troops on the island. With the mood becoming progressively uglier, Bob travelled yet again to London to meet Lennox-Boyd and Macmillan. He returned to a difficult situation, exemplified by the decision of the Maltese Government to boycott the traditional Candlemas Ceremony on 2 February 1958, on the grounds that Bob was no longer impartial. Instead of integration with Great Britain, the talk turned to full independence, with Mintoff threatening that the Russians would pay much more for use of the dockyard than the British were proposing to do.

  In March 1958 Bob flew to London yet again. He had delayed his departure in order to receive the Queen Mother, who stopped briefly in Malta on her way back to London after a world tour. She offered Bob a seat in her plane, and his presence came as a great surprise to the Queen, who met her mother at Heathrow. In addition to his usual meetings at the Colonial Office, Bob had one other reason for going to London: to see a specialist about his leg, which was causing him considerable pain. The specialist diagnosed a slipped disc close to the sacro-iliac joint and recommended that he go into a nursing home for more detailed examination, but Bob was unable to spare the time.

  In between the punishing schedule of visits to London and meetings with Mintoff and the other party leaders in Malta, Bob and Angie were at least managing to lead a satisfactory family and social life. By 1957 Joe had left Eton and was at Sandhurst hoping for a commission in the Blues. Tilly and Mark Agnew were in London, where their daughter, Leonie, had been born in March 1956. In that year Ben went to prep school in England, whilst Emma, after two terms in a local convent school, after which she was taught alongside two army children by a governess, also went to boarding school in England in 1958 for the final years of her education. Only Martha remained in Malta for the whole period, initially taught by a governess and then at a succession of schools.

  If Bob and Angie were not entertaining in the evening, their favourite recreation was bridge, with a number of like-minded friends. Freda Dudley Ward came to stay for a month every year, during which the game changed to canasta. She was sometimes accompanied by Bobby Casa Maury, although they had divorced in 1954. In the summer of 1957, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor arrived in Malta aboard Loel Guinness’s yacht, Calisto, and came to dinner at St Anton, whilst Bob and Hall went to lunch on the yacht. In the light of her family history, Angie thought it politic to be away. Many other friends also turned up and most stayed, including David Stirling, although Bob baulked at having Randolph Churchill in the house other than for a meal!

  The Laycocks had the use of the Governor’s barge, which was a former picket boat with a cabin, coxed by a genial Maltese called Joe Vassallo. When not on official business, this was used extensively for picnics, and Bob became very keen on snorkelling off the beaches around Malta and Gozo. Angie also kept a small sailing boat at St Paul’s Bay.

  Due to the political situation, Bob took less than half his full leave entitlement, but when he did it tended to be locally in the Mediterranean. The two or three occasions on which he and Angie were invited on a cruise aboard HMS Surprise as the guest of the Royal Navy were not treated as leave by virtue of the formal occasions with which they were punctuated. On one of their few proper holidays the family came very close to disaster. They had chartered a motor yacht, the St Francis, and were cruising near Corfu, when the weather deteriorated sharply, with heavy rain and a short, steep sea. Ben, on holiday from his prep school, came on deck to be seasick, but as he reached the rail, the yacht gave a violent lurch and he was flung overboard. Luckily he was seen by a deck hand, who sounded the alarm and the ship came round on to the opposite course. A searchlight found Ben, but an attempt to launch the dinghy failed when it filled with water, stove in its side and sank. David Hall then dived in fully clothed and, although not a particularly strong swimmer, succeeded in reaching Ben, who was exhausted. He swam back to the yacht with him, but neither had the strength to use the ladder and they had to be hauled in by hand. Hall was nominated for and subsequently awarded the Royal Humane Society’s Stanhope Gold Medal for the most gallant rescue of the year.

  In addition to his family and social life, Bob’s other pleasure was his connection to the armed forces, not only of Great Britain, but also of its allies. He was always delighted to be invited to spend time with 3 Commando Brigade and also enjoyed going aboard the ships of the Royal Navy: when Montgomery visited the island, he arranged for him to spend a day on the destroyer HMS Alamein. Bob particularly impressed the Italians when their sail-training ship, the Amerigo Vespucci, called in and he climbed up the rigging and on to the lower mainmast top via the futtock shrouds rather than through the ‘lubber’s hole’. His relationship with the Americans was particularly good, to the extent that when Admiral Cato D. Glover, the Acting C-in-C of NATO’s naval forces in the Mediterranean, learnt that Bob was to visit the Pope once again in Rome, he insisted that he should travel in USS Forrestal, at the time the largest aircraft carrier in the world. On this occasion, Bob and Hall were given a private tour of the Vatican and both had an audience with Pope Pius. Bob went again in 1959 to meet the new Pope, John XXIII, but this time he took Angie with him.

