John Stonehouse, My Father

by Julia Stonehouse

  On the 3rd September, Markham opened an account at the Bank of New South Wales on Threadneedle Street, saying he was considering emigrating to Australia and, on the same day, opened an account at the Strand branch of the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group. On the 4th, he made the first of two phone calls from Management Business Services, to number 834-0588, the Midland Bank where he had the deposit account. In the meantime, the bank had been asked by American Express for a reference for Mr Markham. As there was a substantial deposit, they wrote back ‘we have no reason to suppose that he is not suitable for your purposes’, and by the 23rd September, Markham had an American Express credit card in his hand. The call to the bank on the 4th had been to ask them to buy £5,000 worth of shares in the British Leyland Motor Corporation, and the call on the 13th is likely to be when he asked the bank to purchase on his behalf £5,000 of General Electric Company shares.

  On the 18th September Stonehouse caught the 19:55 flight to Zurich, stayed over, and the next morning, as Markham, opened an account at the Swiss Bank Corporation with a deposit of $7,500, then opened an account at the Swiss Credit Bank, before popping to Brussels for the afternoon. The next morning, he deposited $7,500 into the Swiss Bank Corporation before catching the 12:35 flight from Zurich to London. Both these cheques came from personal Stonehouse funds, from the sale of stamps. Two days later, Private Eye published a piece at the top of page three saying, ‘Delicacy and good taste prevent me from mentioning the names of the two Labour MPs who are at present under investigation by the Special Branch for their connections with an East European embassy. However, I should point out that the Czech embassy, which covers espionage and dirty tricks for the whole Soviet bloc, allocates £20,000 a month for “gifts”, “retainers” and “consultancies” to politicians, journalists, civil servants and others who might prove useful.’7 This was Frolik and rogue elements in MI5 spreading poison again, and my father probably thought this just confirmed that ‘Plan B’ was the only way to get away from this hurtful and dangerous slur. Escape beckoned, like a balmy breeze enticing him towards a new life, free of the financial, political and emotional stress and, perhaps above all, the stress of being called a traitor to the country he’d worked hard for all his life.

  On the 24th September, he asked the Midland to send £7,000 to his Markham account at the Bank of New South Wales in Threadneedle Street, and on the 30th, he asked them to sell the shares and transfer the balance of his account there too. By this time, the Midland had been approached by several other banks and credit card companies to provide a financial reference for Markham, which they didn’t normally give for deposit accounts, only current accounts, and they’d had to reply, ‘we are unable to speak for your purposes’. This meant a refusal for Barclaycard and the National Westminster Bank, but it didn’t seem to affect Markham’s acquisition of accounts with Post Office Giro, the Bank of New South Wales and the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group.

  Also on the 24th September, Markham wrote to the Bank of New South Wales saying he was going to Australia via the USA, and asking for a letter of introduction to the Melbourne branch, where £14,100 should be transferred. The next day he flew from Cyprus to Beirut where Stonehouse would try and finalise a trade deal, but this time he used the Markham passport. The alter ego identity was becoming increasingly real, and to make it more real still, between the 29th July and the 19th October, Stonehouse withdrew £62,912 from his personal accounts.

  On the 10th October, my father again won his parliamentary seat in the general election with a large majority. Eleven days later, on the 21st, Mr Markham took a metal trunk to shipping agents in Binney Street, W1, and asked for it to be sent to Melbourne. The agent remembered the transaction because he was asked to help carry the trunk up the stairs. Mr Markham filled out the declaration and consignment note, took out insurance, and left the trunk to make its way by a series of impressively well-recorded steps into container No. INTU 241487, and to berth 39 at Tilbury Docks, where it was loaded onto vessel ACT 1. On arrival in Melbourne, it was examined by customs officer Robert Rowland Hill, who saw it contained only the clothing of a man.

  On the 1st November my father flew to Zurich again and deposited £30,219 in the Markham Swiss Bank Corporation account. It was his own money and, try as they might, later on the DPP could find no charges to bring regarding these funds. On the 1st or 2nd November, he went to Management Business Services and paid in advance for the months of November and December, saying he was going to Australia, and gave instructions in writing for his mail to be forwarded to the Bank of New South Wales, 395 Little Collins Street, Melbourne, to take effect that day. Between the 6th and 11th November, my father took eleven flights crisscrossing America as his mind crisscrossed between Stonehouse and Markham, eventually returning to London. On the 15th November, Private Eye published their gratuitous and humourless character assassination ‘Bungler Dashed’. By the 20th, he was gone.

