The Great Cat Massacre

by Gareth Rubin

  THE WRONG NUMBER – THE INVASION OF GRENADA, 1983

  The Americans do like their dramatic codenames. And the invasion of the former British dominion of Grenada was named Operation Urgent Fury, which seems excessive.

  Anyhow, the American invasion restored the constitutional government to the small island a wee bit north of Venezuela, after a military junta had seized power from the ruling People’s Revolutionary Government, which had itself seized power from the elected government four years previously with the help of the Soviet Union and Cuba. The American invasion outraged the sort of person who gets outraged by that sort of thing, but especially the People’s Revolutionary Government, which went so far as to send a telex to the British Foreign Office on 23 October 1983 alerting the British government to the invasion and begging them to talk the Yankee imperialists out of it.

  Unfortunately, the telex number the People’s Revolutionary Government used was for an office no longer used by the Foreign Office, but instead occupied by a Scandinavian plastics firm, which seemed bemused by the request for military assistance from Grenada to fight off an invasion by the United States.

  Margaret Thatcher was another of those people outraged by the US invasion, but by the time she heard about it the best she could do was telephone the White House and object to it. Had the telex been sent to the right number, she would have known rather earlier and could possibly have mediated between the Americans and the Grenadians. As it was, relations between Britain and the United States were severely soured by the affair.

  In the House of Commons, Denis Healey, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, posed the question:

  I should like the Foreign Secretary to tell us whether it is true, as widely reported in the newspapers this morning, that both the Prime Minister and the Palace first heard of the invasion from press reports. Is it also true that a telex from the Government of Grenada announcing the invasion was delivered to an old Foreign Office number which now belongs to a Scandinavian plastics company? It is difficult to believe that incompetence and lack of grip could go any further. How on earth could the Prime Minister possibly imagine that a couple of minutes on the telephone with President Reagan, when the invasion was already underway, would make any difference? The Prime Minister has been an obedient poodle to the American President.

  THE WORLD’S WORST CODE – THE DOGS OF WAR TRIAL, 2004

  Question: According to the CIA World Factbook, which African country has the highest Gross National Product per person?

  Answer: Equatorial Guinea.

  For those who did not even know there was somewhere called Equatorial Guinea in the first place, it must come as a real shock to know the inhabitants are some of the richest people in the world. Well, up to a point, anyway.

  Equatorial Guinea is an oil-and gas-rich brutal African dictatorship where most of the 500,000-strong population desperately trying to find enough food to eat each day probably have no idea that they are all millionaires. One person perfectly aware of the nation’s wealth is President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who seized power from his uncle in a military coup in 1979. It must have been quite a day when massive oil and gas fields were discovered in Equatorial Guinea’s waters, propelling the country up the international wealth list overnight. But, as every African dictator knows, one thing that tends to follow a sudden expansion of your bank account is an expansion in the number of people who want to shoot you.

  In 2004 it turned out that the latest group of people attempting to depose Obiang in a very direct manner were a group of foreign professionals – i.e. mercenaries. They were led by an Old Etonian former SAS officer, Simon Mann, who was then working in South Africa.

  On 7 March 2004 a plane landed in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. The passengers were 64 mercenaries, most of whom had fought in the civil wars that had rampaged through Mozambique and Angola. They were stopping off in Harare to pick up weapons and ammunition arranged by Mann, who was already there. From there, they were to fly to the capital of Equatorial Guinea, Malabo, where they would join an advance team of 15, who were already there. They would then infiltrate Obiang’s home and either fly him to exile in Spain or simply blow his brains out, depending on how pleasant he was. Behind them was an opposition leader, Severo Moto, who would declare himself president and no doubt bring in an era of peace and prosperity for all, without any more of the corruption and systematic embezzlement that had characterised Obiang’s murderous regime.

  Sadly for those concerned, the coup was scuppered before it had even begun when the Zimbabwean police arrested everyone upon arrival in Harare. The problem was that plans for military coups in Africa tend to be common knowledge – even if most of the people involved are professionals who keep their lips sealed, there’s always one who boasts about it at the local bar or brothel. Not only was Obiang aware of the scheme, having been tipped off by the South African security service, the Scorpions, but Zimbabwean security was also on the case because they had become suspicious of Mann’s attempts to buy arms in the country.

  So, when the passengers of the plane were arrested on immigration charges, Mann was also seized. Not one to lose his nerve, though, he tried to talk his way out of it, claiming the men were all on their way to a contract to provide security for diamond mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The story was believed until the Equatorial Guinean police got in touch, after arresting the advance party. Most outraged was the Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, perhaps angry that there was a plan to create a military dictatorship that wasn’t going to involve him. When interrogated, Mann revealed that he had been introduced to Moto by a Lebanese businessman, Ely Calil, who had originated the coup plan.

