Right wing establishment influence in Scotland and the UK

1.In the 1940s, Herbert Morrison chose not to publish the ‘Red Book’ contents because there were too many lawyers and senior Court of Session judges listed on it. If today, a current list was published some two judges are known to have and four more suspected as having clandestine right wing involvements – some 36 members of the Faculty of Advocates – some 40 odd solicitors – and two MSP s are believed to be involved.

3.Increasing influence of our security services particularly via the use of spin doctor intelligence as with the Zinoviev letter [vii] , and Blair’s weapons of mass destruction.

4.Direct security service manipulation of the populace, as has occurred for the last fifty years [viii] with infiltration of student, trade union, and labour sanctums.

5.Murder – right wing security services have always engaged in elimination – but recently there has been a downgrading of the ‘wet job’ business as with Bush’s approved ‘Matrix’ document to the CIA; and the Home Secretary’s October 2001 memo which appears to inadvertently lead to the parking of Dr Kelly.

I do not think it would be in the public interest to publish the names of the members of this organisation, or to state which steps have been taken from the point of view of national security. Appropriate steps are taken to watch all kinds of people about whom there may be grounds for suspicion. About many members of the Right Club there are no grounds for suspicion, and about many people who were not members of the Right Club there are grounds of suspicion. To publish the names of people who are being watched would be most unwise: to publish the names of people who are not being watched would be unfair. Secrecy is the essence of any system of supervision. Debate in the House of Commons (12th October, 1944)

Tom Driberg asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will now publish the complete list of members of the Right Club, the activities of which were the subject of police enquiries.

Herbert Morrison: No, Sir. For reasons which I have explained on a previous occasion I do not think that it would be fair or in the public interest to publish this list, but I can give an assurance that appropriate steps are taken to watch any individual against whom there are grounds of suspicion.

Tom Driberg: Is the right honourable Gentleman aware that this club existed for the specific purpose of spreading anti-Semitism; and, in view of the fact that anti-Semitism is one of the classic weapons of Nazism and Fascism, is it not time to let the light of day in on the proceedings and personnel of this very shady secret society?

Herbert Morrison: I still think that it would be unfair to publish the list. It is a list which has been compiled by a private individual. It may be correct, or it may not. There may be people who went on that list, with or without the opinions to which the honourable Member referred, and to publish lists of this character would, I think, be an improper use of the information which comes to the Home Office in all sorts of ways, and from all sorts of directions.

Emanuel Shinwell: If there should be any truth - I am not suggesting that there is - in the allegation that some honourable Members of the House, past and present, were members of this club and were supporters of its subversive activities, is it not desirable in the public interest and in the interest of members as a whole, that the list should be published?

D. N. Pritt: He (Archibald Ramsay) has now disclosed that one of the reasons why he was interned was his connection with the Right Club, and has described it as having close connection with the Conservative Party and having Conservative members.. Is it not fair to the Conservative Party to publish, not an inaccurate, but an accurate list of those persons known to the Home Secretary to be members of the Right Club.

Herbert Morrison: What the honourable and gallant Gentleman says is one thing, but I cannot agree that that should bind me. One of these days I might be asked in this House if I will publish a list, for example, of secret members of the Communist Party. I am not sure that my honourable and learned Friend would say that it was right for me to publish it.

