Although Mosley’s two sole contacts with Hitler had been through Diana, her frequent visits to Germany to further the radio project, her meetings with Hitler and Hitler’s presence at the Mosleys’ marriage ceremony harmed Mosley because these events appeared to the British public to demonstrate a close relationship between him and Hitler. We now know that such a relationship never existed, and Mosley always insisted that the puppet-dictator scenario was never a possibility. He wished to be Britain’s leader all right, but not under Hitler. He saw Fascism strictly in terms of its application in Britain as a political expediency, not subject to Germany or Italy. Without straying into the details of a repulsive ideology, or the fact that Mosley preached the overthrow of one of the oldest successful forms of democratic government in the world, according to his own lights Mosley was a patriot who sought peace with all Britain’s sovereign possessions intact. His biggest fear was that war with Germany would cost Britain the Empire and, of course, history proved him right. Years later Diana told her stepson Nicholas Mosley that her relationship with Hitler had ruined her life. ‘And’, she added, ‘I think it ruined your father’s.’32
We do not know precisely what Hitler had in mind for Britain if his invasion plans had been successful, but we know what he thought of Mosley: in May 1940, at about the time when the BEF was trapped on the beaches of Normandy, Hitler spoke of him to an adjutant. ‘After our meal,’ Gerhard Engel wrote in his diary, ‘a long conversation and dialogue from Hitler about Mosley, [he said that] Mosley might have been able to prevent this war. He would never have become a populist leader, but he could have been the intellectual leader of true German–British communication. He [Hitler] is convinced that Mosley’s role hasn’t run its course yet.’33 Although Diana is adamant that this was never what Mosley intended, and that ‘Mosley would never have accepted such a role’,34 had the Germans successfully invaded Britain it is possible that Mosley would have been a prime candidate for the position of Fascist overlord.35 Diana disagrees. At forty-three he was too young, she said. A more likely candidate, she feels, would have been Lloyd George, a much older man who had been a great figure in the First World War, ‘like Pétain in France. Also Lloyd George greatly admired Hitler and they got on extremely well together, which Hitler and Mosley never did.’36 Lloyd George’s admiration of Hitler is historical fact. As late as 1936 he regarded Hitler as ‘the greatest leader in the world’, and even told him so during a visit to Germany.37
On 23 May the Mosleys drove to their London apartment. Mosley had given up the house in Grosvenor Road and bought a flat in a modern building a short distance away, in Dolphin Square. As they drew up they saw a group of men waiting near the entrance. They were plain-clothes policemen and produced a warrant for Mosley’s arrest. Although Mosley must have recognized that he was deeply unpopular he had never done anything illegal and both he and Diana thought that the matter would be quickly resolved, that a trial would exonerate him. But there was no charge, and there was never a trial.
In the previous summer, when war was known to be imminent, an Emergency Powers Act had been rushed through Parliament. An amendment to Rule 18B of this act, made in the following months, enabled the Home Secretary to arrest and detain without trial anyone of ‘hostile origin or association’ if this was believed necessary for the defence of the realm. In May 1940, when Hitler’s troops advanced clear across Europe and there was justifiable fear of an invasion, ‘a wave of fifth-column hysteria swept the country’.38 Churchill’s new National Government decided to arrest and detain enemy aliens, Fascists and Communists, on the grounds that they were a potential security risk, and also for their own safety. During the First World War German nationals had been badly treated by angry British citizens. Accordingly, Rule 18B was amended, and under Rule 18B(1a) the government was now empowered to imprison indefinitely, without trial, any member of an organization which, in the Home Secretary’s view, was subject to foreign control, or whose leaders were known to have had association with leaders of enemy governments, or who sympathized with the system of government of enemy powers. This may be regarded as poetic justice by some, for although Mosley argued hotly that his arrest and incarceration were against rights laid down in Magna Carta, there is good reason to believe that had his party ever come to power those rights would have been sacrificed by him for expediency. He had, after all, proposed similar legislation in 1931 to combat mass unemployment.39
The following day Diana visited Mosley in Brixton Prison, and found, with some difficulty, a solicitor willing to represent him. Many of the BUF officials had been arrested with Mosley, and Diana agreed to perform a few tasks for the party, such as paying outstanding wages. When she returned to Denham and her children, the police were hard on her heels, with a warrant to search the house. From documents at the Public Record Office we now know that Diana was not arrested at the same time as Mosley because the security services wished to keep her under surveillance. Her phone was tapped, her mail intercepted, her movements and contacts recorded during the entire time that she was at liberty. Within a short time she was informed that Savehay was to be requisitioned for the war effort, and she began to pack.
