He talked about his part in fighting for an independent Bangladesh, saying, ‘I was enthused at that time with hope, but the hopes turned to tears as the conditions in that country deteriorated. Another of my ideals had collapsed.’ This led on to the setting up of the BBT: ‘This involved me in very great problems, which could have ruined my career and public standing, and I was left a broken man as a result of the nervous tension I suffered throughout that period. That experience contributed heavily to my breakdown. In 1974, with the collapse of many secondary banks and the problems of the British economy, the strains became even worse. There seemed no escape from the awesome pressures which were squeezing the will to live from the original man. Everything he had lived for and worked for seemed to be damned.’
He tried to explain his breakdown: ‘In this House itself, I felt a big weight bearing down on me. It was physically painful for me to be in the Chamber because it was such a reminder of my lost ideals. I was suffocated with the anguish of it all. The original man had become a burden to himself, to his family and to his friends. He could no longer take the strain and had to go. Hence, the emergence of the parallel personality, the disappearance and the long absence during the period of recovery.’ He explained why he had been absent from the House: ‘That recovery took time, and in the early stages the psychiatrist in Australia advised that I should not return to England until I had recovered, as a premature return would inevitably do further harm to my health. At the time of the disappearance, no criminal charges were laid or anticipated; they did not come till four months later. In view of the facts, I hope that the House will agree that the right hon. Member for Walsall, North had no intention of removing himself from the processes of justice as established by Parliament.’ He extended thanks to some MPs who had been supportive, and within fifteen minutes, it was over.
In November, Death of an Idealist was published. MPs had already been made aware of some of his criticisms of parliament when extracts of the book had been printed in the News of the World in March and April. Now they were to read more: ‘What I saw and felt increasingly alarmed me and, most seriously, what we were doing in Parliament was, at best, irrelevant and, at worst, extremely damaging to Britain and her standing in the world. Parliament had become a raucous rabble concerned only to shout the ephemeral slogans of the day. The few intelligent leaders cynically pandered to the appetites of their supporters so they could ride along on their unthinking support. Principle, except on rare and isolated occasions, was thrown out of the window. What leaders wanted was power; their political aims as politicians were subverted to this end, rather than power being seen as the means to achieve those aims. Power and office became the cruel masters of men as ends in themselves.’3
What he said about his own political party was damning: ‘The 1964–1970 Labour Governments had been conspicuous failures in the fields of National planning, but this did not deter Labour leaders from further adventures in state manipulation. In this they acted like alcoholics who had felt the effects of earlier drinking, but were not to be deterred by that experience, as the intoxication was already in their blood.’ And ‘I was sick to death with the way most Labour Members were afraid to say what they really thought about the Trade Unions because they feared the repercussions from the militant members of their constituency party organisation. I recalled with a shudder of disgust that Dick Taverne, the talented Member for Lincoln, had been forced out of his seat by such militants.’4
Individuals within the Labour Party came in for criticism. He wasn’t too hard on James Callaghan, who became prime minister on 5th April 1976, three weeks before my father’s trial at the Old Bailey began, saying he’d been ‘one of the best Foreign Secretaries since the war, although disastrous, at some stages, as Chancellor’, noting that ‘Jim Callaghan is a skilful politico, always with his eye on the main chance; a man without the impediment of strong convictions.’5 He had little good to say about Tony Wedgwood Benn, who he’d followed into two ministries, feeling he’d been left to clear up Tony’s mess – for example, the two-tier postage system, GIRO banking system, and the expensive postal HQ in Birmingham. He felt that he’d become the scapegoat for Tony’s flamboyant but expensive and time-wasting decisions. Meanwhile, Tony would gladly take credit where he could, such as over Concorde: ‘Tony Benn was never involved in the detailed talks but always turned up, as he was entitled to do as Minister of Technology, when there were important public occasions.’6
In 1978, I had the opportunity to ask Tony Benn to help my father when I happened to be at Khan’s Restaurant in Westbourne Grove with my friend, Steve Abrams, while Tony was there with his family. My father was in prison recovering from open heart surgery and needed all the help he could get. As usual I was sitting with my back to the other tables, when the waiter came up, very excited, and said to Steve ‘It’s only because I know you’re Lord Snowdon that I’m telling you Tony Benn is over there.’ This was bizarre enough as Steve was a tall, long-haired American who’d started SOMA, the campaign to legalise marijuana, while Lord Snowdon was short, immaculately groomed and dressed, and the very English ex-husband of Princess Margaret. How the waiter could confuse the two, I do not know. Anyhow, I went over to Tony’s table and gave him the details of what was going on. His eyes went dead. Not glazed, not distracted, just so dead they ceased to look alive. I’ve never seen anything like it. And Tony wasn’t going to do anything to help. None of them did.