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On Why Judges? ‘Or even a paranoid has enemies’ There is considerable debate over the government’s new terrorist plans – with many there is an agreed reluctance to see the Home Secretary be the arbiter in such matters of house arrest – some suggest it should be a judge. But is there any logic in the suggestion that a judge will be any less bias? In fact, in historical terms if Scotland is anything to go on then a judge, on matters involving terrorism, may be exceedingly prejudiced. It may come as a shock to some that Scotland has an endemic record of right wing extremism in establishment circles. Some place the blame upon the elitist ideas of predestination adopted by a Calvinistic church, others upon the hierarchical Scottish social systems but only fools would deny that Scotland has been, and is today riddled by formal and informal groupings designed to protect vested interests. Mention has been made on this website to the Speculative Society, the New Club, and the Merchants Company -- yet in truth, all of these are but vessels harbouring perverse forms of sectarianism and social intolerance – such views being encultered within Scotland’s ‘higher society’. Scotland does have privileged power groupings. Such groupings are not representatively elected and in my view these cabals engender poor economic performance and endanger the freedom of the Scottish people. We can learn from history – and two things that the 20th century taught us is that restrictive government orders are rescinded in time and that the Scottish establishment has a predilection of thinking it knows best. Let us consider: Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War the government passed a Defence Regulation Order. This legislation gave the Home Secretary the right to imprison without trial anybody he believed likely to "endanger the safety of the realm" On 22nd September, 1939, Oliver C. Gilbert and Victor Rowe, members of the Right Club [i], were among the first to be arrested under the Order. In the House of Commons Ramsay [ii] , Conservative MP for Peebles, attacked this legislation and on 14th December, 1939, asked in Parliament: "Is this not the first time for a very long time in British history, that British born subjects have been denied every facility for justice?" At Prime Minister’s questions last week Tony Blair stated: ‘In my judgement considerations of national security have to come before civil liberties, no matter how important those civil liberties are.’ Should we be worried that the powers being arrogated to the State are only temporary and will harden into permanence? Yes, is the obvious answer but only if we abandon our will for parliamentary democracy and/or forget our right to equality. I see both of these virtues remaining under attack in Scotland – indeed it is almost a self evident feature that in Scotland the establishment does not concur with the equality of man, nor do many support the principles of democracy. In support of these contentions I provide some examples from my own life. Once, as a young boy when examining my father’s commando danger, my father relayed the tale that during the Second World War he had worked with Percy Sillitoe [iii], Chief Constable of Glasgow to break up the Glasgow gangs. My father’s portrayal of a dance hall scene at which he and his fellows blocked the exits so that they could slaughter ‘the knife gang’ inhabitants left me with a poignant first impression of the brutality of man. Equally upsetting to a young boy was my father’s description of a Dobie [iv] who while working alongside Sillitoe took a sadistic pleasure in exterminating what he determined as Glasgow’s scum. According to my father, Dobie appeared typical of many upper middle class Scots he met, many of which had contempt and indifference to their economically less advantaged. In the seventies I was introduced to a number of interesting people. Between 1974 and 1976 a coalition of right-wing conservative politicians and elements of the armed forces and of the intelligence services worked secretly to subvert the elected Labour Government led by Harold Wilson. It is not suggested that this coalition was responsible for the demise of the Wilson Government and the eventual installing of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister. But the whole notion of such secret activity involving state security services in efforts to undermine the elected Government runs so sharply against the general perception of British democratic tradition that it is hardly surprising that such stories are discretely ignored. Prominent among these men was the financier Sir James Goldsmith who kindly wrote up in his ‘Now’ magazine several flattering pieces involving my activities. In meetings in the Scottish Borders, Glasgow and about Oban I encountered many prominent Scots who were preparing for civil insurrection. Following on from a live debate I had on national BBC television with the Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, I met with a number of right wing activists at Inverary – there I