She argues that the correspondence ‘was rhapsodic but chaste, alluding only in general terms to the physical passion they denied themselves.’577 According to Andrew Wilson, ‘The highly charged, brittle and almost manic relationship which both Mountbattens had with Nehru seems to the eyes of hindsight to be much more explicable in terms of a non-consummated, sexual-emotional passion.’578 Lady Pamela Hicks, interviewed for the publication of her memoir India Remembered, said it was platonic.579 Philip Ziegler passes over it quickly: ‘If there was any physical element it can only have been of minor importance to either party.’580 Mountbatten’s grandson, Ashley Hicks, claims Nehru’s sister revealed that he was impotent and therefore there could not have been a physical relationship with Edwina.581
Yet Edwina writing to her husband refers to an element of the physical alongside the spiritual relationship. ‘Others are love letters in a sense, though you yourself well realise the strange relationship – most of it spiritual (biographer’s italics) – which exists between us.’582 Richard Hough, the author of several books on the Mountbattens, and who interviewed Edwina’s sister, later wrote, ‘Mountbatten himself knew that they were lovers. He was proud of the fact, unlike Edwina’s sister who deplored the relationship and hated Nehru for the rest of his life as a result.’583 Marie Seton, a friend and biographer of Edwina, agreed: ‘I really don’t know about the physical side of their affair – I’d think probably yes.’584
Nehru was deeply attractive to women and had many lovers, including: the politician Padmaja Naidu, who threatened to commit suicide over the affair and whom he later appointed Governor of West Bengal; the actress Devika Rani; and Mridula Sarabhai, the General Secretary of the Congress Working Committee.585 In May 1949, he supposedly fathered a son with a scholar of Indian scripture and mythology, in her early thirties, called Shardha Mata. The boy was brought up in a Christian Missionary boarding school.586
The writer Zareer Masani’s parents:
knew Nehru well, and they, and many others who did, thought he was ‘highly sexed’, as was the whole Nehru family . . . I do know that they wrote each other passionate love letters till she died and that he used to spend the night with her on trips to London as PM in the ’50s (much to the chagrin of his Foreign Service minders, one of whom was my uncle and a future Foreign Secretary). It seems unlikely they didn’t go to bed.587
There are countless references suggesting there was some sort of a physical relationship. Russi Mody, the son of the Governor of the United Provinces, later chairman of Tata Steel, on one of Edwina’s early visits to India was asked to fetch Nehru and Edwina and bring them to dinner. Opening the door, he found the two embracing.588 According to S.S. Pirzada, a former Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Jinnah was given several letters between Nehru and Edwina that had been intercepted. ‘One said, “Dickie will be out tonight – come after 10 o’clock.” Another, “I have fond memories of Simla – riding and your touch.”’ Jinnah returned the letters saying he had no wish to capitalise on them.589
Nehru’s biographer, Stanley Wolpert, writes of seeing Nehru and Edwina at the opening of New Delhi’s Academy of Fine Arts:
And how like adolescent lovers he and Edwina behaved, touching, whispering into each other’s ears, laughing, holding hands. ‘The family line is that they are simply good friends,’ Lady Mountbatten’s grandson Lord Romsey told me thirty-five years later over tea in his sitting-room in Broadlands. ‘Nothing more than that, you see.’ But I had seen much more, and Lord Mountbatten himself often referred to Nehru’s correspondence with his wife as love letters, knowing better than anyone but Nehru how much Edwina adored her handsome ‘Jawaha’, as she lovingly called him. That was why Nehru’s daughter Indira hated her.590
The author Charlotte Breese feels all the evidence points to a physical relationship:
Henry Burdwan remembered that, when in Calcutta in the 1950s, Hutch used to hear that Edwina’s relationship with Nehru was ‘complicated by his then reputed impotence’. At this news, Burdman’s father, who was ‘very well informed’ and had known Edwina and Hutch in London for years, used to roar with laughter. Many people in India believed in Nehru’s affair with Edwina and those still surviving (time of writing, 1998) provide the evidence of their own eyes. Furthermore, every year from 1950 until her death in 1960, she went to see Nehru in Delhi whenever she could; and he sometimes visited her in England. While I accept that the impotence gossip is unproven, I find it strange of Morgan to insist that Edwina and Nehru conducted an exclusively affectionate and spiritual relationship . . . All else aside, given Edwina’s character and physical needs, it is far more likely than not that she had a fully consummated affair with Nehru . . . There were many stories in Delhi and Kashmir of servants finding them in bed together.591
