John Stonehouse, My Father

by Julia Stonehouse

  A two-page report typewritten in English is headed in handwriting ‘Od Lee’ – ‘From Lee’ – and given that ‘Lee’ was the StB code name for the backbench Labour MP Will Owen, I think it’s fair to assume it came from him. In 1969 Frolik told the secret service that Lee was handing them information for cash, and he was arrested in January 1970, admitting he’d done wrong. This document predates any of that, 1st November 1967, and records a lunch between Owen and my father at which they discussed events at a Labour Party Defence Committee meeting. At the end, Lee says, ‘Stonehouse was seeking to impress, in view of the criticism of NATO.’ What this document shows is that while the Labour Party were emphasising the weakness of NATO, my father was doing the opposite. This goes against what the StB were reporting back to Prague. In a document dated February 1963, they say they have ‘no compromising material, the only fact is that he’s passing information willingly, damaging British interests’. But emphasising the strength of NATO is not ‘damaging British interests’, and I wonder why the StB had to get a report of a conversation from ‘Lee’ if ‘Katalina’, as the StB called my father at this time, was actually one of their agents. Surely, he could have just told them directly what he thought or, better still, given them a handwritten report? That’s what they said they were paying him for.

  There’s only one other political document in the StB file and that’s a two-page typed minutes which appears to be from a Labour foreign affairs committee of 1960, which my father attended, along with Barnett Stross who Frolik also accused of being an StB spy. At the meeting, apparently, Stross said that he was in Prague two weeks earlier talking to ‘leading officials’ who believed that ‘Germans are absolutely unfit to have arms.’15 While the Czechs probably opened a file on Stross, that in itself is not proof of anything, and I’m not saying the document came from him. One possibility is that this document made its way into the file via Will Owen, who admitted to handing Labour Party material over to the Czechs. The report itself is short and contains nothing that can’t be read in the newspapers, and certainly no secrets – and there’s nothing to indicate it came from my father.

  I’ve now described every single document in the English language in my father’s StB file. The Czech portion of the file, which is the major part, is written in a certain style that I’ve been told is typical StB – using a lot of words that, when examined closely, don’t actually say very much. It’s not ‘gobbledygook’, and I don’t have a suitable word to describe it, but it’s a peculiar blend of verbosity, obfuscation and repetitive totalitarian bureaucracy. There’s no criticism of comrades in the StB file, which is understandable given they never knew who their enemy might be, or how other people were connected. The safest thing was to say nothing negative, which also helped to reassure Prague that everything was fine, which seemed to be important.

  Many of the documents are just admin bulk – CV-type reports on my father, drafts of documents with rows of dots that will be handwritten or typed in for a later version. There’s a huge amount of repetition generally. Then there are evaluation reports, mostly consisting of how my father can be useful in the future. Indeed, much of what’s in these files is about the future – what will happen in the future rather than what happened: they will have a meeting; they will pay him; they will get photos, etc. Maybe they thought that if they prevaricated long enough the personnel in Prague would change, and nobody would remember what they’d said about what was going to happen.

  Josef Frolik said in his book: ‘I know of no other place in the world, outside of Austria and West Germany, where access to the Government apparatus, Parliament, the trade unions and scientific institutes was at that time so complete and on such a scale as in Great Britain’16 (emphasis Frolik’s own). Britain was a remarkably open society. Every word said in the House of Commons was available at the time in the form of printed copies of Hansard, which could be picked up the following day for a couple of shillings at Her Majesty’s Stationery Office in Holborn. Someone from behind the Iron Curtain would find some of the information in those papers very revealing, especially when it’s to do with defence. Plus, our newspapers are very open, and scientific, military and trade journals were available on subscription or in libraries – a mine of information for communist spies. The StB seem to have spent their time gathering publicly-available information and packaging it as insider ‘agent’ information. That’s what their reports back to Prague consisted of – information that communist Central Office in Prague couldn’t dream of as being public knowledge.

  Some documents in the file are one-line memos, usually referring to other documents, which are themselves repetitions of other documents, just changed a little so the emphasis is on one subject rather than another previously highlighted. They made a huge deal out of every document. For example, the typewritten itinerary of my father’s trip to Africa – basically a list of names they could have got from a dozen sources if they wanted to – is translated and spun into: ‘This will also provide opportunities for our trade policy penetration after gaining independence in the current year.’17 Everything is made to seem more significant than it is.