was surprised not only by the passion but their latter-day zeal reminded me of Jacobite risings. As is noted in my Reflection’s introduction I was fortunate in the early eighties to become associated with Michael Romaine – Michael, a Russian émigré, was a regular visitor in the late thirties to the Russian Tea Room in South Kensington, a meeting house for Ramsay’s ‘Right Club’. Michael had maintained not only his right wing views but his contacts – many of whom I had the pleasure of being introduced. I was surprised to meet not only prominent Scots but US citizens working in the UK, some as serving officers. It was Michael Romaine who first showed me a copy of Ramsay’s Red Book [v], his copy along with some forty years of additional notes contained some six thousand names of which nearly a thousand hailed from Scotland. Michael’s copy contrasted with Herbert Morrison [vi] , the Home Secretary’s copy who refused to reveal the contents of Ramsay's Red Book. Morrison claimed that it was impossible to know if the names in the book were really members of the Right Club. If this was the case, the publication of the book would unfairly smear innocent people. Ramsay died in 1955 and it was not until 1989 that a copy of the Red Book was found in the safe of Ramsay's former solicitors –this copy book included the names of 235 people. Unfortunately a lot of the names were in code. However, it did contain the names of several senior Tories including a large number of MPs and peers of the realm. Now I wish I could say that the ‘Right Club’ and its derivatives were all ancient and irrelevant history – this is not the case. Admittedly the Hamiltons’ (Duke of Hamilton and Lady Douglas-Hamilton); Dobie (Sheriff Dobie) and Pentland (father of Joan Pentland-Clark and a prominent member of both the New Club and Edinburgh’s Merchant Company) are long since dead but their ultimate offspring still retain much of their ancestor’s hubris – see Lord Douglas-Hamilton MSP, Mr Dobie (Partner in Tods Murray and the main progenitor of the Tods Murray v Frost & McNamara dispute), Joan Pentland-Clark in their association with David McLetchie MSP (whose father was not linked with the Right Club). Others, like Stuart Usher, whose family was intimate with both Ramsay and Rudolph Hess (deputy leader of the Nazi party, who was born in Egypt reputedly in the company of the Usher family) have suffered from their ‘Right Club’ connections. Undeniably Stuart (whose mother boasted a Prussian and Nazi pedigree) has lost out to other members of his family who appear to have robbed his branch of the family because Stuart’s family fascist tendencies had become too apparent. Upsetting as ‘these hand me downs’ may be – does past or present connections with secret right wing organisations pose a threat to Scottish society today? – My answer is YES because:- 1.In the 1940s, Herbert Morrison chose not to publish the ‘Red Book’ contents because there were too many lawyers and senior Court of Session judges listed on it. If today, a current list was published some two judges are known to have and four more suspected as having clandestine right wing involvements – some 36 members of the Faculty of Advocates – some 40 odd solicitors – and two MSP s are believed to be involved. 2.Much of our security services still remain as the ‘priests at prayer’ for our non elected right wing establishment. 3.Increasing influence of our security services particularly via the use of spin doctor intelligence as with the Zinoviev letter [vii] , and Blair’s weapons of mass destruction. 4.Direct security service manipulation of the populace, as has occurred for the last fifty years [viii] with infiltration of student, trade union, and labour sanctums. 5.Murder – right wing security services have always engaged in elimination – but recently there has been a downgrading of the ‘wet job’ business as with Bush’s approved ‘Matrix’ document to the CIA; and the Home Secretary’s October 2001 memo which appears to inadvertently lead to the parking of Dr Kelly. In conclusion then I emphasise two matters: A .I would rather have a visible if corrupt politician in charge, a politician who is subject to the ballot box, than a judge whose allegiance is to his ‘Right Club’ peer group. B. I think David McLetchie should resign. Martin Frost 2005-02-27 top NOTES for (BM) On Why Judges? [i] A MI5 agent reported on the activities of the Right Club in October 1939. From two independent sources we learn that the activity of the Right Club is centred principally upon the contacting of sympathisers, especially among officers in the armed services, and the spreading by personal talks of the Club's ideals. There is talk of a military coup d'etat, but there seems to be lack of agreement among members on the question of leadership. [ii] Archibald Ramsay, the son of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Ramsay, was born in Scotland on 4th May, 1894. Educated at Eton and Sandhurst Military College, he joined the Coldstream Guards in 1913. During the First World War he served in the War Office (1917-1918). Ramsay married the eldest