The official line has always been that the love affair did not begin until May 1948 and after the transfer of power, but rumours of their closeness had circulated from soon after the Mountbattens arrived in India. On 31 March 1947, Hamid was writing in his diary, ‘Nehru’s relationship with Lady Mountbatten is sufficiently close to have raised many eyebrows.’592 A Balochistani politician, close to Jinnah, Yahya Baktiar claimed that by the summer of 1947 Nehru ‘was having a roaring love affair with Lady Mountbatten . . . said to be with the tacit approval of Mountbatten.’593
Edwina remained as busy with her own humanitarian work, as ever driven by duty and competitiveness with her husband, but she also continued to support her husband in his career. She acted as charming hostess for politicians and naval colleagues at Wilton Crescent and Broadlands, she used her own contacts to put in a good word on behalf of her husband and she patiently put up with ceremonial events. He missed her when she was away.
‘The house is very lonely without you,’ he wrote in 1959. ‘I shall hate passing your door in a few minutes when I go to bed, without looking in.’594 Symbolically, that year her present to him was a wrought-iron gate for Broadlands – her monogram on one side, his on the other.
CHAPTER 23
Sea Lord
In 1954, Mountbatten’s tour of duty in the Mediterranean ended. Now was his chance for the top job but, determined as Dickie was to be First Sea Lord, there were several senior naval figures equally adamant that he should not be appointed – the most important of whom was Admiral John Cunningham, who questioned his judgement. As so often, Edwina was deployed to use her charms to further her husband’s career. ‘I am sure you will be able to help, dear Pug,’ Edwina wrote to Ismay. ‘It would be heart-breaking if Dickie’s remarkable personality and outstanding ability was to be wasted in these next vital years in a back yard.’595
Cunningham was soon persuaded that what the Navy needed was not necessarily the most respected or trusted figure, but someone who could fight its corner in Whitehall. In September 1954, the First Sea Lord, Sir Rhoderick McGrigor, offered the job to Mountbatten:
I want you to come here with your drive and powers of persuasion, experience and influence, to keep the Navy on its feet in the nuclear age, to give it a new look where necessary, and to keep up the confidence of the Service. I am sure you are the best man to do it, and it is essential for the good of the Navy and of the Country that you should relieve me . . . I am sure at this time we need your prestige and qualities.596
He was not yet home and dry as Churchill, the Prime Minister, hitherto Mountbatten’s greatest supporter, tried to block the appointment. His motives are unclear – perhaps rancour about India, perhaps a desire to have a more emollient First Sea Lord – but eventually he relented. Mountbatten had achieved his lifetime’s ambition. On 18 April 1955, he arrived for his first day as professional head of the service to which he had committed his life, to his father’s old desk in his father’s old office, with a portrait of Prince Louis above the fireplace and his bust on a pedestal outside the door. Family honour had been satisfied.
Being Mountbatten, securing the post was not sufficient. He now intended to use his power, helped by the fact that his old f
riend and confidant Charles Lambe had been made Second Sea Lord. A Way Ahead Committee was set up to examine its purpose and priorities in the Atomic Warfare age. Amongst much else, it sought to improve recruitment by making the Navy a more attractive career, cut the size of the Reserve Fleet and Royal Marines, reassessed procurement and construction programmes, and concentrated research and development at Portsdown for surface and Portland for underwater weapons. Emphasis was now placed on adapting to the age of nuclear power with the development of the ‘County’ class guided-missile destroyers, Commando-carriers for amphibious operations and the use of helicopters.
