John Stonehouse, My Father

by Julia Stonehouse

  The MPs were worried that the bad behaviour of Stonehouse would reflect badly on them, and the country was getting angry. ‘Come Home Stonehouse’, yelled the Daily Mail on 2nd January, saying ‘Yard men fly out to “invite” runaway MP to return.’4 The policemen didn’t actually talk to my father, yet alone ‘invite’ him to return, and the Government were silent too. It was, of course, the calm before the storm. Meanwhile, the press were having a heyday, with so many stories to reveal, including the mysterious phone calls and letters. On the 4th, the Daily Mail called Sheila the ‘Beautiful enigma’, and on the 6th, their front-page headline was ‘What “S” Wrote to Stonehouse’, with a few quotes including, ‘kind words from uncle Harold’, and ‘lots of questions from the fuzz’. The Daily Mail did not say where they obtained the letters, but the only possible source was the police. They asked: ‘Who is the accomplice who fed Stonehouse with information since his disappearance? And who received phone calls from him at the Highfield House Hotel in Hampstead? There have been widespread reports that the mystery figure was, in fact, his secretary Mrs. Sheila Buckley.’ Sherlock Holmes was now joined by James Bond: ‘The letters will be studied by MI5, Britain’s internal security force, and Scotland Yard will check all typewriters which could have been used in London by Stonehouse’s secret correspondent.’ The letters, according to the Mail, ‘make nonsense of his claim that he went to Denmark to find out about British reaction to his faked drowning’. What the Mail didn’t say is that the letters were so highly coded they were largely incomprehensible. And while they were right that ‘a secret meeting with his contact’5 took place in Copenhagen, they didn’t know that my father spent five days there alone before phoning Sheila and telling her where he was – and that delay indicates they were not co-conspirators.

  Sheila was in hiding at her aunt’s house in Cornwall and must have been perturbed by what she read on the front page of the Daily Express that day, alongside photos of my parents smiling and looking into each other’s eyes with the caption ‘Together’, and one of her with the caption ‘Alone’. In this exclusive interview, the top headlines read: ‘The wife: He says there is no other woman’ and ‘The secretary: He admits she helped his plan’. This last line was a classic journalistic twist on what had actually been said in the interview. The reporter, Paul Hopkins, had asked my father two questions, one after the other: if he’d phoned Sheila twice from Honolulu, and ‘It appears obvious that she was assisting you in your escape plan?’, and reported ‘He nodded in agreement to both questions.’ The word ‘appears’ replaces what Hopkins writes elsewhere in the text: ‘And he nodded in agreement when asked if it seemed obvious she helped him in his getaway plan.’6 Here’s where the twist happens: Hopkins asks whether it appears or seems obvious, and it well might seem so, but that is not the same as the headline: ‘He admits she helped his plan’. What my father was agreeing to was that it looked bad. However, the headline is what people remember – ‘she helped’. That’s conspiracy, and an admission of conspiracy, no less. This twist would cause the nation to dismiss the notion of a breakdown, and see the ‘plan’ as collusion. These two things are mutually exclusive: there’s either one person having a breakdown, or two people involved in a conspiracy. This is why journalists had such a negative role in my father’s story – they twisted things.

  MPs were as much influenced by this reporting as anyone else. The largest headline on this page was ‘MY DIRTY TRICK, BY STONEHOUSE’. Hopkins had put it to my father that either my mother had colluded, or he’d ‘caused her great pain by putting her under suspicion – in addition to her initial shock of believing him dead’. My father answered, ‘That is my greatest regret in this whole business. It was a dirty trick.’7 So, altogether, by the 6th January, Stonehouse had – in an interview – admitted he’d done a ‘dirty trick’, and conspired in a ‘plan’ with his secretary/mistress. The emerging picture was downright embarrassing to the government, and MPs of all parties wanted to distance themselves as far as possible from this unfolding drama involving one of their own.