daughter of 14th Viscount Gormanstan, and the widow of Lord Ninian Crichton-Stuart, the son of the 3rd Marquess of Bute. After their marriage the couple lived in Kellie Castle near Arbroath. A member of the Conservative Party, Ramsay was elected to the House of Commons in 1931. Over the next few years he developed extreme right-wing political views. A strongly religious man, he became convinced that the Russian Revolution was the start of an international Communist plot to take over the world. In 1935 two secret agents from Nazi Germany established the anti-Semetic Nordic League. The organization was initially known as the White Knights of Britain or the Hooded Men. Ramsay soon emerged as the leader of this organization. The Nordic League was primarily an upper-middle-class association as opposed to the British Union of Fascists that mainly attracted people from the working class. The Nordic League described itself as "an association of race conscious Britons" and being at the service of "those patriotic bodies known to be engaged in exposing and frustrating the Jewish stranglehold on our Nordic realm. In Nazi Germany the Nordic League was seen as "the British branch of international Nazism". During the Spanish Civil War he was a leading supporter of General Francisco Franco and his Nationalist Army. In 1937 he formed the United Christian Front, an organization that intended "to confront the widespread attack upon the Christian verities which emanates from Moscow, and which is revealing itself in a literary and educational campaign of great intensity." At first the United Christian Front gained the support of several church leaders. However, it soon became clear that it was a front for extreme right-wing politicians. In November 1937 William Temple, Archbishop of York and Donald Soper, a Methodist minister, wrote to The Times to condemn the United Christian Front: "We regret that so admirable an inspiration as the union of all Christians in resistance to the enemies of the Gospel should be bound up with judgments on contemporary events which are certainly precarious and to us appear mistaken." On 28th June 1938 Ramsay introduced a Private Member's Bill entitled the 'Aliens Restriction (Blasphemy) Bill'. The main objective of the legislation was "to prevent the participation by aliens in assemblies for the purpose of propagating blasphemous or atheistic doctrines or in other activities calculated to interfere with the established religious institutions of Great Britain". Ramsay was now the unofficial leader of the extreme right in Britain. His close associates Admiral Barry Domville, Nesta Webster, Mary Allen, Oswald Mosley, John Becket, William Joyce, A. K. Chesterton, Arthur Bryant, Major-General John Fuller, Thomas Moore, John Moore-Brabazon, and Henry Drummond Wolff. In the House of Commons Ramsay was the main critic of having Jews in the government. In 1938 he began a campaign to have Leslie Hore-Belisha sacked as Secretary of War. In one speech on 27th April he warned that Hore-Belisha "will lead us to war with our blood-brothers of the Nordic race in order to make way for a Bolshevised Europe." In May 1939 Ramsay founded a secret society called the Right Club. This was an attempt to unify all the different right-wing groups in Britain. Or in the leader's words of "co-ordinating the work of all the patriotic societies". In his autobiography, The Nameless War, Ramsay argued: "The main object of the Right Club was to oppose and expose the activities of Organized Jewry, in the light of the evidence which came into my possession in 1938. Our first objective was to clear the Conservative Party of Jewish influence and the character of our membership and meetings were strictly in keeping with this objective." Members of the Right Club included William Joyce, Anna Wolkoff, Joan Miller, A. K. Chesterton, Francis Yeats-Brown, E. H. Cole, Lord Redesdale, Duke of Wellington, Aubrey Lees, John Stourton, Thomas Hunter, Samuel Chapman, Ernest Bennett, Charles Kerr, John MacKie, James Edmondson, Mavis Tate Marquess of Graham, Margaret Bothamley, Earl of Galloway, H. T. Mills, Richard Findlay and Serrocold Skeels. Unknown to Ramsay, MI5 agents had infiltrated the Right Club. This included three women, Joan Miller, Marjorie Amor and Helem de Munck. The British government was therefore kept fully informed about the activities of Ramsay and his right-wing friends. Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War the government passed a Defence Regulation Order. This legislation gave the Home Secretary the right to imprison without trial anybody he believed likely to "endanger the safety of the realm" On 22nd September, 1939, Oliver C. Gilbert and Victor Rowe, became the first members of the Right Club to be arrested. In the House of Commons Ramsay attacked this legislation and on 14th December, 1939, asked: "Is this not the first time for a very long time in British history, that British born subjects have been denied every facility for justice?" Ramsay also continued his campaign against Leslie Hore-Belisha and even distributed free copies of right-wing magazines that included articles attacking the Secretary of War. Eventually Neville Chamberlain decided to remove Hore-Belisha as Secretary of State for War and appoint him as Minister of Information. Lord Halifax objected, claiming that it was "inappropriate to have a Jew in charge of publicity." In January 1940 Hore-Belisha was sacked as Secretary of State for War. On 20th March, 1940, Ramsay asked the Minister of Information a question about the New British Broadcasting Service, a radio station broadcasting German propaganda. In doing so he gave full details of the wavelength and the time in the day when it provided programmes. His critics claimed he was trying to give the radio station publicity. Two Labour Party MPs, Ellen Wilkinson and Emanuel Shinwell, made speeches in the House of Commons suggesting that Ramsay was a member of a right-wing secret society. However, unlike MI5, they did not know he was the leader of the Right Club. By this time Ramsay was being helped in his work by two women, Anna Wolkoff and Joan Miller. Unknown to Ramsay, Miller was a MI5 agent. Wolkoff was the daughter of Admiral Nikolai Wolkoff, the former aide-to-camp to the Nicholas II in London. Wolkoff ran the Russian Tea Room in South Kensington and this eventually became the main meeting place for members of the Right Club. In the 1930s Anna Wolkoff had meetings with Hans Frank and Rudolf Hess. In 1935 her actions began to be monitored by MI5. Agents warned that Wolkoff had developed a close relationship with Wallis Simpson (the future wife of Edward VIII) and that the two women might be involved in passing state secrets to the German government. In February 1940, Wolkoff met Tyler Kent, a cypher clerk from the American Embassy. He soon became a regular visitor to the Russian Tea Room where he met other members of the Right Club including Ramsay. Wolkoff, Kent and Ramsay talked about politics and agreed that they all shared the same political views. Kent was concerned that the American government wanted the United States to join the war against Germany. He said he had evidence of this as he had been making copies of the correspondence between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Kent invited Wolkoff and Ramsay back to his flat to look at these documents. This included secret assurances that the United States would support France if it was invaded by the German Army. Kent later argued that he had shown these documents to Ramsay in the hope that he would pass this information to American politicians hostile to Roosevelt. On 13th April 1940 Wolkoff went to Kent's flat and made copies of some of these documents. Joan Miller and Marjorie Amor were later to testify that these documents were then passed on to Duco del Monte, Assistant Naval Attaché at the Italian Embassy. Soon afterwards, MI8, the wireless interception service, picked up messages between Rome and Berlin that indicated that Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence ( Abwehr), had seen the Roosevelt-Churchill correspondence. Soon afterwards Anna Wolkoff asked Joan Miller if she would use her contacts at the Italian Embassy to pass a coded letter to William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) in Germany. The letter contained information that he could use in his broadcasts on Radio Hamburg. Before passing the letter to her contacts, Miller showed it to Maxwell Knight, the head of B5b, a unit within MI5 that conducted the monitoring of political subversion. On 18th May, Knight told Guy Liddell about the Right Club spy ring. Liddell immediately had a meeting with Joseph Kennedy, the American Ambassador in London. Kennedy agreed to waive Kent's diplomatic immunity and on 20th May, 1940, the Special Branch raided his flat. Inside they found the copies of 1,929 classified documents, including the secret correspondence between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Kent was also found in possession of what became known as Ramsay's Red Book. This book had the names and addresses of members of the Right Club and had been given to Kent for safe keeping. Anna Wolkoff and Tyler Kent were arrested and charged under the Official Secrets Act. The trial took place in secret and on 7th November 1940, Wolkoff was sentenced to ten years. Kent, because he was an American citizen, was treated less harshly and received only seven years. Ramsay was surprisingly not charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act. Instead he was interned under Defence Regulation 18B. Ramsay now joined other right-wing extremists such as Oswald Mosley and Admiral Nikolai Wolkoff in Brixton Prison. Some left-wing politicians in the House of Commons began demanding the publication of Ramsay's Red Book. They suspected that several senior members of the Conservative Party had been members of the Right Club. Some took the view that Ramsay had done some sort of deal in order to prevent him being charged with treason. Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary refused to reveal the contents of Ramsay's Red Book. He claimed that it was impossible to know if the names in the book were really members of the Right Club. If this was the case, the publication of the book would unfairly smear innocent people. The government found it difficult to suppress the story and in 1941 the New York Times claimed that Ramsay had been guilty of spying for Nazi Germany: "Before the war he (Ramsay) was strongly anti-Communist, anti-semitic, and pro-Hitler. Though no specific charges were brought against him - Defence Regulations allow that - informed American sources said that he had sent to the German Legation in Dublin treasonable information given to him by Tyler Kent, clerk to the American Embassy in London." Ramsay sued the owners of the New York Times for libel. In court Ramsay argued that if there had been any evidence of him passing secrets to the Germans he would have been tried under the Official Secrets Act alongside Anna Wolkoff and Tyler Kent in 1940. The newspaper owners were found guilty of libel but the case became a disaster for Ramsay when he was awarded a farthing in damages. As well as the extremely damaging publicity he endured, Ramsay was forced to pay the costs of the case. Although detained in Brixton Prison he was allowed to submit questions in the House of Commons. This enabled him to continue to make racist comments. For example, on 23rd February, he asked for details of the Jews fighting in the British armed forces. On 3rd August, 1944, he complained about the music of "Oriental and African music" being played on British radio. During the summer of 1944 several Conservative Party MPs in the House of Commons called for Ramsay to be released from prison. William Gallacher, a member of the Communist Party, argued that he should remain in detention. He pointed out that Ramsay was "a rabid anti-Semite" and that "anti-Semitism is an incitement to murder." He asked "if the mothers of this country, whose lads are being sacrificed now, are to be informed by him that their sacrifices have enabled him to release this unspeakable blackguard." When Gallacher refused to withdraw these comments he was suspended from the House of Commons. Ramsay was released from Brixton Prison on 26th September, 1944. He was defeated in the 1945 General Election and in 1955 he published his book The Nameless War. Archibald Ramsay died on 11th March, 1955. [iii] Sir Percy Sillitoe, Sunday Times (22nd November, 1953) I cannot deny that during my first few weeks as head of MI5, I found it so extremely difficult to find out precisely what everyone was doing that I felt its popular reputation for excessive secrecy was in no way exaggerated. The men I was attempting to direct were highly intelligent, but somewhat introspective, each working ... in a rather withdrawn isolation. [iv] Sheriff Wm. Jardine Dobie, author of Sheriff Court Practice and Sheriff Court Styles [v] Paul Lashmar, Taken from The Independent on Sunday (9th January 2000)92 The Red Book is the membership list of the Right Club, a secret organisation founded in May 1939 by Captain Archibald Ramsay MP. Unlike the populist British Union of Fascists lead by the charismatic Sir Oswald Mosley, the Right Club was exclusive. Its members were aristocrats and Members of Parliament, academics, civil servants, clerics and rich dilettantes. Some of the men had distinguished themselves in the 1914-18 war and saw themselves as patriots. But they were also virulent racists who supported Hitler's treatment of Germany's Jewish population. Many were Nazi sympathisers. From King Edward VIII downwards, there was a widespread view that only a powerful Germany could hold back the threat of Bolshevism, and that Britain should be supporting Hitler, not preparing to attack him. The existence of the Red Book first emerged in 1943 during a heated debate in Parliament. By then, it had already been seized by MI5. For 40 years, the ledger was believed to have been lost and its whereabouts was much speculated upon. Some believed it was held by a secret clique of the extreme right awaiting a fascist revival. And the racist right did treat it with a respect akin to ancestor worship. Running my finger down the list, written with a fountain pen in Ramsay's hand, the names still resonate: Arthur Wellesley the 5th Duke of Wellington, the Second Baron Redesdale, The Earl of Galloway, Lord Ronald Graham, Princess Blucher, Sir Ernest Bennett, Prince Turka Galitzine and Britain's most notorious Second World War traitor, William Joyce, later known as Lord Haw-Haw as he broadcast propaganda from Germany. The book also lists donations. Sir Alexander Walker, then the head of the Johnnie Walker whisky dynasty, is shown to have donated the princely sum of £100. [vi] Herbert Morrison, answer to a request by Geoffrey Mander, for the government to publish Ramsay's Red Book (31st July, 1941) I do not think it would be in the public interest to publish the names of the members of this organisation, or to state which steps have been taken from the point of view of national security. Appropriate steps are taken to watch all kinds of people about whom there may be grounds for suspicion. About many members of the Right