In the period between my father’s arrest in December 1974 and his imprisonment in August 1976, he was something of a loose cannon on the deck of the big ship H.M.S. Establishment. He criticised parliament and parliamentarians, the press, the police, the legal system and the security services. On the 9th February 1976, the Daily Mirror reported on the November 1975 US Senate Committee hearings on communist bloc intelligence activities, at which Josef Frolik had been the CIA’s star witness, and where he had named my father as an StB agent. The same day, the House of Commons held a debate on ‘Foreign Policy and Morality’, and this coincidental confluence of events gave my father the opportunity to both deny the spy claim, and challenge the UK security services to be more accountable. He began, ‘It is true that when I was a minister and, indeed, before, I associated with Communist agents. I did not know at the time that they were spies. Also, I am convinced that most ministers of both administrations have in past years associated with agents. There is no escaping from it, if one is going to engage in any sort of discussion with the Czechs or with anyone else. Indeed, the man I had known from the Czech embassy turned up when I was a minister negotiating with the Czech minister responsible for the Czech aircraft industry and I was trying to sell him the VC10. Associated with that sale was a negotiation to provide the Czech airline with landing rights at Heathrow, so that the Czechs could fly their VC10 through the United Kingdom into the United States, and the very man who at that time, apparently, was a Communist spy turned up as the interpreter. He has since been named as one of the Czechs’ leading agents in this country at that time. I therefore suggest that it is impossible for anyone, if he is a minister responsible for negotiating with the Czechs or with anyone else, to escape from having some association with Communist agents. When I was in Czechoslovakia I apparently met some others who were involved in this business.’
He then turned to the subject of the debate by quoting from a report by US senator Frank Church into the CIA’s plots to assassinate foreign leaders, and their ‘Mongoose’ plan to sabotage Cuba by any means, including ‘incapacitating sugar workers during harvest season by the use of chemicals; blowing up bridges and production plants; sabotaging merchandise in third countries – even those allied with the United States – prior to its delivery to Cuba …’.* In particular, he wondered whether the Daily Mail was correct in February 1975 to question ‘Did the CIA organise a collision on the Thames to stop British Leyland sending 400 buses to Castro’s Cuba?’ The story concerned an East German freighter called the Magdeburg that sunk in the Thames at Kent
, in October 1964. He then suggested that the UK government should establish a select committee to investigate the Magdeburg and attempts by the CIA to prevent the export of UK civilian goods to Cuba, adding, ‘We should investigate other areas involving activities of our own secret service and foreign affairs officials.’ He then talked about the USA and Soviet Union subsidising foreign political parties, and added that he believed ‘a select committee should investigate the secret donations that have been made by British Governments to foreign political parties to enable them to win certain elections, to the advantage of the United Kingdom. As a former minister, I know of examples, which I should like to give to a select committee … If the Americans have thought it right to establish the Church Committee and the Pryke Committee to carry out full investigations into the secret operations of the CIA – I am not suggesting that our activities have been so serious – I believe that we should investigate our operations in other countries.’ Although any such investigations would be done behind closed doors, I doubt the British security services were happy about this suggestion, and it told them and everyone else that my father had had enough of keeping his mouth shut about what really went on in the geo-political world.
On the 5th April 1976, three weeks before his trial at the Old Bailey was due to begin, my father asked this of the attorney general in the House of Commons: ‘Is he not aware that the Directorate of Public Prosecutions is headed by a geriatric who is well beyond the retirement age and is given to making ridiculous decisions about prosecutions – given that 25 per cent of the prosecutions at the Old Bailey result in acquittals?’ The Financial Times reported that ‘a Labour MP shouted “Give him another passport”’.7 It probably wasn’t wise to attack the director of public prosecutions, Norman Skelhorn, who would undoubtedly have an influence on his own case. Indeed, Skelhorn was an influential man all round, having been Master of the Freemasons’ Western Circuit Lodge 3154, based in Duke Street, St James’s, and favoured by judges. Judge Edward Eveleigh, who would preside over my father’s trial at the Old Bailey, was also a Freemason.
On the 7th April my father resigned from the Labour Party. The American embassy in London sent a message to the Department of State, laying out the consequences: ‘Renegade Labor MP John Stonehouse – scheduled to stand trial later this month on thirteen counts of fraud arising from his questionable business dealings and “disappearance” – tossed a spanner in the government’s parliamentary works April 7, adding to Prime Minister Callaghan’s political problems. Stonehouse publicly announced that he had resigned the Labor Party Whip and in future would vote as independent. … This is one problem Prime Minister Callaghan really didn’t need at this time, following loss of Labor MP by death. Stonehouse resignation, if it becomes official, will diminish government’s working majority (roughly eight to ten seats) and place its control of committees in jeopardy … this situation will increase uncertainties, enhance bargaining power of minority parties, and make government whip’s already trying task even more difficult.’8
Now that he was free of the miserable, unfriendly Labour Party, my father started representing a group that his barrister, Geoffrey Robertson, called ‘a collection of fairly harmless oddballs, who dressed up in Robin Hood costumes and held tea parties’.9 The ‘English National Party’ my father represented for four months were along the lines of ‘Merrie England’, and their main objective was a devolved English parliament. They were a fun bunch who enjoyed themselves without being too serious, and their whole eccentric outlook was a relief from the usual dogma of British politics. (They disbanded in 1981 and shouldn’t be confused with the racist organisations that adopted that name during the 1990s.)