  Comparing the English documents with the reports written about them, it’s possible to see that the StB are masters of spin. Every word gets a little turn, a little exaggeration or change of emphasis or even direction, until by the end of a paragraph a complete 180-degree turn has been achieved. It’s quite impressive really. The spin is always positive, and leading towards the notion that my father was worth keeping as an agent. I’m reading this and thinking, ‘Yes, you need to justify your existence and, while you’re at it, pocket some cash.’

  If the StB were anything like the KGB, it’s quite likely that the people reading these reports in Prague knew they were made-up nonsense. In his autobiography, Next Stop Execution, the Russian KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky says of his boss, Viktor Grushko, ‘He wanted nothing to do with the huge reports that people kept sending in from foreign stations: even though he was head of the department, he never read them, knowing that most of what they said was invented.’ Writing about his time in London, Gordievsky says ‘officers often exaggerated their successes and up-rated the importance of their contacts’.18

  My father’s recruitment, according to the file, took place in January 1960, and Robert Husak’s report of the event was very descriptive. He’s referring here to the fact my father accepted £50 – according to Husak – at Christmas: ‘After receiving the money, in that first moment he lost his self-confidence and consciously accepted the position of subordinate. He was not accustomed to this position and apparently rebelled internally. I helped him to move through this depression and he sensed that I understood him well and I saw boyish gratitude in his eyes.’ Husak reports that his understanding and tact led to their friendship and, ‘he had complete confidence in me’. Husak notes that, ‘There is no space in the operative record to describe psychological moments,’ but says, ‘Kolon accepted my leading role and in terms of that personal relationship he became an agent.’19 Husak must have been very pleased with himself – he’d just invented an agent over which he claimed to have control and, at the same time, justified where the £50 went, which was probably into his own pocket. Husak says: ‘We agreed to explain Communist principles to him and help him with advice and criticism in preparing his book on British democracy. It wants to address the system of non-corruption, i.e. the de-politicisation of public life and especially the youth. The book will be controversial, but formulated to draw the attention of the British public to a politician fighting to deepen democracy and thereby enhance the moral prestige of Britain abroad.’20 Prague might have bought this nonsense, but my mother doesn’t. At this time, January 1960, my father was engaged in a battle with communism within the London Co-operative Society, of which he was a board member – a bitter battle that would ensue over the next few years. He knew very well what communist principles meant, and he detested them – and that is no exaggeration. My mother typed up all
my father’s paperwork, including reports and books, and she tells me that no such book was planned at any time. Husak’s fantasy report continues, ‘I am confident that I will help to get him into the leadership of the Labour Party over a period of ten years.’ Husak’s laying plans for his long-term pocket money stream.

  According to the defector Frolik, standard procedure included this: ‘working on the precept that had been drummed into us in Prague … we ensured they received money from us and signed for it’ (his italics), and the ‘receipt is carefully filed away’.21 In my father’s file, there’s a reference to him being given £25 in February 1960 which ‘he signed’ for, but there’s not a single signed receipt, or unsigned receipt, in his file.

  The StB agents liked having good lunches on expenses, paid for by Central Office in Prague, at the best restaurants in London, including the San Frediano, White Tower, Prunier, Boulestin, Bentley’s, Hatchetts, The Vine, Marquis and Frascati, but they could only justify these expenses if they said they were meeting an ‘agent’. Their reports of meetings always began with a description of the efforts they made to make sure they weren’t being followed, sometimes with details of the circuitous route they took to get there. They did this even when the destination they were heading for was routinely frequented by people who would notice a famous British politician meeting shady characters from the Czech embassy – like journalists, politicians or the British secret service.