Club there are no grounds for suspicion, and about many people who were not members of the Right Club there are grounds of suspicion. To publish the names of people who are being watched would be most unwise: to publish the names of people who are not being watched would be unfair. Secrecy is the essence of any system of supervision. Debate in the House of Commons (12th October, 1944) Tom Driberg asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will now publish the complete list of members of the Right Club, the activities of which were the subject of police enquiries. Herbert Morrison: No, Sir. For reasons which I have explained on a previous occasion I do not think that it would be fair or in the public interest to publish this list, but I can give an assurance that appropriate steps are taken to watch any individual against whom there are grounds of suspicion. Tom Driberg: Is the right honourable Gentleman aware that this club existed for the specific purpose of spreading anti-Semitism; and, in view of the fact that anti-Semitism is one of the classic weapons of Nazism and Fascism, is it not time to let the light of day in on the proceedings and personnel of this very shady secret society? Herbert Morrison: I still think that it would be unfair to publish the list. It is a list which has been compiled by a private individual. It may be correct, or it may not. There may be people who went on that list, with or without the opinions to which the honourable Member referred, and to publish lists of this character would, I think, be an improper use of the information which comes to the Home Office in all sorts of ways, and from all sorts of directions. Emanuel Shinwell: If there should be any truth - I am not suggesting that there is - in the allegation that some honourable Members of the House, past and present, were members of this club and were supporters of its subversive activities, is it not desirable in the public interest and in the interest of members as a whole, that the list should be published? D. N. Pritt: He (Archibald Ramsay) has now disclosed that one of the reasons why he was interned was his connection with the Right Club, and has described it as having close connection with the Conservative Party and having Conservative members.. Is it not fair to the Conservative Party to publish, not an inaccurate, but an accurate list of those persons known to the Home Secretary to be members of the Right Club. Herbert Morrison: What the honourable and gallant Gentleman says is one thing, but I cannot agree that that should bind me. One of these days I might be asked in this House if I will publish a list, for example, of secret members of the Communist Party. I am not sure that my honourable and learned Friend would say that it was right for me to publish it. [vii] Zinoviev Letter In October 1924 the MI5 intercepted a letter written by Grigory Zinoviev, chairman of the Comintern in the Soviet Union. In the letter Zinoviev urged British communists to promote revolution through acts of sedition. Vernon Kell, head of MI5 and Sir Basil Thomson head of Special Branch, were convinced that the letter was genuine. Kell showed the letter to Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour Prime Minister. It was agreed that the letter should be kept secret but someone leaked news of the letter to the Times and the Daily Mail. The letter was published in these newspapers four days before the G1924 General Election and contributed to the defeat of MacDonald and the Labour Party. After the election it was claimed that two of MI5's agents, Sidney Reilly and Arthur Maundy Gregory, had forged the letter and that Major Joseph Ball, a MI5 leaked it to the press. In 1927 Ball went to work for the Conservative Central Office where he pioneered the idea of spin-doctoring. Research carried out by Gill Bennett in 1999 suggested that there were several MI5 and MI6 officers attempting the bring down the Labour Government in 1924, including Stewart Menzies, the future head of MI6. [viii] Sir Percy Sillitoe retired in 1953 and was replaced by Dick White. His major innovation was the creation of F Branch. This infiltrated every left-wing organization in Britain including the Labour Party, the trade unions, the peace movement and student unions. White appointed Alexander Kellar as the director of F Branch. Keller, a former president of the National Union of Students, suggested that MI5 should recruit British students and trade unionists. These people were then told to express views sympathetic to communism in the hope that they would recruited as Soviet agents. David Maxwell-Fyfe, the home secretary, told White to "wage war on the communists and crypto-communists". In 1955 Hugh Winterton of MI5 organized the burglary of a flat occupied by a senior Communist Party official. During the operation MI5 agents were able to photograph files detailing the party's entire 55,000 membership. Such activities continue to this day and it no accident that a branch MI5 office is now to be officially condoned for Glasgow.
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