Who do you think you are Kevin Whateley

It is 11.30 on Thursday and the count down to being 70 begins in earnest. Although up at a reasonable time it was so called, minus 2 that I have fritted away a good two hours without achieving anything which will make feel later that this has been a good day. True I did sort out the a new sets of battery lights to so that I do not enter the day room in the dark in search for the lamp on the table, or crash in the chair left in the middle of room as I go to turn on or off the central heating. I have also washed up and attended to some emails and read the account of Prime Minister’s address to both houses of Congress yesterday. It appears he was invited not by the President by the Speaker although the Vice President was in his place. There were also vacant seats from those who did not turn up which were filled by staff and visitors. The Prime Minister did not get a an on the lawn press conference although the media was invited into the Oval office to ask the PM Questions. The President appeared to be treated the matter low key. It was noticeable that the Foreign Secretary and Hilary Clinton his opposite number were not present with David in the Commons sitting next to stand in Harriet Harman, the Leader of the House and Hilary in the Middle East.

I thought it was a good speech full of praise for the USA and cutting across the political divide in the USA appealing to the right as well as centre to avoid isolationism and protectionism, emphasis on the need for global action on matters such as the economy, globalization, climate change, poverty and terrorisms. He reminded of the US approach after World War II with the new deal and the closeness of the two countries as well as the relationship with a united Europe. He is only the fifth British Prime Minister invited to address Congress over the past century, Winston Churchill Conservative Clem Atlee Labour, Margaret Thatcher Conservative and Tony Blair Labour being the others and the 107th national leader or Prime Minister to do so.

In terms of impact I believe it will have some positive effect on relationships with the USA, if only to remind of the fact that the two countries have stood together alone several times before when it mattered. The gesture of an Hon Knighthood to Ted Kennedy for his help to bring peace in Northern Ireland by persuading his Irish countrymen to stop funding the IRA has he fights for survival is a good gesture. It also helps to enhance Brown’s status outside of the UK, especially un Europe before the forthcoming summit of the principal economic summit to be held in London next month and which will be attended by President Obama. It will be interesting to see if a reciprocal invitation has been given to him to address the UK Parliament. However I doubt if any of this will have much impact if any on the position of Gordon Brown politically in the UK or of his government and Party. This year, fortunately, there are no elections for the Metropolitan authorities with European Elections and Counties but any losses will add to the sense of gloom bordering on resignation with the Parliamentary Party. There was much fun in the House yesterday attacking Harriet Harman who is thought to be positioning herself to take over from Gordon Brown if as expected Labour lose the next General election. She had to bat on a sticky wicket but William Hague did not get all his own way.

On Monday it was a great joy to watch Kevin Whately, the subject of who do you think you are. Kevin Whately is an actor unknown outside of the United Kingdom and even within the UK. Unless a fan of the police detective series set in oxford , I city in which I lived 1961-1963 and 1964-1967 and to which I have returned on regular basis such is its atmosphere and reminder of the second most important period which governed the rest of my life.

Kevin was born in the City of Newcastle in 1951 and raised as part of a middle class family in the County of Northumberland where his first inclination was to be a doctor but after commencing training as an accountant and having a talent for folk singing and playing the guitar he went to London to study acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He gained work in TV productions and his first role which came to the attend of the wider public was an ensemble series of comedy dramas Auf Wiedershen pet, about a group of building workers from Tyneside who went to work in Germany and in later series in Spain, Middlesbrough and the USA and then and Cuba. The Final special involved work in the Far East. There were 26 episodes in the first series, 13 in the second and six in the subsequent two. The series generated several stars who achieved subsequent success. Timothy Small has become recognised as an outstanding TV and Films actor. Jimmy Nail’s greatest film success was in Evita and in addition to TV series he which he starred he gained success as a singer. Tim Healy also had subsequent success as a singer as well as actor and is married to another well known actress Denise Welch and the couple have been flat bearers for Tyneside and the North East.

In this series Kevin played a quiet, homesick married man with three children devoted to his wife and family although there was some kicking of the traces in later seasons.

Colin Dexter wrote thirteen crime police detective books set in Oxford published 1975 through to 1999 and a thoughtful bachelor policeman with a love of opera, a Jaguar car and who could hold his own at any Oxford top table. The first Morse appeared in 1987 and there were 33 self contained features until 2000 the much loved actor who played Morse, John Thaw and who had become ill died a fictitious death in an Oxford Hospital. He actually died two years later in 2002. Each episode comprised 100 which with commercial breaks meant a two hour show. The throughout the series Kevin Whately appeared as his assistant, married with children and often imposed upon by Morse who apart from his love of Opera was married to his work. In 2005 the famous car was sold for £100000. John Thaw had become well known playing a Scotland Yard Flying Squad Policeman in the Sweeney and also as a barrister Kavanagh.

After a break of four years the character of Lewis, now living on his own in Oxford and promoted to the position held by Morse returned as Lewis in a pilot to judge the audience reaction. It was the most popular drama of the year so three more programmes were created and shown in 2007 and a further four in 2008. In these programmes in a nice twist which John Thaw would have appreciated Lewis was assisted by a young Oxford graduate as a counterpoint to the northern working class lad who had made it through the ranks, although in fact, as stated, Kevin was raised in a comfortable middle class home and now lives in the Home Counties with his family who were introduced in the Do you know who are programme.

What emerged from the programme was four things. The most interesting for me is that Kevin revealed himself to be the essential character he played in both major TV series over the past thirty five years, A kind, humanitarian and thoughtful family man of great integrity.

Kevin had known that his maternal grandmother, Doris Phillips, had been classically trained as a singer and he knew that she had performed in local theatricals. He has a daughter who is singer and therefore he was interested to learn more about this aspect of his relative. He discovered that in addition to performing with her two brothers in fund raising concert party type of shows, she had sung professionally with the Newcastle Back Choir as a soloist and performed for the BBC in 1938 in the days when there was only one radio station and no British based commercial stations. She had also performed at the Newcastle City Hall where he has appeared in charity performances as a folk singer with his guitar. He was visibly moved by this unknown connection

He became interested in the father of his grandmother, Fredrick Phillips who was born in Bedfordshire had opened a single fish and chip shop in Newcastle and the built up a business involved in the catching and distribution of fish along the East coast. Fish had not only become the first fast food but the herring the dominant fish, salted for export or smoked to become the kipper which was the main breakfast dish. When the great grandfather died he had been worth over £2million pounds in to-day’s money. Kevin wanted to know how it appeared that the business had been lost when it came under the control of the two sons. What he discovered reassured because a combination of public taste with the mass produced cereal replacing the kipper as breakfast dish, together with and other changes in the national diet and the economic depression resulted in the industry beginning to contract on a journey which has continued in a more dramatic form over the past three decades.

Kevin then explored the only member of his family in addition to his father who had not be a clergyman with the leading figure who became the Archbishop of Dublin and where there is also a stained glass window and an portrait at an Oxford College when he studied and which was interesting given his own developed love of the city from twenty years of the Morse and Lewis Programmes.

In the family tree the other ancestor who did not become a Vicar was someone noted as Turkey Merchant. This puzzled Kevin because it was at a time when he thought Turkey‘s had not been introduced to the British market. In fact he was sent as a young Merchant to the Levant which included Turkey, Syria and Palestine. When he returned became a major merchant in the city of London and banker who had married well and became a member of the Court (Board) of the Bank of England which involved holding a substantial amount of shares. His wife‘s sister had married the Governor of the Bank!

This was quiet a discovery for Kevin who had regarded himself as being left of centre not enamoured with those who made their money from interest and speculation. However greater shocks were to come.

He discovered that that the woman his relatives had married was a descendents of one of the four brothers who had played major parts in the Cromwell rebellion which had led to the formation of the Commonwealth. The grandfather of Mary Whately had gone to Virginia in part because of the religious freedom as a puritan and to develop an early plantation of tobacco and had a monopoly of the trade to Britain, this therefore in great part responsible for the great evil of smoking that we know today, and worse still had also been a pioneer in the establish of sugar production from the West Indies and therefore in the British involvement in the slave trade to both the USA and the West Indies.

Mary Whately nee Thompson, the wife of the Banker had live in a grand house and grounds known today as Nonsuch Park. The present grand house was built later. The Park is less than a half hour drive from my childhood home close to the route to Kingston and Teddington where I also lived for two years.

The programme therefore provided much new information and his family and caused him to reconsider who he was in terms of his ancestral heritage.

The Mayfair set

The third in the Channel four series on Hons and Crims that I have watched involved John Aspinall the alleged criminal gambling master and corruptor of police and Billy Hill of London’s worst crime bosses in the 20th century. My interest was not in fact that John did a deal with a criminal to cheat Aristocrats and others with too much money and no sense out of their fortunes, businesses and land holdings, but the lives of his closest friends who became known as the Clermont set and the Mayfair set and their plot to bring down the democratic elected government by force and impose a Franco style fascist dictatorship if the Left and the trade unions appeared to be gaining too strong a hold. What was the evidence for this and how far did they go in the organising and planning?

I have no personal knowledge, nor have a I spoken with anyone who has, and the amount of time researching the information held by others is limited by wanting and needing to limit the time allocated to one period of 24 hours, using those hours for the normal business of everyday living, for consideration and reflection on other things, for experiences the new as well remembering the old.

Perhaps one or two individuals who I do not know directly and one or two with whom I have corresponded will read what I say and that will be that but I always try and write on the basis that it is accurate as practical and fair based on the information available and my experience of life and knowledge, in so far as it extends, to matters being considered. If the person is no longer alive, I ask myself he question, how if you were that person, you would feel is this or that was written about you, even if what is written is accurate? And even greater question is how would my parents, my former partner, my children react if that was said about me as the first test in considering how the parents, the partners and the children of those mentioned now feel in general about what is said about their child, partner or parent. It is not just good enough to say that the matter and the individual is already in the public eye through other media interest or their previous self promotion using the media, in all its forms, or even that a major part of their lies was funded by me as a national and local tax payer, to they held power, or took decision which affected my life and the lives of those I cared and care about, or that I do not get financial or other significant benefit from my writing and project work. I need have to justify what I say irrespective of the potential response of anyone else.
John Aspinall was born in India to May Grace Horn who had married Robert Aspinal a respected Army Doctor. The Independent Obituary states that Robert was “officially” his father and Wikipedia makes no mention of his father. It is the New York Time which revealed the apparent truth and his named father revealed to him that his father was a soldier George Bruce who has sex with his mother under a Tamarind tree at a regimental ball. That it was Mr Aspinall who revealed the truth is interesting because his whole life is said to have been inflexed by a Rider Haggard story which involved Zulus, their land and someone who was illegitimate. It is my understanding that he was an adult when his discovered that his named father was not his birth father, where as a child when I learnt that my care mother was not my birth mother and close on sixty when I learnt the who my birth father was said to be, although without confirmation from DNA or a recorded verifiable statement that he admitted this was, the uncertainty remains.