  These occasions were, however, only diversions from what had become a highly demanding and frustrating job. Notwithstanding his attempts to remain neutral, Bob was increasingly and publicly accused by Mintoff of bias towards the British Government’s position. In April 1958 Mintoff resigned again over a proposal from Lennox-Boyd that there should be a five-year period in which the financial and constitutional provisions of integration were implemented, but that during this time Malta would be neither integrated with the United Kingdom nor represented at Westminster. Borg Olivier was invited to form a government, but declined, and Bob was compelled to suspend the Assembly and take direct control of the Civil Service. Demonstrations were held and the General Workers Union called a one-day strike, during which the police were stoned by strikers whilst trying to remove roadblocks. Immediately afterwards, Bob declared a state of public emergency, giving increased powers
to the police and banning all meetings and demonstrations for three months.

  Bob travelled to London yet again at the end of May, having canvassed the views of all parties other than Labour, which declined his invitation. He was there for two months in intensive talks at the Colonial Office and other government departments, much of which was focused on the dockyard. The conclusion was reached that it should be commercialized, and discussions were held with a number of possible operators, agreement finally being reached with C. H. Bailey Ltd. Once Bob was back in Malta, this was announced, but the Labour Party immediately instructed the unions not to cooperate with the company.

  Bob was now asked to extend his term further to the end of May 1959, so when new talks were convened in London for November, he was present. Mintoff was also there, but this time he demanded not integration, but immediate and full independence. When Bob returned to Malta, he broadcast on the radio, placing the blame for the collapse of negotiations squarely on the shoulders of the Leader of the Labour Party and spelling out what the implications of splitting from the United Kingdom would be for Malta’s economy and employment. Direct rule by the Governor’s Council was imposed, but trouble continued, especially when the Admiralty announced that it was laying off 6,000 workers in the dockyard but that they would be taken on again by C. H. Bailey. Riots broke out, and Rear Admiral Lee-Barber, the Admiral Superintendent, was stoned and chased by the rioters. C. H. Bailey took over formally at the end of March and only twenty-four of the 6,000 workers rejected the offer of a job.

  By that time the name of Bob’s successor, his old friend Admiral Sir Guy Grantham, had been announced. Bob himself was greatly relieved to be stepping down, as he had found the last few months exceptionally difficult. He was nevertheless admired in London, and by many in Malta, for his patience and forbearance, whilst Mintoff was far from universally popular on the island. Bob’s failure to broker a resolution to the constitutional question was widely recognized as the result of the British Government’s unwillingness to write what amounted to a blank cheque for Malta and Mintoff ’s refusal to consider anything else.

  Angie was to be missed by many in Malta, where she had enjoyed herself immensely. In addition to her duties as a hostess in support of Bob, at which she was a natural, she carved out a very distinct role for herself as an influential and enthusiastic supporter and patron of a number of local charities, including orphanages and church organizations.

  Bob and Angie’s departure on 28 May 1959 was as ceremonial as their arrival. They had been invited by the C-in-C Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Sir Alexander Bingley, to sail in HMS Surprise to Nice, where Bob was to meet and brief Grantham. The voyage took the form of a cruise via Minorca and Corsica, and the ship carried Bob’s Rolls Royce on board so that they could drive through France back to England. On their arrival in Nice, Bob’s back gave out and he was admitted for a short time to the American Hospital. Angie, Hall and Celia Monckton went to the casino in Monte Carlo, where they pooled their meagre foreign currency allowances for Angie to bet all their money on Ben’s birthday. The number duly came up!

  Chapter 22

  Sunset

  Bob’s accrued leave at the end of his Governorship amounted to 98 days, most of which he and Angie planned to spend on a cruise in the Caribbean at the beginning of 1960. Bob calculated that, if he was to avoid paying UK income tax and surtax on all his income for the year ending 5 April 1960, which combined to produce a marginal rate of nineteen shillings and sixpence in the pound, he would have to stay out of the country for a further three months. Accordingly, that autumn they rented a large house outside Dublin and moved there until the New Year.

  This was not a particularly happy period. The house itself, whilst attractive from the outside, lacked many modern amenities, notably central heating. As the electricity supply was highly erratic and the fuses inadequate for appliances such as irons, the family had to rely on open fires to provide warmth. Bob spent as much time as he could in the garden, but Angie was miserable about leaving Malta.

  There were other problems. Tilly’s marriage was failing and, having espoused communism, she was having an affair with a left-wing journalist whilst working as a journalist herself on the Evening Standard in London. Her daughter Leonie, now two years old, was brought to stay with Bob and Angie, but, possibly because of the ructions between her parents, she cried a lot, driving the household to distraction. Joe had resigned his commission in the Army and was uncertain what he should do next: in the meantime, his growing interest in alternative religions and cults irritated his parents. Emma had just left school and was a typically grumpy teenager. Only Ben, now at Eton but back for the Christmas holidays and always cheerful, and Martha, who went to school locally for a term and was quiet and even-tempered, seemed immune from depression.

  As Bob and Angie had relations and many friends in Ireland, at least their social life was good. However, there was some relief at the beginning of 1961 when the tenancy ended. In January Ben returned to school and Martha began boarding at Heathfield, whilst Emma went to Blois to learn French. Soon afterwards, Bob and Angie left on their cruise.

