The Intrigues of Jennie Lee

by Alex Rosenberg

  Both of them knew she was right. The Trades Unions behind Labour were fervent in their opposition to women in work.

  “Will you speak against it, Miss Lee?”

  Jennie replied with a touch of venom. “Will you?”

  “Perhaps. But you won’t, not since you came back from America. You’ll want to go easy on your fa—” Jennie heard the word form on Lady Astor’s lips, which then spat out the word “party” instead.

  So, she knew. Had Mosley told her? Had she told others? Who else knew? Nancy Astor was continuing to speak, perhaps covering her slip, trying to distract Jennie, but Jennie was no longer listening. Instead she was conjuring a frightening image. Standing in the House, catching the Speaker’s eye, rising from the back benches to heap scorn, derision, abuse on Ramsay MacDonald, while all round her the men sat, knowing she was attacking her own father. She flushed the deepest crimson.

  Lady Astor watched Jennie’s face and ceased her diatribe. The two women were now standing only a few feet apart, glaring at each other.

  Just above a whisper, Jennie said, “How do you know?” And without waiting for a reply added, “Who else knows?”

  Nancy Astor’s tone changed, softened by the intimacy of the matter.

  “I don’t know who else knows.” She sighed. “My source was rather a nosey parker, but he’s an American, a society snob who doesn’t travel in your circles, so perhaps no harm’s been done on your side of the aisle.”

  Her glare belied the comforting words even as she mouthed them.

  Lady Astor reverted to her accusation, “That really is why you’ve been silent ever since you came back from America? Did someone there tell you?” she answered her own question. “N...I don’t think anyone in America could have known.”

  If Nancy Astor had noticed Jennie’s reticence, who else had? And seeking explanations of her silence, had people begun to speculate? Did Jennie need to worry that anyone would hit upon so far-fetched a reason why she had ceased her merciless attack on the Labour front bench? Her glare became even fiercer.

  “Who have you told?” She added venom to her words.

  But even as she asked, one answer came to Jennie. It was you who told Tom Mosley, wasn’t it? The realisation was instant. That had to be how he knew, or at least it was Jennie’s best guess. Was Nancy Astor clever enough to realise that it was Mosley who’d told Jennie? She didn’t seem interested in knowing how Jennie had learned that MacDonald was her father. Why not? Because she thinks she knows?

  Without answering Jennie’s question, Lady Astor strode from the room, leaving her maid to fold away the party gown and carefully place the rings, tiara and necklace in their fitted traveling case. Jennie sat down on the worn chesterfield. It was then that real anxiety began to creep up on her. Lady Astor had told Tom Mosley and Tom Mosley had told Jennie. What if Nancy Astor began to be interested enough in why he had told Jennie? Once this question dawned on her, another thought came and now Jennie was properly frightened. She remembered that first afternoon, here in this very room, when a message arrived for her from the palace. Nancy Astor had noticed and asked. Jennie hadn’t replied, but was that the end of the matter? Probably not for the Viscountess Astor. She’d make a point of learning what connection the little Scottish socialist might have with royalty.

  Had she already done so? Might she put the palace, Jennie and Mosley together and make real trouble out of it? That Jennie was MacDonald’s bastard was a matter of mere gossip. But what if Nancy Astor’s insatiable curiosity revealed that Jennie was bound up with constitutional mischief, uncovered the secret transmission of money, Royal interference in politics? Jennie instantly calculated that every loyalty of Lady Astor’s—gentry, party, ruling class, her husband’s newspaper interests—every one of them would be sucking secrets like this from her lips the moment she learned it. It would sink Jennie, certainly in her North Lanark constituency, if not in the party altogether. It would destroy any chance of Mosley’s New Party and whatever chance he had of righting the sinking ship. Jennie had committed herself on this bet at stakes far higher than she had ever meant to, or could afford. She had to distract Nancy Astor and anyone else who was wondering about her silence in the house. She’d have to speak in the debate. But that wouldn’t be enough of a distraction from what was really happening, would it? She had to warn Mosley as well. If it had been Nancy Astor who’d put him onto Jennie’s bastardy, he’d have to find a way to lead her off any other trail it might put her onto.