A major factor in why John developed as he did is the fact that he was sent away by his mother and father to England to a residential school when he was six, and that did not return to India even for Holidays, staying with his grandparents and that that he was much influenced in what became his love of animals and the countryside by a local farmer. I do not know what age his mother commenced to play a greater part in his life but even when she divorced and married Sir George Osborne, a man of greater wealth than her first husband John was sent to Rugby school and where it is said he was an uninhibited exhibitionist at Rugby school and with a complete disregard for rules, prepared to accept punishment which had no effect on how he subsequently behaved. Looking back on my own childhood I was always a shy, reclusive child wanting to be an uninhibited exhibitionist and who developed my own internal sense of right and wrong and which only transcended the rules of others after I overcame the difficult of challenging the authority of the Catholic Church and questioned how adults appeared to me to be putting their faith in practice, or not putting their faith into practice which seemed to be more often the situation. I always then and since accepted that if one broke the rules of others with some legitimate vested authority for rule making then one should accept punishment and not attempt to evade it, even if emotionally it was natural to do so, I also tried not to let the punishment affect my future actions. However I developed a greater personal sense of injustice when for example I was physically beaten with a strap on my hand because a lay teacher of French when nuts and fortunately because of the parental pressure from others disappeared from the school the following day. I hated every second of my first experience of a prison environment, a weekend in isolation on remand from other demonstrators who had a great time held in the prison Library and during the three or four days held in Brixton for refusing to pay a fine but it did not prevent me from repeating the demonstration two weeks later refusing to accept the non custodial alternative to six months or deciding to take the anytime option to leave when I found the experience unbearable and my life was significantly threatened. It was also the prospect of losing the opportunity Ruskin College provided which governed my decision to accept the same recognisance less than two years later rather than fear of a return to the prison experience. However as my life progressed being true to myself and what I believed became more important that the potential negative consequence for me of what I was doing. In this respect I understand and have sympathy with what appears to have happened in the life of Mr Aspinal and the others to be covered in this writing. The difference, and an important difference is that he and the others appears to have had little or regarded for the impact of their behaviour on others, including some of those closest to them.

John left Rugby school at 17 and it is not clear if obtained any examination certificates. He had joined the school military cadet force designed to prepare its young men to become officers in the regular army or during their required period of national service. He Joined the marines for three years, not as officer but as a regular soldier and from their it appears he used his connection to get a place at Oxford University where his interest was Brideshead than academic as he boasted that he never attend one lecture, although this was never an important aspect of Oxford University life with its emphasis on tutorials, private reading and essay assignments. People still refer to going to Oxford to read History, the Classics, English Literature or Philosophy than to pass a degree in that or that. He is said to have attended Royal Ascot in preference to sitting his examinations.

He then set up home with his new wife, Jane Hastings, a Scottish Model, in one of the most fashionable and expensive residential streets in London, to-day, Eaton Place. A three bedroom flat is available for £3 million and a similar ground floor and basement flat can be rented for £100000 a year. At Eaton Place he had built a glorified garden shed to house a baby tiger, a monkey and two Himalayan bears without regard to the impact of the animals upon neighbours. Soon after opening his Gambling Club he had two tigers in cages at one special events which he then let lose to roam among the tables. Because he lacked the throw away money of many of his contemporaries when he learnt to play cards for money he learnt in order to win and he learnt enough to know that running gambling was more profitable than actual gambling. From the outset he was not interested in acquiring wealth to acquire more wealth or power but to what use the money could be put and in particular his interest in wild animals and the preservation of endangered species. In fact he was open about his dislike for people in general and his preference for animals when it came to friends those he chose he was loyal regardless of any consequences.

I am unsure when and how he came to work out that there was a way round the then law which made any form of gambling for money an offence in all but limited and controlled situations such as at race meetings the day at the courses, although at school, the son of a bookmaker used to make books on major races and it would be surprising if this was not known to the school authorities. There was the general sense that the law was out of touch, much like prohibition had been earlier in the USA and gambling on cards was widespread even though the stakes were often quite small. In John’s instance aimed for the highest level big time possible, hiring quality premises, chefs and bar staff and creating an atmosphere appropriate for members of the Aristocracy used to the Gentleman’s club and high life living. Although h was confident that they were technically not breaking the law they attempted appropriate insurance by brining the Metropolitan Police where corruption was widespread and involved some very senior officers. One officer with the nickname pony because charged £25 just for a meeting, which is between £500 and £1500 today depending on the basis of the calculation. This was paid before any decision or sum to ensure the police did not apply the law.

This worked for several years until in 1958 his mother failed to make a payment and the establishment where the games were being held was raised and Aspinall charged. Rather than pleading guilty and paying the fine, and ensuring the police were better paid, Aspinall decided to contest the action and won and this led the government to realise, no doubt under pressure from those who used his facilities and those who wished to that the time had come to change the law. With the first piece of legislation which created the licensed Casino, the high street betting shop and to day the TV betting channel and the wide range of online gambling opportunities.

Mr Aspinall made his money by taking percentage of the money gambled on each game. It is my understanding that there was only one game played which was Baccarat Chemin de fer, the James Bond favoured game in Casino Royale. The game requires awareness and nerve and luck in which one of the participants puts up money to begin as the banker(banco) and the other players individually or in concert must offer more money to engage in the first game. There are six packs of shuffled new cards placed in a shoe and the object is to make 9 or 8 points with aces counting 1 and J.Q. and K value 0 and if two card total 10 this become 0 an two card adding to 15 become 5. The cards are only used once and played in a contained which is visible to the players. The maximum stake of the bank can be fixed or unlimited and as a consequence vast fortunes and estates of land could pass hands in a matter of minutes. The programme talked in terms of single losses in a night of £50000 which is in the range of £375K to £3 million and of taking overall bets of £.25 million in a night from £4 to £16 million a night and which resulted in an income to Aspinall of half a million. These may have been exceptional such as when a Lord lost several million and kept smiling or a young man from Yorkshire lost his family estate which was one the eldest the oldest in the UK on his first or early visit.

I do not know what is like to possess great wealth, businesses or lands but I do not what it is like to be faced with the choice of doing something and knowing it could mean the loess of everything and the what the effect was likely to be on other members of a family. This is no different when to day as it has always been, the family provider suddenly losses their livelihood and their established home. They are alive and usually in good health but the impact will be devastating, yet these men did this from choice on the turn of a card. It is immoral and irresponsible unless they are single individuals with no dependents and dependents is not just the staff of estates or businesses or estate tenants as well as subsidiary customers, and services. I make no distinction between the gamblers of cards and the gamblers on the stock, share, currency and other such like markets and those who take such risks with the livelihoods of other for their personal profit do not merit any respect or sympathy when if hey fall. This appears to have been the attitude of Mr Aspinall towards the very people on which his wealth and interests depended. There is a parallel to my mind with the slave trade which was regarded as acceptable within British society. We have made progress in realising the evil of those who grow and manufacture tobacco which is a worse and horrific killer than heroin and other illegal drugs for example.

My understanding is that far from helping Mr Aspinall, the post 1962 licensed casino posed considerable problems for Mr Aspinall. He opened a plush exclusive Casino in Berkeley Square Mayfair in 1962 called the Claremont Club with a restricted membership of 600 and which included 5 Dukes, 5 Marquises and 20 Earls. The club was lavishly decorated and provided fine wines and food. He made available the basement to a friend for a dining, dancing and drinking nightclub Annabel’s which was London’s first Member only night club and the only one Queen Elizabeth visited and which was a haunt of Prince Charles and for international film stars, members aristocracy and some of the wealthiest and most influential men in the UK.(In 1959, three years before I had trained for a month as a salesman for British Olivetti in Berkeley Square heading the list of students after sitting four weekly examinations).

The club was a great success and attracting many who could not be seen when the activity was not legally recognised but it meant the previous way of profit making ended. In addition to the setting up and on going running costs, including staffing there were taxes and accountants. As with any enterprise here will have been quiet nights and overall it became difficult to achieve the kind of profit required to fund what was in fact his main interest the rescuing, protecting and the breeding of endangered species and one and then a second wildlife park which he opened.

He was then approached with a solution beneficial to both solution by London’s crime boss of the day Billy Hill, the man who the young Krays went to for advice. He had started as a house burglar in the later 1920’s, born 1911. He turned to smash and grab raids of jewellers and furs in the 1930’s and to the black-market during World War II. He supplied forged documents for deserting servicemen. He fled to South Africa in the 1940’s but was extradited and imprisoned. Remarkably although he organised a postal van robbery of a quarter of million in 1952 worth between £5 and £20 million today, and Bullion robbery 1954 where no one was convicted which suggests a high level of police corruption as well as incompetence. He also smuggled drugs from Morocco. He was a violent man who marked his victims with a V for victory but professed to avoiding cutting of arteries which meant murder which regarded as for mugs, a lesson which the Krays and others did not learn.

He suggested the way he and John could makes major fortunes from the irresponsible and immoral aristocracy and the other members of what became known as the Claremont set. John provided him the unopened sets of playing cards which were then marked in ways which trained players could detect. The cards were then repacked to look unopened. John then arranged for selected individuals, some actors, to be trained to read the cards, to become members with fictitious backgrounds and to play games winning consistently but never individually sufficient to draw major attention to themselves, by having several operating in every game
he and Bill shared millions of profit which then went into secret accounts abroad and not through any accounting books. Mr Aspinall therefore became a thief although we may have no sympathy for the money he stole from and consider that his crimes pale into significance with honourable bankers and Hedge funds dealers who lost bullions, endangered the financial system, wrecked good businesses and have put millions of individuals out of work and led to thousands possibly tens of thousands losing ownership of their homes.

He divorced in 1962, remarried and divorced again in 1972 marrying for a third time Lady Sarah Courage, the widow of racing driver Piers Courage. He died of cancer in June aged 75 years 2000 survived by his three children and two step children who manage the Foundation he established to run his two individualists animal parks designed to protect and breed rare and endangered species with over 1000 animals and 80 different species. The way he ran the park caused some concern with some twenty deaths of employees from their close association with the animals. Sources generally agree that he was not interested in making money for the sake of making money but what he could do with it. In addition for his passion for his children and step children and for animals and his true friends he had one other interest which was political.

His passion for his friends led to him admitting that he would have help his friend Lord Lucan to escape the law after he is officially considered to have murdered the family nanny in the mistaken belief he was killing his wife. What happened to Lord Lucan has never been established. He was also personal friends with some of the most wealthy and powerful men of their day and some who also plotted to overthrow the elected British government violently and replace with a fascist state, the details of which I remain to establish.