  An example of an invented meeting is recorded in the file as having taken place between my father and StB agent Captain Robert Husak on 29th December 1965 at the Grill Room at St Ermin’s Hotel, 2 Caxton Street. This was literally the last place in the entire country that a UK politician would agree to meet his communist StB ‘handler’, because in the 1960s it was the main watering hole for all the branches of the British secret services. It was the place where the Special Operations Executive (SOE) was formed in the 1930s, and was for years later used by the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), which became MI6, whose HQ was nearby at 54 Broadway. It was the HQ for Section ‘D’ of SIS, and home for the Statistical Research Department of SOE. The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) were around the corner in Palmer St, MI9 were in Caxton Street, and the Chief of SIS had his office at 21 Queen Anne’s Gate, with further offices in Artillery Mansions on Victoria Street and in the basement of St Anne’s Mansions. Military intelligence, MI8, had a listening post on the roof of what was the passport office in Petty France. The hotel was used by MI5, and the Naval Intelligence Division. Even as late as 1981, it was the natural meeting place for the St Ermin’s Group – a right-wing Labour Party group including Denis Healey, that organised to prevent Tony Benn taking over the Party. St Ermin’s was also a ten-minute walk from the old Scotland Yard police headquarters, the Foreign Office and the Houses of Parliament. It even had an extension of the division bell so the many MPs and Lords who frequented the hotel’s restaurant and bars could be alerted when they had to return to parliament to vote. In this most unlikely of places, Husak says he had a clandestine meeting with my father. He reports it was ‘perhaps the most interesting meeting during my entire stay in London’. Apparently he told my father they ‘are fully aware of fact that he was now a minister, and therefore want to pay maximum attention to the perfect conspiracy of contact and ensure the “cover story” provides the possibility of a full explanation for his contact with them’. My father was reported by Husak to have said ‘there must be no scandal’.22 The idea that my father met Husak at St Ermin’s Hotel is ludicrous. The more credible scenario is that Husak wanted a nice lunch on expenses and felt it would be cute to walk into ‘the lion’s den’, as it were, and observe the secret agents as, no doubt, they observed him.

  In 1961 the StB reported paying my father £250 in document 000_0389. His code name at the time was ‘Kolon’. They say, ‘Kolon said he was going to be at Sadler’s Wells Theatre on the evening of 30th June. We agreed he would leave his car at Wells Street, about 3/4 km from the theatre. The street is quiet in the evening, the entrance to the park, and movement on it is easy to control. Kolon himself made a drawing – see attachment, where we should put the money and gave us the description and dates of the car. New station wagon, Austin A55, green, number 5108 MF, key number FP672.’23 Indeed, the adjacent document, 000_0388, is a page taken from a notebook showing a map, and it has those car details on it. But it’s not written in my father’s handwriting. Depending on how it’s approached, Wells Street is about three kilometres from the theatre, but there’s no park on it. The map shows roads going around an oval-shaped central section, presumably buildings, with the letter ‘T’ marked at one end, and four roads leading into that oval area at somewhat haphazard angles, one marked with an ‘A’ and another with an asterisk. No road names are given. Wells Street itself is straight, and nowhere along its kilometre length does it have the road configuration as shown in the map, so identifying from this map where the car was supposed to be parked would be difficult to say the very least. The report describes events at 9.30pm when agent ‘Kugler’ attempted to put the money in the car while ‘Hanousek’ kept watch from a distance. There was a ‘technical failure’ because the key my father had supposedly given them from the ‘bundle’ on his key ring was the wrong one. Kugler tried the doors and then worked out it was the key to the back-hatch. He put the package of money between the gear stick and the ‘overhang of the front seat’. According to the report, ‘Shortly after 10pm, Kolon came to the car alone and immediately left without looking for money in the car.’24 Given that finding the car on Wells Street from the map would be nigh on impossible, and given that the map was not, as they said it was, drawn by my father, I think it’s fair to say this entire scenario was also fake.

  The Wells Street map has a file number, 148, and on the reverse of this page taken from a notebook there is another map, this time with no file number and no reference to it within the file documents. Again, it is not in my father’s handwriting. It identifies a location in ‘Fullbrook Road, N19’ (actually spelled Fulbrook) showing the streets around Tuffnel Park (actually spelled Tufnell) underground station or, as it’s marked on the map, ‘U-station’ (as in the German ‘U-Bahn’). And there’s a mark indicating the location of a pub, spelled incorrectly as ‘salloon’. Under the map are the words ‘169 Rushey Green Lane, Black Horse Inn, saloon’ – which is location ‘II’ of The Times system of calling meetings. The map shows a location in north London, while the Black Horse Inn address is in Catford, south London. Given that this map bears no relation to any text in the file, it seems likely that the purpose here was to link a supposed regular meeting place, the pub in Catford, with my father – who was supposed to have drawn the map on the other side.