  * * *

  Jennie was in her usual place as far back from the government benches as she could be, up against the back wall in the shadow beneath the Strangers’ Gallery overhang. But she was wearing a bright green dress, which shone even in the dim light passing between the carved wooden support pillars. Members would certainly notice her. Would the Speaker?

  Margaret Bondfield had just put the question of her “Anomalies” bill. Jennie rose. The Speaker of the House had evidently noticed her. Perhaps he’d also remarked her seven weeks absence and then her silence in the months after she returned from America. The second time she rose to catch his eye he recognised her.

  Jennie knew she had to make something of a storm in her attack on the government, though the subject was the rights of women workers alone—married at that, and not all workers. It wouldn’t be hard. She looked at Bondfield, deciding how to begin. It was customary to refer to an MP in one’s own party as ‘my honourable friend.’ But Jennie would not adopt the hypocrisy. She would be rude.

  The minister of labour, the very first woman to ever hold a cabinet post in this country, has, shamefully I say, decided to sacrifice the interests of her sex to maintain the support of the Trades Union bosses in this country. Removing three hundred thousand married working women from the protection of a pittance in unemployment insurance that their own contributions have earned is shameful enough. But to do so simply to prevent reductions in the amount paid to unemployed men...well, that is not something socialists could ever have expected their own government to demand they vote for.

  There was a jeer. Was it from her own benches or the Tory side?

  “When did you last vote with this government anyway, Jennie?” Laughter swept the house; even Ramsay MacDonald smiled.

  “Order, order,” the Speaker’s voice boomed. When quiet had been restored, he turned back to Jennie. But she had resumed her seat, and next to her Ellen Wilkinson rose and was recognised to continue the attack.

  Jennie looked across the aisle, seeking out Nancy Astor. Was she in the house? Yes, easy to spot in her accustomed place behind the opposition benches as far as possible from Winston Churchill, now himself a backbencher.

  At the division on the motion to adopt the minister’s bill, Jennie joined a dozen or more other Labour MPs in opposition. She noticed as she passed the teller that Mosley hadn’t been in the house at all. But Cimmie Mosley was, voting with Jennie and the other ILP members against their own government. Jennie approached her from behind as they passed the tellers.

  “Lady Mosley,” she said quietly. “Can you pass a message on to your husband?” Without turning her head, Cynthia Mosley nodded. “Tell him that Lady Astor knows what he told me and she may know that I am in communication with the Duchess. He will understand.”

  Cynthia Mosley turned to Jennie and frowned. Suddenly Jennie began to worry. Did Mosley’s wife know about his arrangement with the palace? Did she approve?

  Chapter Twenty

  And then Jennie’s world changed completely. It took only a month, August 1931, a month that announced itself as the annual parliamentary interregnum everyone expected, when the House rose for summer recess. By the end of that month, everyone else’s world in Britain had also taken a radical turn.

  * * *

  It was late that Saturday morning that the papers arrived at Wallington Hall, the grand country house of Sir Charles Trevelyan high up in the Northumbrian countryside, a half dozen miles inland from the North Sea. Jennie and Frank Wise we
re Charlie’s guests that first weekend of the parliamentary summer recess. Frank would shoot grouse with Charlie, an activity Jennie couldn’t begin to understand. She was going to read, first Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and if it was too difficult, the latest instalment of The Forsythe Saga, secure in the knowledge that Galsworthy had been praised by the Writer’s Union in Moscow.

  Breakfast was over and all three were in the Library, each at a writing table, scratching away with pen and ink, dealing with constituency correspondence. The wainscoting and bookshelves of the ample room were brightened by the morning light, streaming in through three large windows from which curtains had been drawn, billowing slightly in a breeze coming off the Northumbrian plain.

  A valet entered quietly, laid a salver with the morning’s post at Sir Charles’ elbow and placed three newspapers on the library table. Frank rose, picked up one and then the other.