Known as the Clermont or Mayfair sets, the two groups group contained some remarkable people. The first was Sir Archibold David Stirling DSO OBE who founded the S.A.S after joining the officer Training Corps at Ampleforth College, joining the Scots Guards in 1937. In 1940 he volunteered the No 8 Commando. His experience convinced that a small specially trained force could cause greater damage than the traditional structure of the army force and his approach can be seen to this very day with the ambush in Pakistan of the visiting Cricket Team and the ability of the gunmen to disappear after killing six policemen and their driver and shooting into the team coach, an operation similar to that in Mumbai except those involved planned to stay and go to their deaths

Stirling then found his way into the military headquarters and persuaded the Deputy Commander of the Middle East, General Ritchie to allow him to set up a unit to pursue his idea. His first efforts were disastrous but the approach began to have success but in 1943 he was captured and although he escaped several time he was eventually sent to Colditz Castle

After the War he established independent, arms and fighting men businesses at a high level, mainly to Middle East and Gulf states such Saudi Arabia and he is reputed to have been involved in a failed attempt to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi of Libya in 1970/71. He was a man of many parts and his television interests brought Seasame Street, the Muppets to the UK and the company he devoted later created Thomas the Tank Engine and Thomas The Tank Engine and Bob the builder.

He was a founder of a society in 1949 to free Africa from racial discrimination but was also in favour of elitist voting franchise. In 1975 he set up an organisation GB 75 designed to combat the power of the Trade unions and provide an alternative workforce in the event of prolonged or general strike. It was called into action with the miner’s strike in the mid1980’s He died in 1990 aged 74,

The second figure was James Goldsmith, a very different kind of man, with French and British parents and citizenship. He dropped out of Eton and joined the British Army after his father paid off his gambling debts. The family made their fortune as German bankers and like the Queen with a German family history changed the family name to Windsor, the Goldschmidts changed to Goldsmiths. When his grandfather came to London in 1895 he was already a multi millionaire banker. The family are relatives of the Rothschild’s. During the 50’s and the 60’s his gambling brought him close to bankruptcy several times. However he was also successful in business winning the British franchise of Alka Seltzer and introducing low cost generic drugs to the UK. He then made a name for himself by acquiring companies and asset stripping and when these activities were questioned in the media he worked through private companies registered in he UK and offshore. Much of his activities were financed by Jim Slater, and when his empire collapsed and had to be rescued by he Bank of England it was Goldsmith who was asked to sort out the mess through his companies. He was knighted by Labour Leader Harold Wilson in 1976.

His business success continued especially when he found out that American firms with timber holdings which were often accounted as a nominal 1 dollar value for taxation and other accounting purposes often had an actual market value worth more than he was paying for the whole company. In 1987 he went to Mexico having liquidated his assets having predicted the market crash that year. He then used his wealth to change direction establishing the forerunner of the investment funds of today, developing interests world wide in Russia, and India and the Far East.

He also had strong right wing views and used his resources to try and break individuals and organisations which he saw as threats to what he believed in. One of the most public actions was to issue 60 Libel actions against Private Eye Magazine because of their attacks on his Referendum Party. He conducted vendettas against other who questioned his approach and methods.

Goldsmith along with John Aspinall and Lord Lucan became concerned at the extent to which Communist workers had commenced to have power in the trade unions, in the Labour party and the Media. For him and others there was no distinction made between state capitalists which the soviets had become, authoriser and anti individualism, socialists, including Christian based socialists, and the Enterists who joined organisations, occupations and political parties hiding their real beliefs and intentions and who were organised and part of well funded and organised groups, often quite small operating as cells. When he stood for Putney at the General Election he cheered when David Mellor was defeated by the Labour candidate, although Goldsmith lost his deposit and his party failed as had his attempt to publish the weekly News magazine Now. Such was his power and influence that when he died Margaret Thatcher described him as a great man, larger than life and Prime Minister Tony Blair said he was amazing interesting and fascinating which can be taken to mean what you want it to mean.

In addition to his gambling he had several wives and other relationships and eight children. He liked to use the phrase when you marry your mistress you create a vacancy. He was officially married three times, at 20 to a 18 year old Bolivian Heiress with relation with the Spanish Royal Family. When he proposed the marriage to her father he was told we are not in the habit of marrying Jews to which he replied I am not in the habit of marrying Indians. With the parents insisting their daughter separate despite her pregnancy, they eloped. Sadly she died as a result of the pregnancy and birth. His daughter survived. He had a son and a daughter by his second marriage. He married for the third time in 1978, the daughter of the Marques of Londonderry, who had been married to his friend of twenty years who he had offered the basement of the Berkeley Square premises for use as a nightclub and which bar her name to this day, which bears her name to this day. She has said she took up with Jimmy because her husband was a serial seducer of woman. She is alive to day knowing that through her marriage her children and grandchildren are or will become exceptionally wealthy with her one stated regret that she had not been a one woman wife , to have had someone to grow old with. Although in fact her two husbands died comparatively young for these times. The couple had three children, one of whom was disfigured by being allowed to get too close to a pregnant tigress as a child,. One of these children married into the Rothschild’s and Guiness Brewery families.

Goldsmith had an affair with an aristocratic Frenchwoman with whom he had two children treated her as his wife in public and they had two children. A total of eight children by these relationships. There are allegation of other relationships and of other children some extraordinary, including one circulating in Australia. He died of a heart attack brought by cancer at the age of 64.

The third member of the set, said to have had extreme right wing views was Lord Lucan, presumed dead in law in 1992 and declared dead in 1999. He went to Eton and served in the Coldstream Guards. He is described as having been a compulsive gambler. Understandably media attention has concentrated on the fact that his wife suffering from head wounds managed to get to a local Inn announcing that her estranged husband had tried to kill and when investigating the police found a blood trail from the basement where they found the killed nanny.

What is known is that Lord Lucan first attempted to visit and then contacted a friend by phone but hung up and the police found blood stains on her doorstep. He then telephoned his mother explained that eh had passed the house with its lights on and see what appeared to be a fight inside, his wife had been injured and that there was something awful in the basement, asking her to go and look after the children. He then drove to see friends where the wife was only present and her gave an expanded version of what he had told his mother, saying that he had slipped on a pool of blood and the assailant of his wife had escaped. He claimed that his former wife had accused him of hiring the assailant. He contacted his mother from this address to assure that the children were safe and he agreed to contact the police following morning rather than talk to the officer who was present at her home. He then tried to phone his brother in law, who in turn was the half brother of the step father of Princess Diana, but getting no reply he wrote two letters for his friend to post. There has been no officially confirmed sighting of him since. The car was found at Newhaven on the south coast town. His friends led my John Aspinall believing that he was innocent launched a search for him before that of the police who had warrant for his arrest. At the inquest for the nanny the two written letters were read in which he further said he had not attacked the nanny or his wife but believed she would try and blame him. He also advised about raising money to clear his debts. The inquest jury took just half an hour to make Lord Lucan as he murderer of the nanny. Police subsequently accused the Clermont set of obstruction. They only learnt of his visit to his friend by tracing the post marks on the two letters.. In 2004 police used the latest technology to review the case and officer leading the enquiry expressed the vie that Lord Lucan had been helped by friends to escape and begin a new life outside the UK. There were several alleged sightings shown to be false. John Aspinall said before his death that he had believed his friend had killed the nanny by mistake, committed suicide by scuttling a boat he had kept at the port, If this was the case I do not understand why he did not leave a note of confession and what he was doing for the sake of his children. Given who these men were and what they did they would have no qualms of conscience about helping me to leave the UK and commence a new life elsewhere with their financial support and which the Nazis were able to do with great effect after World War II.

Dominic Elwes was a close friend of Lord Lucan and a portrait painter. He was the son of an established and known portrait painter. At the age of 26 he married a 19 year old in Cuba escaping a Court order against their marriage and spending 14 days in jail on return for contempt. His three children went into art, acting and film. He committed suicide in 175 aged 44.

One other member of set is said to be Jim Slater originally an accountant who also worked in financial journalism and with the Tory MP Peter Walker set up a bank investment company, involved in corporate raids with his friend James Goldsmith. 15 charges against Mr Slater for the misuse of £4m of company funds were made after the Bank of England was called in to save the bank but the case was dismissed. Mr Slater survived, repaid his debts, He financially sponsored the 1972 World Chess Championships between Fischer and Spassky being a chess enthusiast and lives in retirement, shortly to celebrate his 80th birthday having written investment and children’s books.

Two other members of the set were not British. Gianni Agnelli was the Italian head of Fiat regarded as the major figures in the Italian economy for men years and who was significantly involved in the Bilderberg conferences along with friend Henry Kissinger an David Rockefeller, whose bank the Chase Manhattan he was on its committee for 30 years. He remained married to one woman although there is recorded reference to affairs and other potentially scandalous matters but I have found no other references to membership let alone involvement with the Clermont set, so far.

Kerry Packer was the Australian publishing, media and gaming tycoon and was the richest and most influential man in Australia holding g huge tracks of land and properties.

He attempted to revolutionise World Cricket after founding the World Series which led to confrontation with the cricket authorities. Thirty years later we have the development with the Indian development and the recent Stanford series and subsequent scandals

He was also a great gambler reported to have lost 28 Australian dollars in London in one three week spell although he regularly also won millions on his trips to London and it is said won thirty three million Australian dollars at a Casino in Las Vegas. He suffered various heart attacks and was once declared clinically dead for six minutes after which he is alleged to have said, the good news folks is that there is no devils, the bad news is that there is no Hell. He died at the age of 64 from Kidney failure

Dominic Elwes was a close friend of Lord Lucan and a portrait painter. He was the son of an established and known portrait painter. At the age of 26 he married a 19 year old in Cuba escaping a Court order against their marriage and spending 14 days in jail on return for contempt. His three children went into art, acting and film. He committed suicide in 175 aged 44.

James Goldsmith, David Stirling and Jim Slater featured in a series of programmes on the Mayfair set. James featured in a programme about the decline of the buccaneer in business and personal wealth creation, named along with Tiny Roland and Mohammed Al Fayed as the last three to survive by the 1980’s. Then of course came the Russians and the international banking and investment fraternity and the survival of the rest of us is now in question.

And the conspiracy? That remains to be established.

Remembering Wendy

Wendy Richards, the actor, whose death was reported yesterday was someone loved and known to almost every household in the British Isles but will be a name unknown beyond these shores unless devotee of the British TV soap drama series Eastenders or the situational comedy show, Are you being served?