Dickie was different to his predecessors in other ways. He had much larger staffs, including his own valet and stenographer, and insisted on travelling in VIP aircraft. He was also ‘a born intriguer’, remembered Manley Power. ‘If there was a choice between open dealing and a corkscrew approach, he always chose the latter!’597 Field Marshal Templer once told him, ‘Dickie, you’re so crooked that if you swallowed a nail, you’d shit a corkscrew!’ It was a remark that Mountbatten liked to repeat – only with another recipient.598
But his manoeuvrings generally succeeded. He was persuasive, open to counterargument and the need to bring his colleagues along with him, hard-working, had a good political sense and excellent connections socially, regularly inviting politicians and senior naval officers for weekends at Broadlands. He remained a consummate PR man with newsletters to staff and charm offensives with the press. When budget cuts, for example, threatened the future of the Royal Marine band, he enlisted the help of the Daily Mirror who launched a successful campaign to save it. His vast experience of administration and politics, together with his technical training, were all brought to bear in the job he had sought all his life.
Dickie was stimulated and satisfied, but Edwina felt ‘low and discouraged, like an animal in a trap’.599 She hated the British weather and parochialism, yearned for the colours of India and the freedom of not being the wife of a public figure. It was on a trip to India in March 1956, Dickie’s first since his time as Governor-General, that the tensions showed themselves to John Barratt:
On an internal flight the photographer checked his equipment into the hold because the next stop was an informal one. During the flight a message was received that a reception committee awaited them. ‘When Lord Mountbatten discovered that the photographer did not have his cameras with him, he flew into one of his monumental rages,’ remembered John Barratt, ‘insisting that the photographer be sent down to the hold during the flight to retrieve his equipment.’600
Another row took place because Edwina’s special make-up had not been packed. ‘I had long since realised who paid the piper in the Mountbattens’ relationship: he went to enormous lengths not to upset her,’ recollected Barratt. ‘There was endless screaming going on, and the poor valet was shaking in his shoes, expecting to be shot at dawn.’601
In Burma, the couple stayed at Government House in Rangoon. Barratt later wrote how:
The Mountbattens never shared a room, but had adjoining ones with her dressing room in between. One evening the maid came to me saying that she could not find the right gloves to go with Lady Mountbatten’s outfit. I had the list of what was packed in which trunk, so I went along with her to find them. I knocked and walked in, went straight across to the trunks and retrieved the gloves. Then a voice behind me said, ‘Did you find them?’ and I turned round to see Lady Mountbatten sitting at her dressing table, stark naked. I was very young and didn’t know where to look; she was totally unperturbed.602
Whilst Dickie was in India, the Commander Crabb case hit the headlines. On 17 April 1956, the Soviet leaders Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev had arrived in Portsmouth on the battleship Ordzhonikidz, on a visit to improve Anglo–Soviet relations. The Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, had given orders that there were to be no intelligence operations during the visit, but the instruction was misunderstood by MI6, who sent a freelance frogman for the intelligence services, Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb, to study the underside of the boat.
That night the First Lord of the Admiralty, James Thomas, dining with the Russian visitors, was asked about the frogman seen swimming around the battleship. There were furious British denials, promises of an inquiry, and the head of MI6, Sir John Sinclair, was quietly forced to take early retirement. Fourteen months later, a body was washed ashore, missing head and hands, which the government claimed was Crabb. This was refuted by his former diving partners and girlfriend and the mystery continues to this day about the fate of the frogman – with varying accounts of him being killed by Soviet frogmen at the time and being captured to live on in the Soviet Union until 1981.603
Mountbatten claimed that he knew nothing about the operation, codenamed Claret, and had even left instructions that, even if he had known, no operation should take place. But his own Vice-Chief of Naval Staff, Sir William Davis, gives a different version of events in his unpublished autobiography. He asserts that, contrary to Mountbatten’s claim, he insisted that the First Lord of the Admiralty be told as soon as he, Mountbatten, learnt of the operation, and actually tried to hush up the story until it broke in the press. A suspicion was that Mountbatten had known all along and simply wanted to keep the operation quiet.