  The captive Mann knew he needed the support of the money men behind the scheme – probably to bribe his way out of prison and away from the danger of being executed by what passed for a justice system in Equatorial Guinea, should he be extradited. He managed to write a letter to his wife, Amanda, on scraps of paper, asking her to get in touch with the rich men in the shadows. Here is where he made his fatal error, however. Having neglected to agree codenames with his wife in advance, he resorted to schoolboy-like attempts to disguise the names, thus revealing the full details of who organised what when the letter was intercepted. Mann had referred to ‘Smelly’ and ‘Scratcher’. ‘Smelly’ was clearly Eli, but the South Africans rightly guessed that ‘Scratcher’ was Mark Thatcher, the businessman son of the former British prime minister, then living in South Africa. This letter and its laughable approach at disguise was the evidence that the South Africans needed to prosecute.

  Thatcher was arrested and charged with providing logistical support for the coup, which became known as the ‘Dogs Of War’ plot after Frederick Forsyth’s novel of the same name, which dealt with a similar story. Although he denied any knowledge, it didn’t look good for Thatcher when the police noticed that his home in South Africa was up for sale and his bags were packed in what looked a lot like an attempt to evade the law.

  Newspapers worldwide reported the case – many in Africa portraying the Mann affair as a British plot to once more rule the continent, which went to the very top of the establishment (Eton, the British Army, Margaret Thatcher). All this added to anti-British feeling and soured a few relations.

  Thatcher eventually managed to avoid extradition to Equatorial Guinea by pleading guilty in South Africa. He was fined three million rand (£250,000). In Equatorial Guinea, the leader of the advance party and Mann, who had been extradited, were sentenced to 34 years in prison each; Moro was given a 63-year sentence in absentia (it is presumed he won’t be going back to serve it voluntarily). Mann was eventually released after five years, and in 2011 he wrote a book about the plot entitled Cry Havoc, from Shakespeare’s line in Julius Caesar: ‘Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war’.

  * The Dutch national anthem, ‘The Wilhelmus’, is named after him. He may, perhaps, have performed a little dance whenever he heard it.

  ** Suggestion of heresy.
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  *** Suggestion of homosexuality.

  **** Suggestion of Satanism.

  * It was a pointless war and the majority of the British people have no idea that it ever took place. Indeed, its greatest legacy is probably ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, now the national anthem of the United States, which was written for the defence of Baltimore.

  * The moment before he died, at least, Gordon would probably have been fairly happy due to his unusual religious beliefs and the expectation that he would be reincarnated. ‘This life is only one of a series of lives which our incarnated part has lived,’ he once wrote. ‘I have little doubt of our having pre-existed; and that also in the time of our pre-existence we were actively employed. So, therefore, I believe in our active employment in a future life, and I like the thought.’ He also believed the world was enclosed in a hollow sphere and God’s throne hovered directly above the Temple of Jerusalem; the Devil’s seat was on the opposite side of the sphere, placing it above the Pitcairn Islands. The Garden of Eden, he suspected, was situated in the Seychelles.

  * Although the right for peers to be tried in the Lords remained on the statute books until 1948, the last case was in 1935. Edward Russell, Lord De Clifford (a fascist who supported Oswald Mosley) was charged with vehicular manslaughter after he drove his car on the wrong side of the road and killed another driver. Even though a coroner’s court had already found him guilty, his friends in the Lords acquitted him. Ironically, in 1928, Clifford had made his maiden speech on the subject of road safety, proposing the introduction of mandatory driving tests, and during his time in the Lords he had called for the imposition of speed limits.

  * When people speak of the Charge of the Light Brigade, they often quote the French commander Marshall Pierre Bosquet: ‘C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre!’ (It is magnificent, but it is not war.) Yet, for some reason his final words are cut off: … ‘C’est folie.’ (It is madness.)

  * Hence the phrase ‘bite the bullet’.

  * The Foreign Secretary, Lord Clarendon, once described Clark as ‘not fit to attend a sick cat’.

  * In fact, British pilots often looked on jealously as their Hunnish opposite numbers saved their skins with Calthrop’s Patent Safety Guardian Angel Parachute, which had been designed in London, sold to Moscow and copied by Berlin.

  * The raids on the two capitals continued for years, with variable success. Among those especially unlucky were the residents of West Ham in east London. The Labour councillors who controlled it had declared they would have nothing to do with a ‘capitalist war’. As pacifists, they refused to make warmongering preparations, such as building bomb shelters. It led to a terrible incident on 9 September 1940 when 450 people sheltering in a school died because they had no more appropriate place to hide.

  The main lesson from the history of cultural creation is that those who most want to contribute to it are often the last people you want doing so. In the fields of literature, architecture and study of history, it’s usually someone so fixated on leaving a part of himself to posterity who has his back turned to the realities of the here and now. So desperate to be judged well by future generations, he often feels he can get away with leaving the current one to hang or believes in flattering liars who should be turned out and pursued with a pitchfork and flaming torches.