She was born in Middlesbrough during World War 2 and her parents moved around the UK. Her father committed suicide in 1954 and her mother died of cancer in 1972. Nothing further is immediately available about her family life except that she went to schools in West London and Rickmansworth Hertfordshire and then to the well known Italia Conti Academy stage school, the oldest in the UK and now with various establishments in greater London from those taking pupils age 9 years to graduate acting and art courses.

Internationally the most well known graduate is likely to be Noel Coward and them the actress Gertrude Lawrence. Among those who made a name for themselves in the cinema as well as stage were Anthony Newley and Nanette Newman, Anton Rogers and Googie Withers. More contemporary names include Leslie Ash, Peter Bayliss, Russell Brand, Johnny Briggs who appeared in the soap rival Coronation Street, William Hartnell, the first Dr Who, Bonnie Langford, the child star who continued into adulthood, Martine McCutcheon who also appeared in Eastenders and who went on to have a career as a singer and in film as well as stage, the much loved comedy actor Leslie Phillips and Anton Rodgers, Nadia Swalhalia who also appeared in Eastenders before becoming a TV presenter, the internationally known comedy actress Tracy Ulman and the former child star Lena Zavaroni and who died at the age of 35 after losing a battle with anorexia nervosa.

In the 1970’s Are you being served Wendy Richards became well known as the store assistant Miss Brahms, a show which gravitated to the London stage over Christmas, one of several during that era and which I would take my birth and care mothers to see on New Year visits as I they came to stay over Christmas. She had appeared in a TV soap before in the 1960’s and had appearances in dad‘s Army, Up Pompeii, the vehicle for Frankie Howard, and two Carry on Films, one with Barbara Windsor who also became and established actor on Eastenders. She commenced in Eastenders as a young married woman to Arthur with a tyrant of mother in law, and graduated into a fine character actor, although there was something negative in the character she was required to play in later years. She is reported to have fallen out with the series managers when asked to remarry again and she left the show after twenty years 2006. For the past two years she made several appearances, and a TV advert for the Post office despite having been diagnosed with breast caner in 1996 and a further development in 2002. Although given a clean bill of health in 2005 last year it was found that there had been a widespread development from which she was unable to recover.

Wendy was married twice before living with John Burns, a Painter and decorator, twenty years her junior from 1996, and marrying in 2008. She had no children.

This year I did not tune into the Master chef competition until the Final two programmes when the three contenders cooked for 400 staff at Buckingham Palace and 200 competitors and dignitaries, including Royalty, at the Burghley Horse Trials annual dinner, for half a dozen International Chefs with 16, Michelin stars between them. Then before the final three course meal cooked within two hours they were sent individually to three of the top ten restaurants in the world. The impression gained from the first programme and the first part of he second is that there were two outstanding amateur chefs, with one the eventual winner Matt, the most creative. His limitation was a lack of finesse in presentation.. His interest was in combinations of natural ingredients and hearty food. He is big man with a soft heart who was in tears of joy on several occasions when master chefs expressed their appreciation for his work.

Married with three children, born in New Zealand to British parents who moved back to the USA and the oldest of winner at the age of 42, he had previously worked by day as an IT engineer. His transformation even during the last two of 24 programmes in the six week series, but which involved several months in actual work and filming, was breathtaking. I have reservations about the justification for creating dishes which can involved thirty processes and a similar quantity of ingredients and are then delivered with prices for a three course meal of £100 upwards before the wine. This is because food is such a basic to human existence and millions do not have sufficient and continue to die from starvation and the illness associated with under nourishment.

However as with fine wine there are those with the financial means and the interest to develop the palette to appreciate the various mixtures of flavours and textures as well as eye catching presentations.

For the record the winning meal comprised a starter of a trio of pieces of rabbit with nettles and pancetta crisps. We used to eat rabbit as this used to be a cheaper dish than meats and at one time my birth mother bought two rabbit with the intention that they would bread, but they just got fatter and father until taken to the butchers as she could not eat to eat them.

The main course was a was a spider crab thermidor with mussels, foraged sea vegetables and a side dish of large chunky chips.

The pudding consisted of cream lavender and blackberry moose with honey comb and blackberry sauce.

I had a soup, two brown finger rolls with thick pieces of cold gammon and a seer and black pepper mustard with earlier a pork chop and apple sauce with new potatoes garden peas and whole carrots.

After the failure of the national cricket team to fail to win the last Test yet scoring over 500 runs in their first innings and then having the opportunity to insist that the West Indian team should follow on, because of injuries to bowlers’s they bated themselves but deciding to go to a lead of 500, only for the opposition to bat on with the help of some rain breaks, I debated watching the start of the 4th test. When England won the toss and got off to an excellent start and by close had scored another 300 runs for the lost of three weeks.

In the afternoon there was a visit to the dentist to see the dental hygienist, something which required mouth open contortions.

I listened to Tina Tuner, art artist I have enjoyed seeing in an arena twice, on video and listening on CD two of which I posses. I have seen the film based on her life and read the book. I also have an Ike and Tina turner tape compilation. Addicted to Love, Golden Eye, River Deep Mountain Eye, I don’t want to fight, When the heartache is over, Cose Bella Vita, Whatever you need, Something Special and Paradise is Here. Better be good to me and What’s love got to do with it, Complicated Disaster and In your Wildest dreams, Open Arms and In Great Spirits.

I went to sleep during a two hour, well one hour fifty minutes to be accurate dramatization of the last days of Margaret Thatcher as British Prime Minister. Previously there was a dramatization of her rise to power, an amazing story in which she overcame the prejudice of a Tory party which preferred to see woman stay in the home looking after children, or being restricted to professions such as teaching and nursing rather then taking an active role on politics, which still believed there was no role for women in politics After winning the nomination she won the General Election and commenced to rule her party, the Government and the UK with a clear vision of Britain competing on equal terms with the rest of the world. She was adamant about a number of issues which she held in black or white alternatives and where compromise was not a word she recognised. She was respected by senior members of the Labour Party more than many of her political colleagues and she was also hated by them for the policies she was able to push through Parliament. They secretly cheered as she paved the way for them to break free from enchainment to the trade unions, and many were as hostile as she to the role of social services and social welfare, and to the public services, wanting everything not only to be run as a business, but to be in non governmental hands. She might have succeed, especially after the success of defending the Falkland Islanders which contrasts with the reaction to Tony Blair who led the British participation and where the number of service personnel killed and wounded are broadly the same. What did for Mrs Thatcher was the change in the system of financing local government in much the same way that the abolition of the ten pence income tax rate nearly did for Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

With hindsight the evidence is that she would have won a fourth election as despite the strength of feeling against her, the middle class remained worried about the implications of having a Labour government. As the programme highlighted she was with four votes of winning the first ballot outright. She was the author of her own downfall expecting loyalty with the House of Commons Party and failing the personally court votes. The problem she faced was the combination of hatred within the Parliamentary Party from those she had excluded from Government and the cowardice of those who feared loss of their livelihoods at the following General Election. The snake in the grass was John Major who successfully courted both wings of the party to gain the leadership once the majority of her Cabinet colleagues told her they would not support her if she insisted on standing in the second ballot. This was the reality of British Party politics. Power and wealth always corrupts.

Remmmmmmmmmm

Wendy Richards, the actor, whose death was reported yesterday was someone loved and known to almost every household in the British Isles but will be a name unknown beyond these shores unless devotee of the British TV soap drama series Eastenders or the situational comedy show, Are you being served?

She was born in Middlesbrough during World War 2 and her parents moved around the UK. Her father committed suicide in 1954 and her mother died of cancer in 1972. Nothing further is immediately available about her family life except that she went to schools in West London and Rickmansworth Hertfordshire and then to the well known Italia Conti Academy stage school, the oldest in the UK and now with various establishments in greater London from those taking pupils age 9 years to graduate acting and art courses.

Internationally the most well known graduate is likely to be Noel Coward and them the actress Gertrude Lawrence. Among those who made a name for themselves in the cinema as well as stage were Anthony Newley and Nanette Newman, Anton Rogers and Googie Withers. More contemporary names include Leslie Ash, Peter Bayliss, Russell Brand, Johnny Briggs who appeared in the soap rival Coronation Street, William Hartnell, the first Dr Who, Bonnie Langford, the child star who continued into adulthood, Martine McCutcheon who also appeared in Eastenders and who went on to have a career as a singer and in film as well as stage, the much loved comedy actor Leslie Phillips and Anton Rodgers, Nadia Swalhalia who also appeared in Eastenders before becoming a TV presenter, the internationally known comedy actress Tracy Ulman and the former child star Lena Zavaroni and who died at the age of 35 after losing a battle with anorexia nervosa.

In the 1970’s Are you being served Wendy Richards became well known as the store assistant Miss Brahms, a show which gravitated to the London stage over Christmas, one of several during that era and which I would take my birth and care mothers to see on New Year visits as I they came to stay over Christmas. She had appeared in a TV soap before in the 1960’s and had appearances in dad‘s Army, Up Pompeii, the vehicle for Frankie Howard, and two Carry on Films, one with Barbara Windsor who also became and established actor on Eastenders. She commenced in Eastenders as a young married woman to Arthur with a tyrant of mother in law, and graduated into a fine character actor, although there was something negative in the character she was required to play in later years. She is reported to have fallen out with the series managers when asked to remarry again and she left the show after twenty years 2006. For the past two years she made several appearances, and a TV advert for the Post office despite having been diagnosed with breast caner in 1996 and a further development in 2002. Although given a clean bill of health in 2005 last year it was found that there had been a widespread development from which she was unable to recover.

Wendy was married twice before living with John Burns, a Painter and decorator, twenty years her junior from 1996, and marrying in 2008. She had no children.

This year I did not tune into the Master chef competition until the Final two programmes when the three contenders cooked for 400 staff at Buckingham Palace and 200 competitors and dignitaries, including Royalty, at the Burghley Horse Trials annual dinner, for half a dozen International Chefs with 16, Michelin stars between them. Then before the final three course meal cooked within two hours they were sent individually to three of the top ten restaurants in the world. The impression gained from the first programme and the first part of he second is that there were two outstanding amateur chefs, with one the eventual winner Matt, the most creative. His limitation was a lack of finesse in presentation.. His interest was in combinations of natural ingredients and hearty food. He is big man with a soft heart who was in tears of joy on several occasions when master chefs expressed their appreciation for his work.

Married with three children, born in New Zealand to British parents who moved back to the USA and the oldest of winner at the age of 42, he had previously worked by day as an IT engineer. His transformation even during the last two of 24 programmes in the six week series, but which involved several months in actual work and filming, was breathtaking. I have reservations about the justification for creating dishes which can involved thirty processes and a similar quantity of ingredients and are then delivered with prices for a three course meal of £100 upwards before the wine. This is because food is such a basic to human existence and millions do not have sufficient and continue to die from starvation and the illness associated with under nourishment.