In my father’s defence ‘dock statement’ to the jury at his trial at the Old Bailey, on 27th July 1976, he accused the prosecution of lying, deceit, cheating and trickery: ‘The lying and cheating is as bad as anything I have seen in the House of Commons. But the humbug is even worse, because it is dressed up in this decorum and in that way you are not supposed to notice it.’10 Judge Eveleigh threw his comments right back in my father’s face on the last day of the trial, saying: ‘You falsely accused other people of cant, hypocrisy and humbug when you must have known all the time your defence was an embodiment of all those three.’11 That was right before he sentenced my father to 95-and-a-half years.
* From page 274 of ‘Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, An Interim Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities’, Chairman: Frank Church, Senate Report No. 94–465, Washington: US Government Printing Office, 20th November 1975.
15
Off with Their Heads!
My father’s trial at the Old Bailey was like the scene in Alice in Wonderland where the Queen of Hearts shouts ‘Off with their heads!’ except in our real-life version, the Queen was replaced by Mr Justice Eveleigh. I suppose we were lucky that Eveleigh allowed the 95-and-a-half years of prison sentences he handed down to run concurrently, so my father ‘only’ got seven years. Eveleigh was the last stop on a long journey that began with arrest on the immigration charge on 24th December 1974, arrest on extradition charges on 21st March 1975, arrest at Melbourne Airport when he was trying to return to the UK on 10th June, arrest when he was brought back to London on the 18th July and denied bail for six weeks, and the committal proceedings in October 1975 in front of a magistrate. My father had already spent months in four jails.
Proceedings began on 28th April 1976 in Court 1 of the Central Criminal Court, known as the Old Bailey. The lead prosecutor was Michael Corkery QC, who appeared to have a further four QCs by his side. He started with a three-day outline of the prosecution case, followed by 40 days of prosecution witnesses. Then came my father’s six-day statement from the dock, followed by eight days of defence witnesses. The prosecution took 43 days, and the defence fourteen, yet it would be my father who’d be accused of dragging the trial out.
Sheila and my father sat together in the dock, not speaking a word to each other. The prosecution were determined to paint a picture of a pair of devious, selfish conspirators and Sheila and my father didn’t want to feed that narrative by whispering conspiratorially to each other. They shared six charges: conspiracy; the theft of four cheques that belonged to his company EPACS, worth £7,500, £6,981, £2,112, £3,029; plus an EPACS US dollar banker’s draft that converted into £5,343. My father faced an additional fifteen charges. These included theft of another EPACS cheque for £3,118; taking out two bank overdrafts for £7,500 and £10,000; and not paying his most recent credit cards bills in the sums of £385, £355 and £422. He was also charged for applying for a credit card in the name of Joseph Markham, as well as falsely obtaining a passport in that name, and birth certificates in the names of Markham and Mildoon. Finally, he was charged with taking out five life insurance policies that were never claimed, totalling £125,000.
The committal proceedings had been held in October 1975 at the Horseferry Road Magistrates’ Court, presided over by Mr Kenneth Harrington, and my father had been represented by barrister Geoffrey Robertson, supported by the solicitor, Michael O’Dell. At the trial, they’d both be involved again, along with a senior QC, Richard ‘Dick’ du Cann. Geoffrey Robertson was 29 at the time, and at the beginning of what would become a very illustrious career; he’s now a famous barrister and Master of the Bench. In his book The Justice Game, he outlined a fundamental problem: ‘What nobody heeded was the fact that John had no crime to run away from: on the contrary, his only crimes were committed in order to run away. The passport forgeries, the £29,000 taken from his one-man company for his expenses, the insurance policies taken out to console his unwitting wife – these were crimes committed in the course of fleeing from his middle-class English existence. But why? There would have been no great difficulty about leaving his wife for Sheila, his bankers would never have forced an MP into bankruptcy and his creditors would have compromised.’ I find these remarks quite interesting. Firs
t, there was only one passport charge, not plural. And could not Geoffrey see that the insurance policies would never have consoled his wife because, as short-term policies and without a body, they could never have been claimed? He wrote ‘At lunchtime we would retire to our room to feast on the contents of a picnic basket provided each day by the much-forgiving Barbara, replete with silver cutlery and silk napkins.’ They weren’t silk, they were linen, and the cutlery was stainless steel Maya, still used by my mother today. We were not the kind of family that possessed silver cutlery, yet alone ‘silk napkins’ – if such absurd items even exist. My father wasn’t happy with his legal representation and sacked them half-way through the trial. He wasn’t satisfied with the amount of time he was being given by Dick du Cann to discuss the case, and also felt that he had no understanding of the mental breakdown that had led to his disappearance and, consequently, the charges. Even Geoffrey Robertson wrote later: ‘If it were madness, there was too much method in it ever to convince the jury.’1 With that kind of support, no wonder my father decided to defend himself.
John Stonehouse, My Father Page 21