How involved in the operation was Mountbatten? There are accounts of him meeting Crabb at Cowdray Park shortly before the dive and that a naval team from HMS Vernon also inspected the Russian ship’s hull the same day.604 According to Sydney Knowles, Crabb’s diving partner, Crabb had previously worked for Mountbatten in Gibraltar in 1943 and after the war ‘on some type of secret work for Admiral Mountbatten in a research lab at Bushey Park.’605
Mountbatten, a keen diver, had a penchant for clandestine activities from his time at Combined Operations and SEAC, and certainly maintained close links with SIS and other intelligence agencies. When he retired, the head of SIS wrote to him, ‘I have enjoyed working for you and how grateful I am to you for all the support you have given to our service.’606 The previous October, Mountbatten had dined at the home of the SIS officer Bill Dunderdale, with the then head of SIS Sir John Sinclair, the writer Ian Fleming and the former naval intelligence officer Donald McLachlan. It is unlikely that he would not have been informed of the SIS operation. Whether he had any involvement in the Crabb mission remains a mystery. The relevant files remain closed.
In the summer of 1956, General Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal Company, which was the responsibility of the Anglo–French Suez Canal Company. The Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, was determined on seizing it back. The episode threatened to destroy Mountbatten’s carefully planned career.
Mountbatten, as Acting Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, initially advised that two Royal Marine Commandos could within days seize Port Said and secure the first 25 miles of the causeway along the canal, but they would not have been able to hold it.607 As planning progressed for what was called Operation Musketeer, he exercised doubts that strayed into the realms of politics, arguing that Eden’s requested ‘full-scale invasion’ would involve bombing and bombardment and consequent civilian casualties.
Intervention was not only militarily difficult – the occupation of Egypt, even if it could be achieved, would tie down a large number of troops that were not even available – but, he argued, would destabilise the Middle East, undermine the authority of the UN, divide the Commonwealth, and diminish Britain’s global standing
He alone amongst the military and political leaders seemed most aware of the diplomatic ramifications of intervention, most notably in the Commonwealth. He drafted a note, suggesting the first step should be economic sanctions combined with gathering international support to negotiate terms, which he showed first to the First Lord and then the Minister of Defence, both of whom advised him not to show it to Eden.
At the end of August, he drafted a letter of resignation to Eden, saying he was worried that military action was in breach of United Nations principles and risked provoking a the
rmo-nuclear war.608 After sitting on it for 24 hours, he decided not to send it, but submit his resignation instead to the First Lord of the Admiralty, who advised further discussion with the Minister of Defence. They told him that, as a serving officer, he could not refuse to carry out orders.
In November, with an Anglo–French invasion force four days away from Egypt and the first parachute jump due in 72 hours, Mountbatten made another plea to Eden, fully expecting he might now be sacked. ‘You can imagine how hard it is for me to break with all service custom and write direct to you in this way, but I feel so desperate about what is happening that my conscience would not allow me to do otherwise.’609
The situation was only saved when international pressure, notably from America, forced Eden to abandon his intervention and a United Nations Peacekeeping Force was sent in. ‘Nothing that has ever occurred to me in time of peace caused me so much trouble, so much worry, so much pain and so much grief as the Suez fiasco,’ Mountbatten was to claim when interviewed in 1972.610
Mountbatten’s role during the Suez Crisis has excited much controversy. It is clear his conscience was troubled by the proposed British military action and the collusion with Israel and France but, as a serving officer, had he much choice except to obey orders? He kept threatening his resignation, but only finally did so after he had received his promotion to Admiral of the Fleet and a few days before the planned invasion, when it was unlikely it would be accepted – it wasn’t. Was it really his place, as First Sea Lord, to resign simply because he did not agree with government policy, given no Cabinet Minister, apart from Monckton as Minister of Defence, did so? If he had been more prepared to sacrifice his career, would it have made a difference?
The Mountbattens Page 24