However as with fine wine there are those with the financial means and the interest to develop the palette to appreciate the various mixtures of flavours and textures as well as eye catching presentations.

For the record the winning meal comprised a starter of a trio of pieces of rabbit with nettles and pancetta crisps. We used to eat rabbit as this used to be a cheaper dish than meats and at one time my birth mother bought two rabbit with the intention that they would bread, but they just got fatter and father until taken to the butchers as she could not eat to eat them.

The main course was a was a spider crab thermidor with mussels, foraged sea vegetables and a side dish of large chunky chips.

The pudding consisted of cream lavender and blackberry moose with honey comb and blackberry sauce.

I had a soup, two brown finger rolls with thick pieces of cold gammon and a seer and black pepper mustard with earlier a pork chop and apple sauce with new potatoes garden peas and whole carrots.

After the failure of the national cricket team to fail to win the last Test yet scoring over 500 runs in their first innings and then having the opportunity to insist that the West Indian team should follow on, because of injuries to bowlers’s they bated themselves but deciding to go to a lead of 500, only for the opposition to bat on with the help of some rain breaks, I debated watching the start of the 4th test. When England won the toss and got off to an excellent start and by close had scored another 300 runs for the lost of three weeks.

In the afternoon there was a visit to the dentist to see the dental hygienist, something which required mouth open contortions.

I listened to Tina Tuner, art artist I have enjoyed seeing in an arena twice, on video and listening on CD two of which I posses. I have seen the film based on her life and read the book. I also have an Ike and Tina turner tape compilation. Addicted to Love, Golden Eye, River Deep Mountain Eye, I don’t want to fight, When the heartache is over, Cose Bella Vita, Whatever you need, Something Special and Paradise is Here. Better be good to me and What’s love got to do with it, Complicated Disaster and In your Wildest dreams, Open Arms and In Great Spirits.

I went to sleep during a two hour, well one hour fifty minutes to be accurate dramatization of the last days of Margaret Thatcher as British Prime Minister. Previously there was a dramatization of her rise to power, an amazing story in which she overcame the prejudice of a Tory party which preferred to see woman stay in the home looking after children, or being restricted to professions such as teaching and nursing rather then taking an active role on politics, which still believed there was no role for women in politics After winning the nomination she won the General Election and commenced to rule her party, the Government and the UK with a clear vision of Britain competing on equal terms with the rest of the world. She was adamant about a number of issues which she held in black or white alternatives and where compromise was not a word she recognised. She was respected by senior members of the Labour Party more than many of her political colleagues and she was also hated by them for the policies she was able to push through Parliament. They secretly cheered as she paved the way for them to break free from enchainment to the trade unions, and many were as hostile as she to the role of social services and social welfare, and to the public services, wanting everything not only to be run as a business, but to be in non governmental hands. She might have succeed, especially after the success of defending the Falkland Islanders which contrasts with the reaction to Tony Blair who led the British participation and where the number of service personnel killed and wounded are broadly the same. What did for Mrs Thatcher was the change in the system of financing local government in much the same way that the abolition of the ten pence income tax rate nearly did for Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

With hindsight the evidence is that she would have won a fourth election as despite the strength of feeling against her, the middle class remained worried about the implications of having a Labour government. As the programme highlighted she was with four votes of winning the first ballot outright. She was the author of her own downfall expecting loyalty with the House of Commons Party and failing the personally court votes. The problem she faced was the combination of hatred within the Parliamentary Party from those she had excluded from Government and the cowardice of those who feared loss of their livelihoods at the following General Election. The snake in the grass was John Major who successfully courted both wings of the party to gain the leadership once the majority of her Cabinet colleagues told her they would not support her if she insisted on standing in the second ballot. This was the reality of British Party politics. Power and wealth always corrupts.

Remmmmmmmmmm

Wendy Richards, the actor, whose death was reported yesterday was someone loved and known to almost every household in the British Isles but will be a name unknown beyond these shores unless devotee of the British TV soap drama series Eastenders or the situational comedy show, Are you being served?

She was born in Middlesbrough during World War 2 and her parents moved around the UK. Her father committed suicide in 1954 and her mother died of cancer in 1972. Nothing further is immediately available about her family life except that she went to schools in West London and Rickmansworth Hertfordshire and then to the well known Italia Conti Academy stage school, the oldest in the UK and now with various establishments in greater London from those taking pupils age 9 years to graduate acting and art courses.

Internationally the most well known graduate is likely to be Noel Coward and them the actress Gertrude Lawrence. Among those who made a name for themselves in the cinema as well as stage were Anthony Newley and Nanette Newman, Anton Rogers and Googie Withers. More contemporary names include Leslie Ash, Peter Bayliss, Russell Brand, Johnny Briggs who appeared in the soap rival Coronation Street, William Hartnell, the first Dr Who, Bonnie Langford, the child star who continued into adulthood, Martine McCutcheon who also appeared in Eastenders and who went on to have a career as a singer and in film as well as stage, the much loved comedy actor Leslie Phillips and Anton Rodgers, Nadia Swalhalia who also appeared in Eastenders before becoming a TV presenter, the internationally known comedy actress Tracy Ulman and the former child star Lena Zavaroni and who died at the age of 35 after losing a battle with anorexia nervosa.

In the 1970’s Are you being served Wendy Richards became well known as the store assistant Miss Brahms, a show which gravitated to the London stage over Christmas, one of several during that era and which I would take my birth and care mothers to see on New Year visits as I they came to stay over Christmas. She had appeared in a TV soap before in the 1960’s and had appearances in dad‘s Army, Up Pompeii, the vehicle for Frankie Howard, and two Carry on Films, one with Barbara Windsor who also became and established actor on Eastenders. She commenced in Eastenders as a young married woman to Arthur with a tyrant of mother in law, and graduated into a fine character actor, although there was something negative in the character she was required to play in later years. She is reported to have fallen out with the series managers when asked to remarry again and she left the show after twenty years 2006. For the past two years she made several appearances, and a TV advert for the Post office despite having been diagnosed with breast caner in 1996 and a further development in 2002. Although given a clean bill of health in 2005 last year it was found that there had been a widespread development from which she was unable to recover.

Wendy was married twice before living with John Burns, a Painter and decorator, twenty years her junior from 1996, and marrying in 2008. She had no children.

This year I did not tune into the Master chef competition until the Final two programmes when the three contenders cooked for 400 staff at Buckingham Palace and 200 competitors and dignitaries, including Royalty, at the Burghley Horse Trials annual dinner, for half a dozen International Chefs with 16, Michelin stars between them. Then before the final three course meal cooked within two hours they were sent individually to three of the top ten restaurants in the world. The impression gained from the first programme and the first part of he second is that there were two outstanding amateur chefs, with one the eventual winner Matt, the most creative. His limitation was a lack of finesse in presentation.. His interest was in combinations of natural ingredients and hearty food. He is big man with a soft heart who was in tears of joy on several occasions when master chefs expressed their appreciation for his work.

Married with three children, born in New Zealand to British parents who moved back to the USA and the oldest of winner at the age of 42, he had previously worked by day as an IT engineer. His transformation even during the last two of 24 programmes in the six week series, but which involved several months in actual work and filming, was breathtaking. I have reservations about the justification for creating dishes which can involved thirty processes and a similar quantity of ingredients and are then delivered with prices for a three course meal of £100 upwards before the wine. This is because food is such a basic to human existence and millions do not have sufficient and continue to die from starvation and the illness associated with under nourishment.

However as with fine wine there are those with the financial means and the interest to develop the palette to appreciate the various mixtures of flavours and textures as well as eye catching presentations.

For the record the winning meal comprised a starter of a trio of pieces of rabbit with nettles and pancetta crisps. We used to eat rabbit as this used to be a cheaper dish than meats and at one time my birth mother bought two rabbit with the intention that they would bread, but they just got fatter and father until taken to the butchers as she could not eat to eat them.

The main course was a was a spider crab thermidor with mussels, foraged sea vegetables and a side dish of large chunky chips.

The pudding consisted of cream lavender and blackberry moose with honey comb and blackberry sauce.

I had a soup, two brown finger rolls with thick pieces of cold gammon and a seer and black pepper mustard with earlier a pork chop and apple sauce with new potatoes garden peas and whole carrots.

After the failure of the national cricket team to fail to win the last Test yet scoring over 500 runs in their first innings and then having the opportunity to insist that the West Indian team should follow on, because of injuries to bowlers’s they bated themselves but deciding to go to a lead of 500, only for the opposition to bat on with the help of some rain breaks, I debated watching the start of the 4th test. When England won the toss and got off to an excellent start and by close had scored another 300 runs for the lost of three weeks.

In the afternoon there was a visit to the dentist to see the dental hygienist, something which required mouth open contortions.

I listened to Tina Tuner, art artist I have enjoyed seeing in an arena twice, on video and listening on CD two of which I posses. I have seen the film based on her life and read the book. I also have an Ike and Tina turner tape compilation. Addicted to Love, Golden Eye, River Deep Mountain Eye, I don’t want to fight, When the heartache is over, Cose Bella Vita, Whatever you need, Something Special and Paradise is Here. Better be good to me and What’s love got to do with it, Complicated Disaster and In your Wildest dreams, Open Arms and In Great Spirits.

I went to sleep during a two hour, well one hour fifty minutes to be accurate dramatization of the last days of Margaret Thatcher as British Prime Minister. Previously there was a dramatization of her rise to power, an amazing story in which she overcame the prejudice of a Tory party which preferred to see woman stay in the home looking after children, or being restricted to professions such as teaching and nursing rather then taking an active role on politics, which still believed there was no role for women in politics After winning the nomination she won the General Election and commenced to rule her party, the Government and the UK with a clear vision of Britain competing on equal terms with the rest of the world. She was adamant about a number of issues which she held in black or white alternatives and where compromise was not a word she recognised. She was respected by senior members of the Labour Party more than many of her political colleagues and she was also hated by them for the policies she was able to push through Parliament. They secretly cheered as she paved the way for them to break free from enchainment to the trade unions, and many were as hostile as she to the role of social services and social welfare, and to the public services, wanting everything not only to be run as a business, but to be in non governmental hands. She might have succeed, especially after the success of defending the Falkland Islanders which contrasts with the reaction to Tony Blair who led the British participation and where the number of service personnel killed and wounded are broadly the same. What did for Mrs Thatcher was the change in the system of financing local government in much the same way that the abolition of the ten pence income tax rate nearly did for Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

With hindsight the evidence is that she would have won a fourth election as despite the strength of feeling against her, the middle class remained worried about the implications of having a Labour government. As the programme highlighted she was with four votes of winning the first ballot outright. She was the author of her own downfall expecting loyalty with the House of Commons Party and failing the personally court votes. The problem she faced was the combination of hatred within the Parliamentary Party from those she had excluded from Government and the cowardice of those who feared loss of their livelihoods at the following General Election. The snake in the grass was John Major who successfully courted both wings of the party to gain the leadership once the majority of her Cabinet colleagues told her they would not support her if she insisted on standing in the second ballot. This was the reality of British Party politics. Power and wealth always corrupts.