  Two years later my father would be on trial in London at the Old Bailey. Alongside him in the dock was his mistress, Sheila Buckley. In his summing up, Judge Eveleigh said to her ‘I have no doubt that you were fully aware of what was going on.’8 I only wish she had been. It was my father laying insane plans, nobody else. Sheila was never seen with him while he inhabited his new personas. ‘Plan B’ existed only inside my father’s head, and as the months of July to November progressed, more planning and paperwork went into it. For months he went around central London alone, pretending to be Mr Markham or Mr Mildoon. He went in and out of the General Register Office, the Passport Office, embassies and numerous banks. He got a migrant visa for Australia, along with the required TB X-ray. Many times he’d respond to the call of his false name and go to various desks to collect the new paperwork. He could have been recognised as Stonehouse at any time. But people believed his new personas, and he enjoyed that. People responded to him as an ordinary person, rather than as a politician. There were no preconceived ideas about him coming from other people. He could walk down the street and conduct business without people having any opinion, good or bad, about him. Such anonymity is highly underrated. And perhaps the most important element of this is that he himself could inhabit a ‘normal person’ space, because that’s where he found the relief. Being Mr Markham was a safety-valve, a release, a lifesaver, and the more that persona became real, and the more the pressures of 1974 increased, the more Mr Stonehouse yearned to be Mr Markham, and escape. What began as a mad escape fantasy became the reality. He thought he had no choice. By the time he disappeared his debts included £40,000 to Rowe Rudd stockbrokers, following his rash gambling on the stock market, and £35,000 to Ambulant Finance, thanks to the nice young Kazi Ahmed, who’d suggested the BBT project in the first place. The DTI later raised serious questions about the date and authenticity of a letter written by Ahmed which led to my father being held responsible for this debt. It was all too much.

  * The DTI report contained seven recommendations for changes in financial regulations. Following the publication of the report, a Mr G Clark of the DTI made this suggestion for a change in the law to the minister concerned: ‘Companies should not be permitted to lend money on the security of their own shares. This would involve clarification of Article 10 of Table A [of Section 54 of the Companies Act 1948] which can be construed to authorise companies which make loans in the ordinary course of business to accept their own shares as security for such loans.’ (Ref: ‘Loose Minute’ from Mr G Clark to Mr HC Gill, 11th November 1977, The National Archives File BT 299/346, page 1.)

  8

  Man Gone!

  On the 21st November 1974, my mother was having a good day. She was in a private viewing suite in Soho watching a promotional film she’d help produce and edit for a company she did public relations for. The clients were pleased with the film, and so was she. Then she went to the home she shared with my father at 21 Sancroft Street in Kennington, London, and made herself a cup of tea. About half an hour later the doorbell rang. It was my fath
er’s personal assistant, Philip Gay, and his wife, Caroline. My mother asked if they’d like some tea, and Philip said, ‘we need something stronger’. A little surprised, my mother indicated with her hand towards the drinks cabinet and said to help themselves, but Philip only poured whiskey into a single glass and put it on the table in front of my mother. It was then she realised something was very wrong, and the Gays had come to tell her something – something bad. My mother drank that whiskey – the one and only time in her life that she ever drank spirits.