  If all the drama of the story was like thick icing covering a cake, the cake itself was the spy story. In substance, my father was just no good. The traitor rumour had not been entirely quashed by Wilson’s denial in the House of Commons on 17th December, because many considered it a cover-up. Once the dramatic icing came into full view people reconsidered the spy allegation and thought it was probably true. If he could collude with his mistress and fake his own death, he could also be a spy. The problem with it, from our point of view, was that being called a spy holds emotional content: everyone loves their country, and love holds emotion. Being accused of being a spy releases that emotion in other people – except it’s not the emotion of love for their country, it’s the hate for someone who would harm their country. On the 10th January, Private Eye carried this by Auberon Waugh (who routinely called Wilson ‘Wislon’ to avoid legal action): ‘In the House of Commons we hear Wislon announce that there is not a shred of evidence for believing John Stonehouse was a Czech spy apart from the first-hand testimony of his Czech spymaster. No wonder Wislon decided to let him stay in the Government … I have never attempted to hide my belief that Wislon is a Russian agent.’8

  In a debate on ‘Subversive and Extremist Elements’ in the House of Lords on the 26th February, Lord Clifford of Chudleigh said this: ‘Once again, will our leaders take note that in a book by the Czech defector, the ex-intelligence agent, Josef Frolik, which I think is coming out in May, there will be mentioned three fairly well-known people as having supplied information to the Czechs. It would be comforting to know for certain that these reports are false, and that if they are not that they will be dealt with without fear or favour.’ He didn’t need to mention my father’s name because Frolik had revealed that in the Daily Mirror in December and everyone knew he was included in the ‘three’. For us, it was like having a bully living in the backyard, with the additional problem that people believed the bully was in the right.

  As a family, over the years, we were to discover that people love a spy story because it’s much more exciting than a non-spy story. And they also loved the salacious mistress angle, especially if it involved ‘running away’. What they weren’t interested in was the mental health angle. To us, it was patently obvious that a sane John Stonehouse wouldn’t adopt alternative personas and fake his death. To others, these bizarre actions seemed normal behaviour for the greedy, adulterous spy. There was also a lot of amateur psychology going on, even among diplomats.

  On the 28th January 1975, J.M. Hay of the British High Commission in Canberra wrote to P.G. de Courcy-Ireland at the Foreign Office, saying that my father had sent a report from his psychiatrist to the minister at the Australian Department of Labour and Immigration, Mr Cameron, and a first assistant secretary there, Andy Watson, had read some of the contents to Mr Hay over the phone. ‘Mr Stonehouse, of course, should not find out that we know the contents of the report,’ wrote Mr Hay. Paraphrasing what Andy Watson said, Mr Hay reports that the psychiatrist, Dr Gibney, said, ‘Mr Stonehouse suffered significant but “atypical” depression. He thought of suicide, but, deciding that this was not the answer, devised a “suicide equivalent” – his disappearance from a beach in Miami … The psychiatrist concluded that Mr Stonehouse is suffering from “significant depression” which requires “on-going” psychiatric care and perhaps treatment in hospital in the future.’ Then Mr Hay turns amateur psychiatrist, writing ‘Nowhere in the report were there suggestions of the schizophrenia and paranoia of which we have heard so much from other sources. As Andy Watson pointed out, there may well be another report which might either be more confidential between psychiatrist and patient or be held in reserve should Mr Stonehouse require a special defence – such as unfitness to plead – should any legal action be contemplated. Such is Mr Stonehouse’s desire to remain in Australia, however, that I would have expected him to use any device to try to soften Mr Cameron’s heart – even to the extent of produ
cing evidence of severe mental disturbance rather than the sort of depression which is an everyday part of all too many people’s lives.’9 We were to hear this notion – that what my father suffered was ‘everyday’ depression – many times over the years. Yet, not ‘all too many people’ are falsely accused of being a spy. Anyone who thinks that doesn’t cause extreme stress has never been accused of something as contemptible as treason and not been in a position to defend himself, in my father’s case because the relevant file was behind ‘the Iron Curtain’ and unavailable to exonerate him at the time.