  They heard him mutter, “I say...” as he picked up the other two and turned. “Better look at this. The May Report is out, and it’s a bit of a bombshell.”

  The others understood immediately. Everyone in politics had been waiting for this shoe to drop ever since March.

  The May Committee had begun its sittings work just as Jennie returned from America. After more than a year in office, Ramsay MacDonald had admitted to his cabinet colleagues that he was “baffled” by the ever-increasing unemployment numbers and how to cope with them. The admission had been the last straw for Charlie Trevelyan, who had quit the cabinet. He did not hide MacDonald’s admission in cabinet from his friends. The evening he’d sent in his resignation to MacDonald, he met Frank, Nye and Jennie coming into the house. Charlie was beside himself.

  “Baffled, he said. As though it were a crossword puzzle!”

  “Poor, pathetic creature...like a child paralysed before a cobra.” Jennie had been unable to say more.

  In his bafflement, Ramsay MacDonald had asked a wealthy financier, Sir George May, to convene ‘experts’ who might tell him what to do in this ever-worsening economic crisis. Everyone knew that the conclusion of this charade was foregone: austerity, belt-tightening, sacrifice, stiff upper lip. Now, three months after it began, everyone in Westminster knew the May Committee’s shoe had to drop at any moment. Now it had.

  The other two rose and each took up a paper.

  Trevelyan spoke first. “They’re predicting a run on the pound and a deficit of 120 million pounds for the year.”

  Frank sighed. “Well, publicising a prediction like that will certainly make it happen. How foolish...unless they mean to destabilise the government.”

  “Why’s the prophecy self-fulfilling, Frank?” Jennie asked.

  “A dozen reasons. For one, it’ll frighten investors to sell treasury bonds, cease any investment at all, take their money out of the country, and so push up the unemployment rate. That’ll require more unemployment insurance, making the deficit worse.”

  Jennie glanced back at the papers. Now she spoke. “No it won’t. They want to cut the unemployment benefit by 60 million pounds. How much is that off the weekly dole, Frank?”

  “I don’t know, maybe fifteen, twenty per cent.”

  Jennie put down her paper. “No wonder the two Labour men in the Committee refused to sign.”

  Frank sat down, paper in his lap. “There is nothing new here. MacDonald didn’t need the May Committee to give him these ideas. Snowden could’ve told him the same thing six months ago.” Philip Snowden was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, once a man of the left, now a stalwart for Churchill’s gold standard.

  Charlie spoke. “All the blighter ever did in cabinet was natter about retrenchment, let the market work itself out...”

  Frank replied. “It’s all wrong, damn it. Trouble is there’s no one in the cabinet to challenge the May Committee. No one with any economics, not MacDonald, not the Trades Union folk. There won’t be anybody who’ll stand up and refute this stuff. Wish you hadn’t resigned, Charlie.” There was a tinge of anger in his tone.

  The older man looked surprised. “I couldn’t have done it. I’m no political economist.”

  “Sorry...you’re right of course.”

  Jennie looked towards Frank. “You’ll just have to do it from the pages The New Statesman and The Herald.”

  These were the most widely read periodical and newspaper on the left.

  “I suspect Keynes won’t need any help from me in The New Statesman.” Then he looked at Trevelyan. “Do you think the cabinet will wear the cuts May’s demanding?”

  Charlie Trevelyan began counting on his fingers.

  “I can think of about five stalwarts who will certainly reject cuts to unemployment insurance, and a couple who are keen to soak the rich at least a little. But that leaves more than a dozen who’ll be loyal to Ramsay MacDonald come what may.”

  There was no need to enumerate them. Jennie and Frank knew who they were as well as Charlie.

  Jennie spoke the conclusion they had all reached by now.

  “It all depends on MacDonald then.”

  They were silent for a moment. But the other two couldn’t know how the sinking feeling weighed on her. Jennie knew in her viscera what her father would do. She felt somehow that she shared his shame, and she hated him for it.