  Apparently, my father and his business colleague Jim Charlton had flown to Miami on the 19th as planned on flight BA 661, dined at the hotel, and arranged that the next morning they’d have a swim before their 12pm appointment with the Southeast First National Bank of Miami. Around 9am, they headed for the beach, my father took off his outer clothes, rolled them into a neat package, and left them with Helen Fleming, the attendant at the cabana office where non-resident users of the beach paid for access. Jim didn’t take a swim, but my father did, giving Jim cause for concern as he went out of sight, at least 180–200 yards from the beach. He landed back on shore some distance away, jogged back to Jim, collected his clothes, and they both went inside to change for the meeting, after which they had lunch as guests of the bank. Back at the hotel, at 4.30pm, my father said he was going to do some shopping and have another swim, and suggested they meet in the bar at 7pm for a drink before dinner. My father went back to the beach, leaving his clothes at the cabana again. Ms Fleming later said ‘He seemed to be in a good mood.’ A little after 8pm, Jim became worried because my father hadn’t turned up, and asked the housekeeper for his room to be opened. All my father’s belongings appeared to be in place, other than the beach clothes he’d worn earlier. Jim checked the hire car was still where they’d parked it, then alerted hotel security. It was now dark outside. Jim went with a hotel security guard to the cabana office and, with the aid of a torch, they could see through the glass that my father’s clothing was placed on the shelf at the rear of the closed cabana office, as had been done in the morning. Now quite alarmed, Jim phoned the police, before searching the beach with the security guard. They couldn’t find anything, so Jim went to the police station and reported my father missing. They told him nothing could be done until morning, and not to communicate with Mrs Stonehouse as missing persons frequently turned up shortly after disappearing. The next day, the 21st, Jim went back to the cabana office to confirm the clothes were still there, then accompanied a police officer as he searched my father’s room and belongings, and itemised the contents of his briefcase. He phoned London and spoke to Philip Gay, my father’s personal assistant, and asked for the family to be informed. Until my father was arrested in Melbourne, Jim was convinced my father had perished while swimming in the sea on the afternoon of the 20th November.

  My mother phoned her friend, Eric Blakemore, and asked him to drive to Somerset and collect my fourteen-year-old brother, Mathew, from school, and bring him to London. The last thing she wanted was for him to hear the news from reporters. Beatrice was at university and Jane and I were working, but we were all living in London at the time so, on receiving the news from our mother, we swiftly made our way to Sancroft Street. Philip Gay was still there, and repeated to us the events in Miami. Jane wrote in her diary how conflicted we all were: ‘One second there’s refusal to give up hope, next minute complete despair and such pain.’ It was decided we’d go to Faulkners Down House, an isolated farmhouse my parents rented, adjacent to a farm just outside Andover, Hampshire. My mother and Jane would wait in London for Mathew to arrive, then drive down with Eric, while another of my father’s associates, Philip Bingham, volunteered to drive Beatrice and myself. First we had to cross London and pick up some clothes. Philip used the handbrake at every traffic light and pedestrian crossing and I was soon feeling sicker than I was before, so I took over the driving and found myself quickly avoiding all traffic lights and congestion by using side roads I didn’t even know I knew. When we got to the A316 and a straight road to Andover, Philip took back the driving. As I looked out of the window, I saw bodies of water I’d not noticed before. It’s strange how stress can affect one’s perceptions.

  Our first thought as a family was that my father had gone swimming far out from shore and had either had a bad case of cramp, a heart attack, or been eaten by sharks. Those had been the visions I had while passing previously innocuous lakes and reservoirs on the drive. My father was an excellent swimmer, and his usual thing was to swim a very long way out from the shore, float around a bit, then swim back. One time in Dubrovnik, he and I had swum to Lokrum, an island about 650 yards away. I swam alongside until I got tired and then held on to his shoulder to rest a while. When we swam back, we saw my mother and an agitated group of people gesticulating on the shoreline. Apparently, there’d been a storm the night before and sharks had come into that area of water for protection. We knew from experience that when my father went swimming he wasn’t interested in splashing around near the beach but in getting far away from it. In another life he would’ve made a good long-distance swimmer.

  This was our first problem because the Florida Coastguard didn’t believe us when we said he would have swum out such a long way. The current close to the shore went in one direction, while the Gulf Stream current further out went in the other direction, and we thought they were looking along the wrong part of the coast. When the Coastguard said they hadn’t found a body, we weren’t surprised and kept hoping he was stranded somewhere, still alive. A person could stay alive in those warm waters, we were told, for two days. We clutched at every straw that came our way. The phone call from my father on his earlier trip, saying he ‘couldn’t take it anymore’, led my mother to wonder if he’d had a breakdown, or killed himself, or both. None of the options were good, but we still clung on to hope. My brother refused to accept he was dead for quite a while. On the 22nd, Jane wrote in her diary ‘We are going to have to accept he is dead. I just hope they never find his body – then I can imagine him starting a new life with amnesia. But that’s ridiculous.’ Little did she know, ridiculous or not, that’s exactly what he’d planned to do. On the 24th, Jim Charlton and his wife came to visit bringing, very disturbingly, my father’s suitcase of clothes. It gave a sense of reality to the situation, and that reality looked and felt very bad. His briefcase had been retained by the Miami police who, we’d discover much later, would be asked by Interpol Washington to send it to Melbourne. The transport costs would be paid for with the currency inside the briefcase. On the 25th, Beatrice had to get back to London because she had university exams coming up. She was found ‘shedding honest tears’ at the buffet at Waterloo Station by a kind lady, who wrote to my mother sending ‘prayers and hopes that your husband is safe’. Many more letters would be received from strangers over the next few years – some sympathetic and some not.