  A FAKE THAT STUCK – NAMING THE HILLS, 1747

  Not exactly a mistake, but a hoax that continues to this day and will go on fooling people for a long time. The Pennine Hills aren’t really the Pennines – or at least you might as well make up your own name for them, really.

  The story begins in 1746 when Charles Bertram, a 23-year-old English tutor at the Royal Marine Academy in Copenhagen, began to correspond with a noted British historian, William Stukeley.

  Bertram claimed to have found an ancient manuscript composed by a medieval English monk by the name of Richard of Westminster. It included a travelling itinerary by a Roman general complete with the lost Roman names for British places and a map. The document apparently detailed the Roman occupation of Britain.

  His letter read that he had ‘at present in my Possession, a copy of an old Manuscript Fragment (and am in hopes of getting the original) called Ricardi Monachi Westmonasteriensis comentariolum Geographicum de situ Britanniae & Stationum quas Romani ipsi in ea Insula aedificauerunt. It seems to me to have been part of a greater Treatise compiled out of Beda, Orosius, Pliny, &c. & some Authors quite unknown; it is pity it is so tenuous, consisting only of four sheets & an half in Quarto, the half of Parchment on which is depicted in colours the Islands of Britain, but in a manner peculiar to this Author.’

  Stukeley was excited – at the time, many historians had been discussing how Britain had been divided during the Roman era – and asked to see the document. Bertram sent him what he said was a copy he had made of the original, which he did not want to send. He later sent Stukeley a fragment of parchment, which was confirmed by an expert as being four centuries old.

  Stukeley went about researching this mysterious mediaeval monk and found, by chance, a likely candidate with a similar name and background, adding to his belief that the document was genuine. He announced to the world that an invaluable record of Roman Britain had been found, declaring: ‘We learn from the present work, now happily preserved, the completest account of the Roman state of Brittain, and of the most antient inhabitants thereof; and the geography thereof admirably depicted in a most excellent map.’

  Bertram published the document and map as De Situ Britanniae (Description of Britain), and the pair were generally taken to be true by British scholars. Only a few people casually enquired why no one was ever allowed to see the original document, which Bertram had kept in his possession. Of course, the reason was that it was a complete fake that he had manufactured from a combination of genuine ancient authorities and his own highly vivid imagination.

  It was a time when classicism was all the rage for cartographers and they went about renaming parts of Britain according to any Roman names they could lay their hands on, including Bertram’s map. Bertram had written that the Romans had named the series of mountains in the heart of the country after the Italian Apennine range: ‘This province is divided into two equal parts by a chain of mountains called the Pennine Alps, which rising on the confines of the Iceni and Carnabii, near the River Trivona (River Trent), extend towards the north in a continued series of fifty miles,’ he stated. When the Ordnance Survey heard this, the spurious name was included in maps from then on.

  It was not until 1845 that people began to question the validity of the document, and over the coming decades it was proved to be fake, but by that time the place names had stuck.

  PREMATURE ENDING – KUBLA KHAN GETS SHORTENED, 1797

  In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

  A stately pleasure-dome decree:

  Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

  Through caverns measureless to man

  Down to a sunless sea.

  So twice five miles of fertile ground

  With walls and towers were girdled round;

  And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

  Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

  And here were forests ancient as the hills,

  Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

  So wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He composed the famous work after an opium-inspired dream, while holed up in a farmhouse on Exmoor. The preface to the work states that it was printed ‘at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity, and as far as the author’s own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the ground of any supposed poetic merits’. It runs to 54 lines but, adds the preface, it was meant to be much longer:

  The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he had the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two or three hundred lines … On Awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct re
collection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved.

  At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purpose of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter!

  POOR DRESS SENSE – IMPROVING CRICKET, 1822

  Cricket is one of the few games so slow you can actually enjoy a full meal while you play it. Yet, staggering as it may sound, it used to be even slower. Bowlers were once gentlemanly sorts who would gently toss the ball to the batsman using an underarm delivery. This would allow the batsman to take in the vista before knocking the ball back to his chum. Then one day a young tearaway by the name of John Willes asked his sister to give him a hand with his batting practice. She turned up wearing one of those house-sized skirts of the era, however, and it was clear that she would be unable to deliver the ball in the usual way, so she threw it to him in a straight-armed, around-the-body motion.

  Willes found it much more difficult for the batsman, and not caring one jot for sportsmanship, he began to terrorise other blameless batters in that fashion. Soon it developed into the over-arm style now in fashion.

  WARMING UP – CARLYLE HAS TO REWRITE HIS MAGNUM OPUS, 1843

  Thomas Carlyle, the greatest historian of his day, was a good friend of tedious political theorist John Stuart Mill. As part of their friendship, Carlyle gave Mill the 300,000-word manuscript of the first volume of his work The French Revolution to look over and comment upon.