Zoe and Sam Wanamaker

Who do you think you are? is now in its seventh series and I look forward to each new exploration of a family history but also cannot resist feeling it would nice if I had been able to have the research support which enables the personalities to uncover their backgrounds. This was especially so this evening as Zoe Wanamaker was able to uncover all the questions she had about her ancestry.

In 1895, in the Ukraine, then part of Russia, and where anyone who was Jewish was required to live in the towns and cities of the South West and where they were restricted in the work which could be undertaken as well as how and where they lived. Most records from this time have not survived but in a drab municipal building in what became an important industrial and naval city of Nikoleav, situated at the confluence of two rivers as they enter the Black Sea, Zoe was able to be shown the birth record of her paternal grandfather, and what remains to day of the area of the town where those of the Jewish faith and life were required to live in cellar like one room dwellings with only half a window above ground.

It was not surprising therefore that when the USA opened up her borders for a new workforce to fuel its rapidly developing economy millions of Russian people and from the central European nations grasped the opportunity. In the instance of her great father, his wife, her grandfather and their other children made the journey by train across Europe to Antwerp where they took ship to Canada, where shipping records show they all spent time in a hospital before making the rest of the journey to the United States and to Chicago where another relative had earlier settled, saved and sending the family the travel tickets, and was presumably available to greet them when they arrived in the city with their clothing, a few other possessions, their hopes and dreams, speaking only Russian and Yiddish.

In one sense the family were lucky because on arrival in the USA everyone was required to have a medical and anyone with a serious condition was not allowed in and returned. Two weeks after arrival the mother was rushed to a local hospital where later a telegram was sent to announce that she had died from a heart attack. Zoe was able to visit the cemetery where Jewish people were buried, and where the administrative officer took her particulars as her great grandmother’s grave did not have a contemporary relative listed and where although in the charity section there was now a tall headstone at the base of which could be seen the word mother chiselled from the stone.

An elder sister of Zoe lived in another part of the USA and through another relative Zoe received a typed copy of the story of her Grandfather’s early life which he had written in his forties. From this she learnt the moving story of the death of his mother and the grief of his father so soon after arriving in the country. Then after gaining work at a local factory and in his early twenties, he had become engaged in a long and fruitless strike against a reduction in wages.

I break off because the picture of an emigrant society is similar to what is happening in the UK and other developed parts of Europe over the past decade and in India and China. Then the USA was wanting to develop its economy to be increase self sufficiency and reduced dependence on the more expensive imports from Britain, Europe and the rest of the world. With the abolition of slavery it was necessary to encourage the hard working and ambitious poor from elsewhere to come to the country where they would undertake production work for long hours and low pay. And because they could be replaced by others more desperate to get a start if wages and condition had to be reduced.

This has also become a necessary development for developed Europe today as production processes which do not require skilled labour can be out sourced in China, India and other developing nations, and where in India for example the average wage is about £350 a year, and where in the world there are estimated to be a billion others who survive on half this amount.

The Chicago strike lasted for several months. One striker was killed in a battle with the police while another, a young woman died of starvation, but in the end the workers returned because the union no longer recognised the action and stopped giving food and clothing relief. The effect of the strike was the development of the a new union, nationwide which became the Garment worker’s union, and Zoë’s paternal grandfather had become the equivalent of a shop steward and commenced to meet a wide range of people as he recorded in his notes. The programme did not disclose the rest of what was written in the notes, but it was sufficient to explain why her father Sam had become a Communist in his youth. It was also understandable that as an individualist he decided to leave but retained an active interest in a number of organisations concerned with civil rights.

Zoe was able to learn of this involvement for the first time because under the USA Freedom of information laws she was able to view the CIA file on her father and be given a copy for the family record. This does not include the names of informants and employees who are still living.

Prior to the Second World War her father, Sam Wanamaker had trained as an Actor at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and had helped build the stage of Peninsula Player’s Theatre in 1937. He travelled the USA establishing himself as an actor and when working on Broadway in 1940 he married a Canadian radio soap star Charlotte Holland and who also became a stage actor.

In 1943 he played the part of a Russian Soldier in the play Counter Attack at the National Theatre Washington and as a method actor he had engrossed himself in the life of the character, was attracted to the ideals of communism and joined the USA Party. He also attended Drake University before being drafted into the Army in 1953 leaving in 1946 moving to Hollywood in 1947 and leaving the Communist party at that time.

Once allies of the USA Russia now became the main enemy as they Cold War developed over the control of Berlin and Germany, and the continuing Community belief that only through a world communist led coalition could the communist system be effectively established and private capitalism ended.

This led to concern in the USA that with such a large emigrant population from Russia, the country was vulnerable to spying and to the provoking of unrest. This concern was reasonable given what had become known about the activities of some German and Japanese residents and what would have been known then about the tactics of the Communists and Trotskyites’ and such groups in particular, however the methods of the Senator McCarthy led Committee were crude and the consequences of being blacklisted or refusing to given evidence at he Committee meant the loss of livelihood and had social consequences.

Less than a decade later I had become a single issue revolutionary, but committed to non violence because of my fundamentalist Catholic background and because I had read Satyagraha and All Men are brothers The United Nations published Life and Thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi (bought on 1st December 1959) I was not a subversive or Enterists, in that everything I did , I did openly, and was prepared to accept and take the consequences of my actions. I was also fortunate to have developed a friendship with someone who explained the nature of state capitalism in communist states and I had also had early direct experience of the position of the Socialist Labour League and their approach to weapons of mass destruction and to industry. In 1960 I been invited to man a bookstall at a London annual meeting/ conference of Socialist Labour League to which Pat Arrowsmith had been invited to address.

I left the stall unattended to enter the conference to which I had to complete a card giving my address and other details to listen to Pat and then had stayed on to listen to the then leader Gerry Healey. He was an established demagogy and spent the first part of his address explaining that while he agreed with Pat about the UK abolishing the possession and potential use of weapons of mass destruction as part of the worker‘s struggle against the capitalist bosses but he was not a unilateralist and considered it essential that those representing the working classes of the world retained the maximum range of weapons especially nuclear weapons in the war against private capitalism

The second part of his operation was to explain how the ordinary workers of the UK had to be led to understand the nature of private capitalism by undertaking strikes in key industries. It was only by being on strike for prolonged periods that the true nature of state supported private capitalism would be revealed by the use of the police and army in their defence, the use of scab labour and they and their families being forced to live on hand outs and charity. The art was to use and employed genuine grievances and the tactic was enterism, infiltration of key industries with the machine tool industry their next chief target. He reviewed their success in terms of placements and strikes over the past year. It was also evident from those groups marching together as a group on successive Aldermaston marches and enquiries made at the time just how many were genuine peace orientated organisations and how many were climbing on the bandwagon taking over leaderships and with other and sometimes more important agenda’s about which they were far from being open.

What interested me was Zoë’s reaction to the contents of the CIA file on her father. She appeared shocked that he had one, and that it included innocuous confirmation from a fellow female actor of his admission that he had been a member of the Communist Party, something which he admitted himself. She also appeared shocked that his membership and support for a number of civil rights organisation had been included, with notes on the reactions of the audience when he had spoken. Against I was struck by her apparent naivety and surprise that such organisations were used or fronts for those with different objectives and motives to those stated in public. At the same time there was the hint of being an apologist or being uncomfortable about his membership of the Community Party, being a socialist and a lefty. I am not being over critical because these days one is branding oneself by declaring that one has always been committed to the socialist ideas and principles recorded as those of Jesus of Nazareth and have consistently denounced the hypocrisy of a state Christianity which applauds and furthers private capitalism especially by the leadership of the Labour Party in the UK. For me it has always been a case of means being as important as the ends and not the other way round.

The reaction of Sam Wanamaker to being told he was about to be issued with a subpoena to appear before the Senate Un-American activities Committee was to effectively seek asylum in the UK, where he was filming Mr Denning drives North. He remained in England with his wife and three daughters, including Zoe working as an actor on stage and screen, as director and producer. In 1957 he was appointed Director of the New Shakespeare Theatre in Liverpool and in 1959 he joined the Shakespeare company at Stratford upon Avon and in the 1960, and 1970 he produced or directed several works in London at Covent Garden including the 1974 Shakespeare birthday celebration. It was during this period that he established a relationship with the then widowed American actress Jan Stirling.

He continued his wide range of interests appearing films such as The Spiral Staircase 1974, Private Benjamin 1980 and Superman IV in 1987 and he directed a version of Aida with Luciano Pavarotti at the San Francisco Opera House.

However his legacy is not his acting, film work and directing but his decision to found the Shakespeare Globe Trust to rebuild the Globe Theatre on its original site having discovered and been surprised at the lack of interest other than for an old plaque at a disused brewery when he had first visited the site in 1949. He obtained the site and planning permission although this is reported to have been opposed by the local council. The sum required to create an exact replica was in excess of ten million dollars

As the programme last night revealed Sam had disclosed to his daughter that he had questioned his decision to make London his home rather than accept the what would have been a subpoena, possibly refusing to answer questions about his colleagues and be sent to prison as had ten of his colleagues beforehand. She conveyed the sense of regret he felt about what he came to regard as a failure to put principles in practice when the going gets tough. It is however one thing to act when only you have yourself to consider and another when you have a wife and a young family and you could be giving up the one activity which you not only love but have spent your whole life doing.

Although I personally found it a very difficult thing to do, when I commenced to protest and returned to prison for six months knowing there was an alternative which offered complete freedom except pursing what I had been doing, I did not have a career or knew what I wanted to do in terms of work, had failed at my second choice of work and had no dependents although I was aware that my activities were having an impact on my birth and care mothers and other family members. The situation was very different when at the end of my first term at Ruskin College, I had become aware of the wonderful opportunity that had been given through a local authority further education grant and had discovered that although attending a specialist adult education college located in the City of Oxford the University opened its doors to Ruskin students in that we were able to attend various university societies, lectures and the library, and that there was a special arrangement which enabled students selected by the college to go for interview for a place at an Oxford, and in some instances, a Cambridge, College to read for a degree, avoiding the first public examination and taking three years to complete what other students were expected to do in two. Faced with such options and opportunities I elected to accept the recognisance rather than risk withdrawing of the grant and or expulsion from the college. I never considered my actions as being wrong subsequently but I did in general regret some of the changes in position and approach to issues which developed later, even those I knew intellectually that this was the right thing to do.