  The next day the police came to the house and interviewed my mother. She had her grief and uncertainty to deal with, but there was worse to come because now the press started to get nasty, and my mother would find herself trying to bat away negative stories. Exactly one week after he’d gone missing, the front-page news in the Daily Mirror was saying the ‘mystery deepens’ and ‘There has been a suggestion he has been kidnapped.’ Nobody had suggested that, except the Daily Mirror, who added ‘– although no ransom demand has been received.’1 On the 28th November, the Daily Mail said he was pompous and too wealthy; on the 29th my mother had to deny to The Sun that money was missing from the Bangladesh Fund; and on 1st December we read that a complaint had been lodged with a law firm that the ‘fund had topped £1½ million’ (as opposed to the £412,083 banked). That same day, the Sunday Times’ Richard Milner – who’d caused so much trouble for the BBT, which led to a DTI inquiry, and a Scotland Yard Fraud Squad investigation, both of which proved nothing untoward – wrote another horrible piece: ‘The strange legacy of the missing MP’. He was a press hound who wanted blood, and nothing was going to st
op him. In the same paper, they ran ‘The Price of Freedom’ – an interview with Josef Frolik. He didn’t mention my father’s name – that was to come a couple of weeks later, but we could hear the knives being pulled from their sheaths.

  On the 2nd, the BBC said that the FBI were reconciled to the fact he’d not drowned. That same day, my mother received a letter from a woman who said her uncle had disappeared in the same place years earlier and his body turned up seven days later in Jacksonville, over 300 miles north. Again, this revived our concern that the American authorities had been looking in the wrong area. Also on the 2nd, the Daily Mail expanded on so-called ‘missing’ money from the Bangladesh Fund, while several papers published the results of a press statement issued by a friend of my father, William Molloy MP. These included the Guardian story, ‘Enemies may have killed Stonehouse’, the Daily Express’s ‘MP with foes everywhere’, and The Sun’s ‘Missing MP “may be a victim of a Mafia Plot”’. Molloy had said many good things about my father, and these had been reported, but it created the impression that he had enemies, and it whipped up the drama. On the 3rd, the damaging headline story was about my father’s life insurances. We didn’t take those stories at all seriously because, obviously, what’s the point of having five- and seven-year short-term insurances when they can’t be claimed for at least seven years if there’s no body? We were naïve because my father would get sentenced to 30 years for those useless bits of paper.

  On the 6th December, the Daily Mail said ‘Mr Fixit’ made ‘at least £1,000,000’ commission arranging big contracts in Bangladesh for British companies, while The Observer had: ‘Why Stonehouse wanted to be rich’. On the 8th, the Sunday Times had another nasty piece about his businesses, but they did at least print some small respite in the form of a letter from Alan Rainbird, a former business associate, who said many positive things, including, ‘John Stonehouse was a man of considerable ability and the highest principle. I appeal to the media to call off the vultures.’2 No chance of that. A reporter was already on the phone, asking my mother about a flat my father rented at Vandon Court, Petty France, Westminster – about which she knew nothing. They said a girl lived there, and read her some potential names. One was Sheila Buckley. My mother spent the rest of the weekend phoning my father’s friends, asking if they knew anything. They all said they didn’t. Sheila was supposed to be staying in the country with friends, but couldn’t be found. On Monday the 9th, the headline on the front page of The Sun was ‘Riddle of Girl in Lost MP’s flat’. The sub-heading was ‘Stonehouse neighbour tells of a brunette’, and the article explained that she thought a girl was living at the flat. The ‘slightly built’ girl was last seen on the 31st October, moving some belongings with Mr Stonehouse. I’d told The Sun: ‘I just don’t know who this girl could be.’