  The same day this letter was written, a motion to set up a select committee to ‘Consider the position of Mr John Stonehouse’ was passed in the House of Commons. The diplomats, however, decided the committee should not be shown the letter. On the 4th February, Mr A.R. Clark of the Foreign Office South West Pacific Department sent a memo to a select number of colleagues saying, ‘I do not think that it would be appropriate to give the letter a wider distribution. If the select committee want a psychiatric report, they will no doubt formally go about getting one.’10 Sir Thomas Brimelow, the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, concurred, adding a handwritten note to Clark’s memo on the 6th: ‘The Secretary of State may think it better that letters such as this should be kept in the Private Office under Ministerial Control.’11

  One aspect of this story that became much misunderstood is that, at the beginning of his time in Australia, my father did want to resign his seat in the House of Commons. He phoned the British High Commission in the capital, Canberra, on the 9th January and asked the director of information services, (H.H.) ‘Tommy’ Tucker, to pass a classified message to London. First my parents had to get to Canberra. They arranged to meet Tucker in circumstances the US embassy reported to the State Department in Washington as ‘best cloak and dagger style at request of Stonehouse’. My father had phoned Tucker and asked him to meet them in a specific hotel car park in Canberra, and to bring his official briefcase as evidence of identity. The reason for the ‘cloak and dagger’ was that my parents were simply trying to avoid the letter handover being reported or photographed by the press. What Tucker didn’t appreciate was that my parents had been forced to move between seven locations in the past five days and were exhausted from trying to avoid the press. My father decided to resign after a particularly gruelling weekend during which my mother and he were followed for hundreds of miles by teams of British reporters in cars who all wanted to know ‘when are you going to resign?’ A helicopter with press photographers had even followed them to a beach where it came down so low it sent sand flying in all directions, annoying the Australians trying to picnic there, who also told my parents to ‘go back to the UK’. It must be said, though, that in general, Australians were very kind to my parents, casually throwing comments like ‘good luck, John’, when recognising them on the street.

  Tucker reported the car-park letter handover to his American diplomatic colleague, Mr Green, who reported to the secretary of state in Washington that Tucker thought my parents’ criticism of the British press harassment ‘a bit hard to understand, as British High Commission understands that Mrs Stonehouse had accepted 30,000 pounds sterling from London Daily Express for her exclusive story’.12 In fact, my mother received £4,000 in cash, not £30,000, and she needed every penny of that to pay for the family’s food and accommodation, and other expenses. Yet this error on the part of Tucker, or the High Commission, is now part of official diplomatic history and may well go down forever as ‘truth’. If my experience of being the daughter of John Stonehouse has taught me anything, it is this: there’s nothing new about ‘fake news’. In addition, I’ve learned from this and other official diplomatic communiques, they’re not always to be trusted either. If Tucker told Green this misinformation, the chances are it was also communicated to London, where it could have caused damage to my father’s reputation.

  The letter my father handed to Tucker was addressed to Edward (‘Ted’) Short MP, the Leader of the House of Commons, and was dated 13th January. It said: ‘As you know I have expressed a wish to remain in Australia and my application to do so is being considered.’ He explained the reasons for his breakdown, and said: ‘I have already advised Mr Cameron [the immigration minister] of my intention to resign from the House of Commons but delayed this action when it was reported that two Scotland Yard detectives were coming here to interview me. In fact they made no request to see me and I have received no official communication whatsoever requesting me to return to the United Kingdom.’ He refers to the pre-judgement he has received from the press, and then says, ‘I thank my constituents in Walsall North, and in Wednesbury for their loyal support over the past eighteen years and ask them to accept my profound regret that external circumstances and pressures have forced me into breaking ties I have learnt to value.’ The letter ends, ‘Will you please, therefore, set in motion the formalities required for my resignation as the Member for Walsall North.’13