I had an interesting conversation when taking the bus to Sunderland yesterday afternoon. I had walked with enthusiasm to the bus station as the sun was bright and although the wind of the previous day persisted it was warm enough for the time of year. I had just missed the 35 direct route which meant a wait of close to 15 minutes and when it failed to pass by on the other side of the road after waiting five minutes after the due arrival time and one of the other routes arrived at the next stop I hurriedly made my way to that. I was soon joined by a man who I subsequently learnt was rapidly approach ninety. He had opened the conversation by commenting on what I fine afternoon it was and I mentioned to having gone out the previous afternoon to look at how the £5 million had been spent on the park. He immediately contributed by speaking of his knowledge of the park from boyhood in the 1920’s and when I mentioned the cost of a bacon roll and coffee at the Ship and Royal to that at the new facility aimed at the coach party tourist and car visitor for the day, he revealed that at the age of 15, an orphan brought up by his grand parents he had been sent to work as a live in page boy at the Ship and Royal, then a hotel. When I was pre school child spending nights in the air raid shelter ion the garden, listening and occasionally seeing the rocket bombs, he was in the navy travelling the world, he was about to tell of his visit to South Africa when he arrived at his stop. Although he needed a stick, I hope I might live as long and keep my mind so clear. He also added on additional piece of information about the Lake and the wildlife. Apparently the birds would migrate annually with the onset of Winter and then the island with trees and shrubs had been added and the birds were able to use the island over the winter, whereas previously the availability of trees and shrubs had not held them because the island being an island was secure.

I need to visit a building society and the post office before making way to the bank to deposit the return of £17.50 from the headquarters of the Vehicle and driving licences at Bristol. I have written several times about my experience working for the Middlesex County Headquarters of the vehicle and Licences Department before the service became Regional and was only later centralised. In January I was sent a form head change of photo and which required a fee of £17.50 to be paid. I had completed the form, obtained a new photo and returned with the existing licence and the parts which can include more current information. It was then all returned back a new form for those who reach 70 years and involves making various statements about heath sight. I still returned the fee as I though my new photo reflected my age. However although the photo has been included on the new licence, they are no printed in black and white, the money was returned in the form of cheque draft. On arrival at the bank I was struck that only one of the eight to ten cashier points was open and in addition to this cashier there was only one other staff member at the reception enquiry table. It was still before 4 pm. Admittedly I cannot recall visiting the city centre branch of the bank so late in the afternoon before but I wondered if it a sign of the time. I was stuck by the number of shuttered shops on my back into Shields.

The bus had gone along the coast road for part its journey stopping close to the Whitburn compressive school and which is used by some pupils who live in Sunderland in preference to the Wearmouth comprehensive at Seaburn which is in Borough and closer to where they lived by about a mile. About a dozen pupils go on the bus at the stop, mostly teenage girls and what struck me was how big of body several of them were in terms of size around the hips. We are becoming a fat nation.

The final thought for the day was to put in a request to see what was available my MI5 file for the period 1960-1964.

The Krays, Boothby East End Crime

The sky was grey with a strong indication of rain as I reluctantly prepared to walk into the town centre this morning with the temperature recording at Newcastle a balmy 9 degrees. Later 10 degrees was recorded, the highest for the month. There was no rain while I was out, just a feeling of dampness, and the weather brightened up a little with small patches of blue emerging, and thought to be the pattern for the rest of the day. I had no evidence to support and I for one have always distrusted feelings over facts. While I still find the climb back up the hill daunting, on leaving my home there is a different perspective in every direction with the mouth of the Tyne River to the East, North Tyneside to the North and in the West indications of the Port of Tyne and the river route to Newcastle. Going diagonally into the town centre there is the Town Hall clock on the hill which masks everything further southward.

It is half term and the lady from some central European country is trying to earn cash with three child mannequins playing musical instruments. I notice the number of retail units to rent signs in a block close to my bank. One has been converted to a charity shop of which there are already several in the street. One brand clothing store aimed at young folk has closed down. It is evident existing occupants have been unwilling or unable to face the increase in rents but I am guess again. Some establishments continue to do well or at least appear busy between 10 am and 3.30. Every make of mobile phone is available, there are three bakeries with take away sandwiches, with two of these offer eat at table snacks; there are two others in the short side passages to the parallel road which acts as the bus terminal. There is the large ever popular internally redesigned Big Mac and two popular first floor restaurant cafes as well as all the pubs, restaurants and cafes at one end in Market Square and along both sides of Ocean Road along the other, but the volume of people except on Saturday morning does not provide the level of trade turnover to justify the likely rents expected for the remaining imposing buildings on three floors which ere not flattened in the Blitz. There are six outlets selling electrical, DVD’s and Games and two chemists. There is also two of everything for £1 stores, two opticians a photograph shop, the chocolate shop. One men’s outfitter, Smiths and the closed Woolworths store. Tomorrow I will see what I have forgotten. South Shields remains a working class town with no hint of the student population located in the southern area of the town with nearby shop and pub facilities. Resident students and those continuing to live with their families only appear in the nightlife area after dark, and then at weekends. You can tell this is a working class town from the absence of suits and women in the clothing of big city professionals. You can see the effects of a hard life in the faces, the bent backs and the walking sticks. Today there are children because it is half term.

After paying in a cheque at the bank, buying the newspaper and collecting the DVD I experienced the anticipated disappointment of finding that the cherries have ended as suddenly as they appeared two weeks ago and have to make do with Bananas which are more expensive than those at the supermarket and grapes, which are much cheaper. However I have enjoyed the treat and regret having to wait months before they are likely to appear again at such a good price.

On return I had planned to work on my in tray and undertake some research after making first notes for Blog of the Day, but checked the film times for Doubt and Vicky Christina Barcelona and it is evident that with the cinema given over to Bolt 2D and 3D versions I have to go and see both this week, starting today if I wish to attend afternoon viewings. This meant coping with the usual half term attendance, so I organised myself to arrive a good 20 mins before the start of the programme. This was just as well because I cannot recall such a crowd, and such a long queue before, and I had to wait twenty minuets arriving in the theatre just before the film commenced. Others were not so lucky and unable to get to their seats for until five and then ten mins after the film had started.

Yesterday I reached 101 successive wins at level chess for the third time. In the first instance I unintentionally pressed the clear button and in the second the computer crashed. It has taken 657 games to achieve the result and 12 draws and four defeats. The previous highest run of wins was 87. This means that I have achieved three runs of 101 or more out of he four games being played at the lowest level or available level of skill. I am approaching 500 wins at free cell without one loss and a good run of over 150 at Spider after a shaky start. This took me to lunch with a pieces of smoked fish cooked in the microwave with the rest of the vegetables from yesterday, a banana and hot cross bun, This evening there was gammon with olive sald with chutney on crackers a starter and a hot cross bun and coffee. Breakfast was a soup and a roll. Before writing about Doubt I needed to work through my reactions to the disclosures of the previous evening.

I had not anticipated the level of revelation and information in the Channel Four programme, the Gangster and the Peer, although it should have called the Gangsters and the peers. Channel Four has taken over from the BBC in providing programmes which reveal and inform information which others want to have buried or restricted without good reason.

I have never regarded the pubic interest as justifying intrusion into the private lives and personal behaviour of anyone unless it directly affects on the performance of functions undertaken on behalf of the people, and even then there are circumstances where the national interest must take precedence over the public. Nor do I believe there is an unqualified public right to know because we live in representative democracy. There are state secrets and sometimes this involves misleading the public through the media, and some circumstance this may involve not telling the truth.

However the dilemma for individuals and the media is being able to make a judgement that the non disclosure is actually in the national interests or in the protection of the rights of others and is not just another squalid political and sometimes criminal cover up. My limited experience and involvement at what happens at National government level is that in general such action is only taken at after much thought and soul searching by senior politicians and their advisers, and that only rarely is there a combination of personalities and events which result in the future of the representative government and the rule of law itself being threatened. This happened in the 1960’s.

The story begins with two East End thugs, the twin brother Ronald and Reginald Kray. They were born to an ordinary East End Family and their school record was good in terms of their attendance and behaviour. The went into Boxing as young men with some success and then things appeared to change before and during the requirement to undertake National Service in 1952. They were known to be able to look after themselves and to be answerable to no one. They immediately rebelled against the army discipline, deserting several times held in an ordinary prison until court martial sentence to an army prison. It said during this time that Ronnie developed the first indications of Paranoid Schizophrenia. It is not said when it was found that he had an interest in other young men rather than girls. Even in the 1950 both were taboo subjects. One was punishable by a long prison sentence and the other was regarded as untreatable.

Discharged from the army, their Boxing careers at an end, they acquired a snooker club in Bethnal green. They were asked to pay protection money and one of the twins is reported to have impaled the hand of the racket leader into a snooker table. This not only ended attempt to extortionate money from them but is said to have led to them starting up on their own. They were also involved in armed robberies and arson and Reggie was sent to Prison for 19 months in1960. The same time as my own experience and British Society was undergoing major changes in terms of political and social awareness and behaviour after the horrors of the World War and the financial restraints that followed.

It was at this point that their fortunes changed as Peter Rachman gave the brothers Esmeralda’s Nightclub in Knightsbridge. (Rachman was a notorious violent landlord) The running of the night club changed things for the Twins. The club had a Peer, Lord Effingham as an effective doorman, adding class to establishment and twins set about cultivating film and TV starts and Politicians in the same way they understood that the Mafia held power in cities in the USA. They entertained stars such as Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, George Raft, Diana Dors and Barbara Windsor but they knew that the power they needed would only come by involving senior politicians form the two main political parties in the UK.

The first Peer they were able to corrupt was Lord Bradwell the former Communist and Labour Member of Parliament, Chairman of the Labour Party and friend of Traitor Guy Burgess, Tom Driberg. He joined the Communist Party when he was only 15 years. And then went to Oxford and became a journalist and a politician. He went to the Express Newspapers owned by the Tory Party supporting Lord Beaverbrook where he created the William Hickey Diary Gossip Column of the type which Evelyn Waugh made famous in Vile Bodies and was made into the recent film Bright Young Things. In his posthumously published autobiography Lord Bardwell admitted that two conflicts affected his life. One was that between his leanings toward the High Church end of the Church of England and his Left wing politics, and the other his High Church leaning and his homosexuality. His problem was not being a homosexual, then still against the law, but needing to take risk, having sex in public places and with those who were criminal and violent. One of these was Mad Teddy Smith a henchman of the Krays and someone Ronnie admitted killing in his end of life confession. The Krays were able to supply Driberg with an unlimited number of rent boys and invited him to sex parties at which photographs are known to have been taken.