Sydney and Unity, who were frequent visitors to Savehay Farm, came on the bus from High Wycombe, and Lord Berners, another frequent visitor, also called to cheer her up. Pam came to the rescue, offering to take in Diana, the babies and Nanny Higgs at Rignell House until things had sorted themselves out. Meanwhile Diana visited Mosley once a week and took in books and old country clothes at his request. Not wanting to worry her, he told her that everything was fine, and it was a long time before she discovered that the cells allotted to BUF prisoners were infested with bed-bugs and lice. On 29 June, Diana was also taken into custody and government records show that it was always intended that she should be. Any doubts that might have existed were swept away when several members of her own family freely advised officials that Diana was at least as dangerous as Mosley, if not more, for it was she who was the friend of Hitler, not he.
Nancy, who knew nothing of the reason for Diana’s frequent visits to Germany – to obtain an airwave – was one of those who informed on her sister. On 20 June, nine days before Diana was arrested, Nancy admitted this to Mrs Hammersley: ‘I have just been round to see Gladwyn40 at his request to tell him what I know . . . of Diana’s visits to Germany,’ she wrote. ‘I advised him to examine her passport to see how often she went. I also said I regard her as an extremely dangerous person. Not very sisterly behaviour but in such times I think it one’s duty.’41 Lord Moyne, Bryan Guinness’s father, wrote to Lord Swinton to inform him ‘of the extremely dangerous character of my former daughter-in-law’.42 He submitted as supportive evidence a two-page memorandum based on the testimony of his grandsons’ (Jonathan and Desmond) governess, who recounted statements and opinions that she claimed to have heard or overheard Diana making. Irene Ravensdale wrote to the Home Secretary saying virtually the same thing: that Diana was as dangerous as Mosley.
As a result of surveillance of and information-gathering on Diana, the head of MI5, Brigadier Harker, recommended that ‘this extremely dangerous and sinister young woman should be detained at the earliest possible moment’.43 He understood that she had been the principal channel of information between Mosley and Hitler, had been deeply involved in the radio project from which ‘all the profits were to go to Mosley [sic]’, and not least because she clearly approved of Unity Mitford’s disloyal behaviour and friendship with Nazi leaders such as Hitler and Streicher.44 Clearly, the government knew everything about the radio project, and of Mosley’s involvement, probably through Bill Allen. Diana states that Mosley was aware of Bill Allen’s involvement with the Secret Service. ‘He always told us that he was an agent. Mosley never minded. He said he had nothing to hide. The secrecy about the radio station was only to prevent the press from knowing.’45 Nevertheless, every movement of Mosley and Diana, for many years previous to the war and since, had been reported and, notably, Bill
Allen was not among the eight hundred members of the BUF who were imprisoned under Rule 18B.