  Trevelyan spoke. “I wonder if he knew this damn May report was about to come out when he recessed parliament for three months.”

  Jennie grimaced. “It certainly keeps the pressure off...no muttering cabals in the corridors of the house.”

  “Not a bit of it, Jennie.” Frank was firm. “The City will begin to react to this report on Monday. Mark my words, in ten days, there will be the most god-awful crisis in the financial markets, MacDonald will have to do something. Only question is what.”

  “Well then, you and Jennie had better change your plans.”

  They had organised another trip back to Russia. Frank had his work for the Centrosoyus. Jennie would travel separately and meet him, perhaps gather material for another lecture tour of America. They’d have a month together.

  Frank looked towards Jennie with a grim smile. “Maybe it won’t come to that. It’s three weeks till we sail for Leningrad.”

  Charlie Trevelyan rose. “I think we might just have time to get some grouse hunting in.”

  Jennie produced a mock frown. “Is that before lunch or before the collapse of the pound, Charlie?”

  * * *

  Frank was right in his prediction, of course. By midweek the papers were reporting a roiling crisis in the City.

  * * *

  It was pouring rain when they left Wallington Hall the next Wednesday, towards noon. In silence, Frank and Jennie watched the metronome paths of wiper blades sweeping down across the windscreen, behind a driver too well-trained to make conversation. Fifteen dreary miles past lush but sodden pastureland on one side and deeply leaved treelines on the other, in the steady downpour to the Morpeth Station. Its creamy sandstone had been washed clean by eighteen hours of steady rain. The entry was closely framed by thick foliage that had thrived in the rain and now added its own drops to the shower in a gust as they pushed the door open.

  “I’ll just get the tickets, shall I?” Frank asked as he started towards the booth beneath a wall map of the London North Eastern System.

  Jennie reached out to stop him. “I’m not going to London just yet. Got to go home briefly.”

  She hadn’t wanted to tell Charlie, or even discuss with Frank why she had to go. But through the last days of the brief holiday, it had become evident to Jennie that she couldn’t much longer put off confronting her parents with what she’d learned. Was it a truth they’d known for twenty-six years and kept from her? If it was, she had to know more, she had to know why, before she threw herself into the political storm that now had to come. She would do what she had to do to bring down MacDonald, if she could, and make Mosley prime minister. If it required her to tell the world who her father was, so be it. But it had to be the truth, and the onl
y way to establish it was to go home and confront her parents. From the moment she had decided she had to do it, a dread had descended upon her. What will you say? How can you even ask? These questions kept forming themselves in her mind, no matter what tricks she tried to banish them. But no thoughts formed themselves into any question she could actually put to her parents at all. Instead there were emotions, coming in waves—shame that she should even ask, fear that it would really be true, all carried along by waves of anxiety she couldn’t suppress.

  If Frank noticed he said nothing. Now, before the station entrance, he stood there a moment, nodded, searching her face, kindness and concern in his eyes, and understanding that didn’t ask for explanation. Does he know? She briefly wondered and then recognised it was just the look of someone who loved her. Then he walked into the station to buy the tickets.

  Their trains would arrive moments apart. Standing underneath the platform roofing, shaking umbrellas and unbelting trench coats, each looked into the gloom towards a different direction: Jennie to the south for her train to Edinburgh, Frank for the train to Newcastle coming in from the north. For the moment, there was nothing more to say. Jennie tried hard to imagine what Frank was anticipating from Dorothy Wise: stony silences, abrupt requests, curt responses, ritual courtesies. All the reasons not to marry anyone! Then she thought, He’s no idea what I’m to face. She thought it through again one last time. You can’t tell him just this one thing about your real father, without unravelling everything. You’ve no convincing answers to any next question he might ask that won’t open floodgates. So more lies between you and your lover, your friend. She wanted to cry but wouldn’t.

  Frank saw her face contort just enough to hold back the tears, mistook them for sadness at parting and hugged her tightly to him. Holding her at arms’ length, he slid his hands down from her arms and reached hers squeezed them firmly.