  ‘Hanousek’ was the StB’s alias for Premysl Holan, and a year later he was involved in another purported money exchange, this time for £100. To make it look genuine to the masters in Prague, they pretended that my father had cancelled the meeting, then rearranged it. To support this notion, the file contains an envelope dated 19th June 1962, addressed to ‘Mr Premys Holan 60 Maitland Court Lancaster Gate W2’ (in capitals) and another, a day later, to ‘P Holan Esq’ (in lower case letters), this time accompanied by a note saying ‘P.H. Thursday impossible suggest Tuesday In haste P.B.’25 The initials ‘P.B.’ probably stand for ‘Paul Barnes’, the cover name the StB devised for my father. None of these documents are in my father’s handwriting, even given that he could be expected to try and disguise that.

  Captain Robert Husak apparently thought he was the James Bond of the StB. Joseph Frolik describes him as ‘a handsome young playboy-gangster’, and recounts a story of him seducing a top-level German secretary at NATO HQ and ‘obtaining classified information in return for his services’.26 My father met Husak at a cocktail party for a visiting delegation at the Czech embassy. He wrote: ‘I was approached by a tall, handsome and suave Czech who seemed to know me, although I did not have any recollection of meeting him. His manner did not attrac
t me to him. In the hubbub of the cocktail conversation he was trying to push his luck with me … when he started trying to make a date for lunch, I allowed myself to be pushed forward in the party melee, and so hoped to avoid any commitment. But as I moved forward he pushed an obviously prepared note into my hand with his name on it, “Husak”, and begged me once more to have lunch with him. I did meet him for lunch but took the precaution of putting in a full report of our conversation through the Ministry’s Intelligence Officer.’ That officer was David Purnell. My father continues, ‘I saw Husak at several diplomatic functions afterwards and when I was involved in negotiations on the possible sale of VC10s to CSA, the Czech Airline, Husak turned up as an interpreter for the Czech Minister.’27 In the course of his ministerial job, my father had to communicate with the Czechs, and the Czech trade negotiators were required to accept the involvement and oversight of the StB. On 21st September 1965 my father left Heathrow Airport, spearheading a government drive to sell British Aircraft to Iron Curtain countries, and it was arranged for a VC10 exhibition flight to take place in Prague the following year.

  It was in connection with VC10 sales that my father agreed to meet Husak on 9th August 1966, thinking he was going to get an update on the trade situation. Husak had suggested they meet at the Carafe Restaurant, off Lowndes Square. This was no clandestine meeting as far as my father was concerned, because he arrived in his ministerial car, and Lowndes Square was not an appropriate location for spy-and-handler meetings because it’s close to many embassies and frequented by diplomats. It’s also a four-minute walk away from the Special Forces Club at 8 Herbert Crescent – a favourite hang-out of the secret services. But Husak had big plans for this meeting. In his report he says, ‘I wanted pictures taken of me,’ so at the last minute he suggested a change of venue to the Chelsea Room at the Carlton House Hotel in Cadogan Place, around the corner, where another StB agent was waiting to take the photos clandestinely. These photos, of my father and Husak walking to the Carlton House Hotel, are the only photos in the StB file. The only tape recording referred to in the StB file also relates to this lunch meeting. There’s no actual tape, but Husak was supposed to have taken a tape recording of their conversation at lunch. The file states, using the code name ‘Twister’ for my father, that: ‘Unfortunately, the recording is very poor quality because the restaurant was noisy. The clearer part (only partially) is basically just a monologue by Hanc [Husak’s alias], while Twister’s voice usually disappears completely.’28 Elsewhere in the file we’re told Husak didn’t mention the name of the agent in the tape. By having photos taken, and deliberately botching a recording, Husak was trying to cover his back because after the lunch, according to him, he gave my father £1,500 in the back of a taxi. That was supposed to be £500 back-pay for three years. In the ten years during which my father was supposed to be spying for the Czechs, a total of £4,280 came out of the accounts department in Prague. It looks like Husak got most of it, and Hanousek and Kugler did pretty well too, but most – not all – of the StB agents seem to have had their fingers in the ‘spy’ pie.