Although she was still breastfeeding her baby, Diana opted to leave him with his nurse. She was told ‘to pack enough clothes for a few days’ and in turn she left instructions to her staff to continue packing for their planned departure for Rignell House. She was then driven to Holloway Prison. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the hatred felt for Mosley and the date of her arrest, she was treated badly. Her reception was rough and on her first night she was given a dark, dirty basement cell containing a thin, worn mattress placed upon a bare damp floor. The only window was blocked with sandbags. She could neither eat the food nor drink the tea, and was too cold, even though it was midsummer and she had not undressed, and was in too much pain, since her breasts were full of milk, to sleep. In short, life was made as uncomfortable as possible for her, and far more so than was necessary. A mutual friend had once told her of a conversation with Churchill. The two men had been visiting the slums of Liverpool and Churchill was moved by the misery and degradation. ‘Imagine,’ he said. ‘Imagine how terrible it would be, never to see anything beautiful, never to eat anything savoury, never to say anything clever.’ These words often came back to Diana during her years in Holloway.46
Later she was given a better cell, in that it was dry. It was six feet wide by nine feet long and contained a hard single bed with harsh calico sheets that felt like canvas and stained blankets. There was a hard chair and a small table. Under the chair was an enamel chamber-pot and on a three-cornered shelf was a chipped basin and jug. From the ceiling hung a single dim light. There were other Fascist women there, and innocent women of Italian and German origin who were married to British men but who came within the scope of Rule 18B. The support of these women helped Diana to cope with her imprisonment, though she never lost her anger at those who imposed it, and she never became accustomed to the unnecessary filthy squalor in which the prisoners were obliged to live. One inmate, a German Jew who had been a prisoner at Dachau before 1939, when it was a concentration camp rather than an extermination centre, and had escaped to England, complained that Holloway was dirtier than Dachau. But Diana’s worst deprivation was, naturally, being parted from her babies. In view of the conditions in Holloway, she had been wise to leave the eleven-week-old Max in a healthier environment, but she suffered all the anguish of any mother parted from her baby and her two-year-old toddler. Her only consolation was in knowing that they were safe. Pam took in the Mosley babies and Nanny Higgs at Rignell House where they remained for the next eighteen months. After that Sydney arranged for them to board with the MacKinnon family at Swinbrook House where she could see them every day.
With Diana’s children and the farm animals, the war years for Pam were busy and not unhappy, although Derek was away a great deal of the time. With his scientific ability Derek Jackson would have been of huge value to the war effort as part of Professor Lindemann’s team at Oxford, but he demanded to be allowed to join the RAF during 1940. Lindemann fought to keep him, but a direct intervention by Churchill freed Derek to join the fighting, and he quickly demonstrated his ability in this field as in others. Posted to a night-fighter squadron as radio operator and gunner he brought to this work the same fearless attitude that he always displayed when hunting or racing. Within months he had been awarded the DFC and during the course of the war was responsible for bringing down at least five enemy aircraft, and several others that were ‘unconfirmed’. He also earned the AFC, an OBE and the American Legion of Merit.
For Diana the time dragged interminably, for the BUF women lived in far worse conditions than their male counterparts. Although the men suffered from bed-bugs and were locked up for twenty-one hours a day in Brixton, conditions at Holloway were almost Dickensian. When a bomb fell and hit a main sewer the ground floor of the prison was awash in urine for three days as the lavatories overflowed. There was no water for washing or cleaning and almost immediately the women went down with food poisoning. Convicted prisoners were evacuated to a safer location since it was recognized that Holloway would be badly affected by bombing raids on London. Initially, Diana and her fellow Rule 18B inmates were locked into their cells at night, lights out at five o’clock, and the distant sound of nightly air-raids made the long, freezing winter nights a hell of noise and apprehension. What sustained Diana through the early days was her belief that her incarceration was temporary. Had she known it would last three and a half years, she feels she would have preferred to die. The cells were unlocked as soon as the local air-raid siren sounded so that prisoners would not be trapped in the event of a direct hit, and the women huddled together and chatted to while away the time when noise made sleep impossible. Diana was popular because she could always make them smile, and inevitably she became a sort of leader because she could articulate their problems. Also they sympathized with her over her separation from her babies. Usually during air-raids Diana went to sit with a woman who had a ground-floor cell.