  Ted Short replied on the 14th, attaching a draft of the formal MP’s resignation letter, which reads, simply, ‘I hereby apply to be appointed Steward of the Manor of Northstead.’ Confusing though this text is, there’s no appointment being made, simply a resignation under the archaic rules of the House. The Americans were keeping a close eye on the situation because the razor-thin Labour majority put the government in a precarious situation that could lead to an election, and change of ruling party and policies. On the 14th, Mr Spiers at the US embassy in London wrote to the Department of State: ‘We anticipate resignation will be accepted expeditiously, opening way for first by-election in current parliament. Press has recently pointed out that absence of Stonehouse and hospitalization of two other Labor MPs theoretically erased Labor majority in parliamentary session which opened January 13. Practical effect of these absences, however, is minimal, as Labor can count on support of single SDLP member and opposition is neither cohesive nor without its own absent MPs.’ The communique shows that the Americans were very aware of the mathematics of a by-election: ‘As Stonehouse was re-elected by very safe margin (nearly 16,000 votes) in October 1974, there appears to be little chance that Labor will lose his Walsall North seat in by-election, even if many Labor voters fail to go to polls, as is often the case in by-elections. (In percentage terms a conservative win would require a 16.7 percent shift in voter preference.)’ Then follows a sentence that helps explain Ted Short’s subsequent fury when my father did not, in fact, resign: he wanted the safe constituency for one of his boys – ‘Labor party sources report that Terry Pitt, former director of Labor Party Research Department and advisor to Edward Short, is leading contender for constituency party nomination.’14

  The only people who weren’t happy with the proposed resignation were my father’s psychiatrist, and his lawyer. Dr Gibney felt that resigning his seat held a great deal of emotional content for him, so much so that it was one of the reasons he feared he would carry out suicide, and that’s why he booked my father into a hospital around this time. His lawyer, Jim Patterson, was much focused on the fact that if my father did resign as an MP he’d have to leave Australia within three days. Given that returning to the UK would be so detrimental to his health, Patterson strongly advised against it.

  The complication in the situation arose because of the constitutional relationship between Britain and Australia, specifically the fact that under Section 8(1)(e)(ii) of the Migration Act my father, as a sitting British MP, had automatic right of entry into Australia and the right to remain. This meant that he had not, in fact, entered the country illegally. However, the law required that he should have sought entry under Section 8(1)(e)(ii) before travelling. This was a technical point but, essentially, he wasn’t an illegal immigrant although, on the technicality, the Australians could have deported him at any time.

  When my father arrived at the immigration desk at Melbourne Airport on 27th November 1974, and got the Markham passport stamped, gaining him entry to Australia, Gough Whitlam was prime
minister and Clyde Cameron was labour and immigration minister, and they had what might be termed an independent approach to the British government. During the first few weeks following my father’s arrest, that was to show. While the British authorities were falling over themselves to respond to the press hounds baying for blood, the Australians casually pointed out that, under Section 8(1)(e)(ii), Stonehouse was exempt from the need to hold an entry permit to enter or remain in Australia and, as the British had no charges against him, as far as they were concerned, he could stay.*

  On the 14th January, a front-page headline in the Daily Express said: ‘Stonehouse quits as MP’. Apparently, Ted Short had made a statement saying, ‘I very much welcome this development.’ But Short had been too quick to make this announcement as the official resignation letter had not yet been signed, yet alone received in the UK. So, the next day the headline was, ‘Stonehouse: I haven’t quit’. Obviously this led to the next theme, expressed on the front page of the Aberdeen Evening Express on the 16th January: ‘Stonehouse told: Make up your mind’. My father wrote to Ted Short on the 16th saying: ‘Some newspapers are apparently reporting that I have announced that I will not resign. That is incorrect. The position is as follows. My solicitor has advised me very strongly not to resign because of the curious position with regard to the immigration laws in Australia. My solicitor has said that he would not take responsibility if I signed the document and that he would require an indemnity from me if I did so. My solicitor is examining the legal position more closely … I will let you know how this legal consideration proceeds and what my final decision is.’15