The highlight of their relationship was when Driberg attended the Royal Film Premier of the film Sparrers can’t sing in their newly acquired East End Premises. London high society had redeveloped a fascination with crime and the East of London. A cockney Play Sparrers Can’t sing had been turned into a film and premier held in the East End with much publicity as it was attended by a member of the Royal Family. The club and the Krays feature in the film and there is a photograph of Driberg with the Krays and other personalities at the after film party. Also in the photo is Leslie Holt. Driberg was protected from prosecution by Lord Beaverbrook and in part this may have been because of the belief that Driberg worked for MI5 and was regarded as a double agent. He was expelled from the Communist Party because they believed he was working for MI5. He is known to have been blackmailed by the KGB who had compromising photo of him. He visited Moscow to interview Burgess for a biography and it is known that because of their pressure the book was amended. Driberg was friends in his early life with the Satanist, Aleister Crowley and there is one document indicating that he had a deep interest in the cult at one time. Driberg is known to have repented aspects of his life leaving instructions that any Memorial service for him should concentrate on his sins and not his virtues.

However having a powerful Member of the Labour Party on their books was not enough for the Krays: they wanted someone high up in the Tory Party.

It has to be remembered that the Macmillan government had effectively fallen because over the wide ranging Profumo Keeler Scandal which came to the fore in 1963. John Profumo Minister of Defence was a high life loving married man who first encountered Christine Keeler wrapped in only a wet towel at the country home of Lord and Lady Astor during one of their weekend House Parties. Profumo although married to the celebrated British film actress Valerie Hobson, commenced an affair with Keeler who was also sleeping with a Russian diplomat and spy, among others. Profumo lied to the House of Commons and to government interrogators, denying his relationship, but then had to admit he had dome so. He and his wife spent the rest of their lives working for an East End based Charity.

Christine Keeler had been the mistress of the previously mentioned Peter Rachman and through her friend the osteopath Stephen Ward she had become friends with Mandy Rice Davis a sixteen year old beauty who had also become the mistress of Peter Rachman. While together at a flat another of Keeler’s former lovers entered and fired shots and this incident led to a trial and publicity about the two women and being part of the Ward set, (he committed suicide), the visits to Cliveden, the home of the Astor’s, the relationships with Profumo and the Russian spy)

The Krays could not have made a better choice in homing in on Lord Boothby.

Robert Boothby was educated at Eton and Magdalene College, Oxford, joining a firm of stockbrokers, but with the ambition to become a conservative Member of Parliament, He won the East Aberdeen constituency in 1924 and continued until 1958. He had been Parliamentary Secretary to Winston Churchill and held a junior ministerial position in the Wartime Churchill Government but was sacked for not disclosing an interest when asking Parliamentary Questions. He then became a national personality through appearances on the radio programme Any Questions and then on TV becoming a very popular figure for his directness and love of life. He held various national offices from Chairman of the Royal Philharmonic, President of the Anglo Israeli Association and Rector of St Andrews University. He was awarded the Legion of Honour and made a knight and then a Life peer in 1958 when he was the same age.

He was also an established homosexual, with an interest in young men as he grew older, then an illegal activity which would have ended his political and public roles. Contrary to some reports that he only used heterosexual relationships to cover his homosexuality, the evidence suggests a love of young women as well as young men. He was married twice and he is known to have been the father of three children to three other married women, according to his cousin Sir Ludovic Kennedy.

His most notorious relationship was with the wife of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. This continued for some twenty years and was the cause of great distress to the Prime Minister. Boothby successfully petitioned MacMillan to be made a Lord.

The mother of the present British Queen, Queen Elizabeth told Woodrow Wyatt in 1991 that the press and London society knew about his affairs and she described him as a bounder but not a cad. An Express Journalist Michael Thornton then a young man discovered when visited the home of Boothby, that he had developed a passion for Leslie Holt a lover of Ronnie Kray and this led to Kray and Boothby having a relationship. In addition to making he available to rich old men for money Leslie was burglar and Boothby joked to Thornton that if he disliked someone he would send Holt around to burgle their homes when they were away on holiday.

It was then that sex shows were arranged at the home of Ronnie to which Teddy Smith and Leslie Holt invited Driberg and Boothby and photos were taken to blackmail them and others. Both were interested in kinky sex one in orgies and the other in very perverse activities. This was happening while the Profumo Keeler scandal raged thus confirmed the limited impact of deterrent sentencing on others. Boothby acted as if nothing could affect his behaviour inviting Kray to dine with him at the House of Lords.

Young Express Journalist Michael Thornton then found himself in a dangerous and compromising situation at the Krays Club. A beaten up young man referred to as a boy was told to be nice to Boothby and while they were the journalist learnt from another boy that Kray has raped a well known heterosexual boxer and an actor, the latter at gun point. This may have been a prearranged seduction plan as Ronnie then made known his intentions when the young journalist refused a gun was pulled and only the intervention of the twin brother enabled the journalist to escape. This was all said on by the journalist today on camera. He recognised that while Kay provided rough East End young men Boothby was trying to provide more sophisticated young men to Ronnie Kray. The point was made that his situation was not unique and he only escaped because he was a journalist.

Understandably he went immediately to his Editor, John Junior with what eh expected would be the scoop of the decade but he the facts of life and the story which could have damaged the Tory Party beyond repair was spiked. The Newspaper was owned by Tory Party Supporting Lord Beaverbrook.

1964 was General Election Year and organised crime in London was a political issue high profile in the media and under investigation by individual in the Metropolitan Police There were 500 clubs operating in the West End with protection rackets dominated by the Krays who had commenced to Franchise. The Michael Caine cult classic Get Carter was set in London and Tyneside so was the play and TV series Our Friends in the North.

The Labour Party supporting Mirror Newspapers were investigating the Krays and proposed articles when from a Scotland Yard tip off they were advised of the relationship between Ronnie Kray and Lord Boothby. Because of the lack of proof they ran a story in the Sunday Mirror which simply said that an unnamed homosexual gangster had an improper relationship with a well known Tory Peer. Obviously everyone in society and politics knew who was being referred to and Tory Party Whips went immediately to Boothby who denied the story. A picture at the Mirror according Derek Jameson then Picture Editor, showing Ronnie and Holt with Boothby at his flat. Although the picture was not published it was referred to in the next edition of the Sunday Paper. Although the Tory Party Whips thought Boothby had therefore lied, and with only weeks to go before the General Election, the Tory Leader Sir Alec Douglas Home closed ranks. However the more extraordinary development was the action of the Labour Leader and soon to be Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who ordered his members of Parliament not to raise the issue despite rumours about the involvement of Tom Driberg with Rent boys and gangsters. Amazingly Boothby was offered the services of Wilson’s senior legal adviser Arnold Goodman, subsequently Lord Goodman. Boothby sent a letter to the Times newspaper explaining that he had met Kray only three times to discuss a business matter and the Mirror was threatened with being sued. Then amazingly despite having the copper bottom evidence if the case came to civil court trial, the boss of Mirror Newspaper Cecil King apologised for the story and sacked the editor. In an out of court settlement Mirror Newspapers paid Boothby £40000 about half a million to- day. Harold Wilson won the General Election and the Boothby Kray affair was dropped with the consequences that media and police had their hands tied and the Krays believed they were untouchable and for some time it appeared that they were.

Several months later the owner of a club reported the Krays and Teddy Smith for demanding money with menaces and then wrecking the establishment when the money was refused. The police had to act, the three were arrested and held in custody but black mailed Boothby to request their release in the House of Lords. He was shouted down. However there is now strong suggestion that the jury was intimidated and bribed and the three men walked free and were treated with even greater celebrity status. Reggie announced on TV that he wished to go ahead with his marriage to which Tom Driberg attended. Ronnie said he wanted to go abroad and then be left alone. Celebrity Photographer David Bailey, who the Antonioni Film Blow Up is said to have been influenced by, took photos at the weeding and also of other celebrities such as Michael Caine and Mick Jagger and when these were published as boxed prints. It was then the husband of Princess Margaret, Lord Snowden, who is reported to have ensured that Photos of the Kray Twins were not included in a second edition of the box.

The consequence of the failed trial and the payment of damages meant that the police and the media were silenced and Krays expanded their criminal empire in an orgy of violence. Their terrorism had become officially sanctioned but this was not the last of the cover ups and Ronnie controlled London as Al Capone had controlled Chicago. They now resorted to murder anyone who offended them during 1966 and 1967. Finally the Police were able to act and they achieved a successful prosecution for Murder and sentenced for life with minimum of 30 years. Ronnie died in prison after a heart attack in 1995 and his funeral was a huge event with people lining the streets. Reggie was released on compassionate grounds for a few weeks before his death from inoperable cancer in August 2000 and elder brother Charlie released in 1975 after seven years returned to prison in 1997 for a drugs offence worth £69million and died from natural caused six months after Brother Reggie.

Another journalist at the Sunday Times and would be author John Pearson was researching a book on the Krays in 1969 when he received evidence that showed that Boothby had lied in his letter to the Times. This coincided with the decision of Boothby to marry a woman from Sardinia 33 years his junior. The evidence was provided by the Mother of the Krays and authorised by the Krays and comprised a photo of Boothby Ronnie and young boy at a nightclub and letters from Boothby to Kray dated 1963 when he had said he did not know Ronnie until 1964. Pearson continued with his research and writing for the next three years, interviewing many members of the former gang and eventually showed Lord Boothby what he was publishing. Lord Hood intervened and threatened Pearson with civil action if the work was published in its existing form. The publisher then announced they were not going to publish nor did the Observer who was to serialise. Pearson then discovered that Lord Goodman was Chairman of the Observer Trust. His home was then burgled and photos and files relating to Lord Boothby were removed and similar this happened to his literary agent. He had played that if you told the truth you shamed the devil and but he realised this was not so then in England. It was after this that Good make a Peer, so did Tom Driberg and Boothby continued to be an outspoken Member of the House of Lords until his death in 1986. It was only when all three were dead that John Pearson was able to publish his book The Profession of Violence.

The reason why the TV programme appears to have now been made is that Pearson has made available to him a police file which includes a report indicating that prominent people some in positions of power continued to lobby support for the twins and the police believed that they were doing so for reward (and I would presume because some may have been blackmailed). The list has been blacked out on instruction of the Attorney General and although the file is to be reviewed in 2014, the Attorney General has stated that the names will not be released until after their death.

John Pearson has also written another non fiction work called the Gamblers about the Clermont set of John Spinal, James Goldsmith and Lord Lucan. There is a programme about this next Monday.