One consolation during these long months of misery was provided by a German woman, who had been given permission to bring with her a wind-up gramophone and dozens of records: Beethoven, Schubert, Bach, Handel, Debussy and Wagner. She held concerts in a room across the yard. ‘Despite the tiresome pauses while the gramophone was wound up,’ Diana recalled, ‘these concerts were heavenly. There is nothing like music for transporting one a thousand miles from hateful surroundings into realms of bliss.’47 But throughout her imprisonment the highlight of her week was a letter from Mosley, who she learned had grown a beard, ‘Guess what colour it is – red!! At least quite a lot of it – silver threads among the gold.’ Mosley used his time in prison as an opportunity to study literature and languages. In his autobiography he would write, ‘Plato’s requirement of withdrawal from life for a considerable period of study and reflection before entering the final phase of action was fulfilled in my case, though not by my own volition.’ His letters kept Diana informed of his daily life, his studies, his love for her. He called her ‘my precious darling’, and ‘my darlingest one’. On the few occasions when the letters were held up for a day or two, Diana plunged into near despair.
As months went by she was allowed occasional visits from members of the family. Even Nancy visited after a year or so, never letting Diana know that she had ‘shopped’ her, but as usual it was Sydney who was to the fore in offering support. During the entire period of Diana’s imprisonment, no matter how difficult it was to travel, Sydney was a regular visitor to Holloway for the weekly quarter of an hour with Diana when she would impart news of the children and the family. Sydney spent four to six hours travelling and was generally obliged to wait for up to an hour in the damp, grimy prison waiting room before Diana was fetched. Sydney also visited Pam and the Mosley babies whenever possible. Later, she took all Diana’s children to the prison, but she was expecting sympathy from the wrong quarter when she wrote to Decca about the conditions: ‘They have no water and no gas, so can’t cook, they get 1 pint of water a day each for washing cooking and drinking, and there is none at all for the lavatories. Diana says the smell is terrible.’48
Nancy was unrepentant that her intervention had helped put Diana – to whom she referred in contemporary correspondence as ‘Mrs Quisling’ – in prison. Though she loved Diana she had seen hardly anything of her since the publication of Wigs on the Green four years earlier, and she clearly felt that her sister deserved punishment for supporting and encouraging a regime that had turned Europe upside down and endangered millions of promising young lives. Soon London was under blitz bombing and this alone seemed sufficient justification. Diana and her fellow prisoners were in the thick of it, too, of course, and Holloway suffered a direct hit on B wing, belying the rumour that the prison was protected because the Germans knew Diana was in there. But Nancy’s house in Blomfield Road was especially vulnerable: it was in the sightline of German bombers aiming for Paddington Station. Her reports of the bombing, once it began in the late summer of 1940
, make baleful reading even though she sprinkled her letters liberally with merriment. Prod had survived Dunkirk and his regiment had performed well, but he was mostly away, leaving her alone through the air-raids. She wrote to Violet Hammersley after one raid:
Ten hours is too long of concentrated noise and terror in a house alone. The screaming bombs . . . simply make your flesh creep, but the whole thing is so fearful that they are actually only a slight added horror. The great fires everywhere, the awful din which never stops & wave after wave of aeroplanes, ambulances tearing up the street and the horrible unnatural blaze of searchlights all has to be experienced to be understood . . . in every street you can see a sinister little piece roped off with red lights round it, or roofs blown off, or every window out of a house . . . People are beyond praise, everyone is red-eyed and exhausted but you never hear a word of complaint or down heartedness . . . Winston was admirable wasn’t he, so inspiring . . .49
A few weeks later she had become so accustomed to the bombing that she could write, ‘People here pay no attention whatever now to the bombs and if somebody does take cover you can be sure they are just up from the country.’ She had changed her job at the first-aid post and now looked after evacuees and those bombed out of their homes. David came down to London for the winter and as the mews was having some essential repairs carried out – when builders could be found – Nancy opened up 26 Rutland Gate and moved in with him, taking some of her own furniture from Blomfield Road. Like many people with spare rooms, they took in homeless people for a short period, while accommodation was found for them. From October 1940 they had a Jewish refugee family billeted on them. Nancy liked them. ‘On the day after they arrived,’ she wrote, ‘Farve . . . got up at 5.30 to light the boiler for them and charming Mr Sockolovsky who helped him, said to me, “I did not think the Lord would have risen so early.” Wasn’t it biblical?’50
The Sisters_The Saga of the Mitford Family Page 34