  The outbound leg of their journey, on the French ship SS Colombie, took them to Barbados, from where they flew on to St Vincent and then travelled by plane or ship to Grenada, St Lucia, Tobago and Trinidad, staying for the most part with the Governors of the territories. From Trinidad they visited Caracas, the only place they heartily disliked. Bob, who wrote very amusing letters to his children in verse, described it to Emma as a:

  Ghastly place that ought,

  Or so we thought,

  To be annihilated – for you might as well

  Live there as rent a boarding house in Hell!1

  In Caracas they boarded the SS Antilles, of the same shipping line as the Colombie, which took a leisurely route via Curaçao, Jamaica, Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico and Vigo to Plymouth, where they arrived towards the end of March.

  The main issue on Bob and Angie’s return was what to do with Wiseton Hall: with over 100 rooms, many of which had never been used, the house was totally impractical for modern living and enormously expensive to maintain. There appears to have been no intention to stay on in Winkfield after Malta, and the Old Vicarage was sold. During a long visit to London for the Malta talks in 1957, Bob had written to Angie:

  And now Wiseton. You know that I have been going through hell trying to convince myself that there really is a good excuse for leaving the soil of my youth and a community to which I feel I owe loyalty. Now I reckon I have got it. I have just heard that they are going to sink a new pit our side of the North Road to mine the coal to the east with another pit village between us and Ramskill. This is the final straw and has broken the camel’s back.’2

  He sought an alternative and, almost certainly at the suggestion of Antony Head, looked at Boyton Manor in Wiltshire, not far from the Heads’ home near Bishopstone. The house, whose park Bob found particularly attractive, was to come up for sale in the following autumn. It may have been because of the extension to his term as Governor, but he evidently decided not to put in a bid. Instead, putting aside his concerns about the activities of the National Coal Board, he conceived a radical plan to pull down Wiseton Hall and build a much smaller and more practical house on the site.

  Whilst only a fraction of the size of its predecessor, the new neo-Georgian house was still large by modern standards, with four spacious reception rooms, eight bedrooms, including a substantial master suite, and all the usual offices. The old stables were untouched and let to a racehorse trainer, who turned out to be extremely bad at paying his rent. The gardens remained much the same, although they had been allowed to run down somewhat and Bob and Angie had to clear a wilderness of brambles and nettles, he with a pick and an axe, she with a tractor. The cricket pitch was retained for the regular use of the Wiseton Cricket Club, and Bob offered a reward of £5 to any batsman who could hit one of the windows in the house!

  During the b
uilding process, which took up much of 1960, the family lived in two cottages on the estate, in one of which they slept and Bob had his study, carrying out chemical experiments in the kitchen, whilst the other was used for eating and guest accommodation. Bob and Angie were able to get away for visits to friends such as the Cazalets, Heads and Cotterrells, and also spent time in London, where they were invited to dine with the Queen.

  There had been two significant deaths in the Laycock family whilst they were in Malta, Bob’s sister Joyce, Lady Daresbury, in November 1958, and his mother Kitty, three months later at the age of eighty-six. To Bob’s great regret, he and Angie were unable to attend either funeral, but he had managed to visit his mother on a number of occasions during his frequent journeys to London and found that she had softened considerably in old age. To compound Bob’s loss, his half-sister Kathleen also died, in November 1960, at the early age of sixty-two; she had divorced Bill Rollo in 1946 and had married Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Asquith.

  Bob resumed his duties as a director of Lloyds Bank on his return to the UK, but with the move from Winkfield he resigned from the Windsor Hospital Management Board. He now picked up a similar appointment as a member of the Sheffield Regional Hospital Board, and was also appointed a Governor of Welbeck College,3 which was located nearby at Worksop and provided sixthform education to candidates for the engineering branches of the three armed services and the Ministry of Defence.

  He was almost certainly even more pleased by two military appointments in 1960. On 11 April he was made Colonel Commandant of the Special Air Service Regiment in succession to Miles Dempsey, and on 9 May he followed the Duke of Portland as Honorary Colonel of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry. Although Bob had never served with the Sherwood Rangers, that appointment maintained a family tradition begun by his father seventy years earlier and continued by his two brothers. After the War the regiment had continued operating tanks, but it converted to become an armoured reconnaissance unit in 1961. Bob’s role was not particularly demanding, but he did play a critical and successful part in negotiations with the War Office in 1967, when the Territorial Army was significantly cut back. Many yeomanry regiments were reduced to the lowest category in the new Territorial Army and Volunteer Reserve, with no equipment and no service requirement other than a week’s camp. Bob, however, used his influence to ensure that the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry retained to its singular identity as one of the squadrons of the new Royal Yeomanry, and also that it was one of only four yeomanry regiments at the time to continue in an armoured role.4 He duly became the Honorary Colonel of the new squadron.