In 1978 I read a report of a speech on subversion by a Mr G. K. Young (‘GKY’) a former ‘deputy director’ of MI6. It said that he was a banker. I had been a student at LSE 1972-1975, my tutor was an expert on the Soviet Bloc and I had studied Soviet politics. Fears of Soviet subversion may seem naïve now, but were widespread at the time, so I was interested. I found GKY’s address from Who’s Who. I wrote to him about his speech and he sent me a copy. I also asked him to recommend something ‘authoritative’ on subversion. He recommended Some Uncivil Liberties by Sam Swerling of the Monday Club. I reported all this to Dr Lawrence James a history teacher from my school days with whom I kept in touch. Dr James claimed to be a former Special Branch officer, and to have infiltrated the CP and student activists when at the LSE. He encouraged me to keep in touch with GKY.
In August 1979 I moved to London to work for Price Waterhouse. I wrote to GKY and asked if there was anything I could do to help his organisation, Tory Action. He asked me to meet him, which I did at the Lansdowne Club on 13 September 1979. GKY warmed to the fact that I had been to Leonard Schapiro’s lectures at LSE in 1973-4; Schapiro was an old friend of his. He told me a little about Tory Action and gave me two files of documents to read. I was amazed at the content of these files which had little to do with subversion but showed an obsession with immigration and the EU (the EEC at that time). A few weeks later I was invited to have lunch with GKY and Eric Lancasterat the Caledonian Club in Halkin Street, SW1. Eric Lancaster was a Justice of the Peace and a Conservative trade unionist. Some time later I found that my name had appeared on Tory Action stationery as a committee member, which was a surprise.
My work for Tory Action consisted of organising ‘write-ins’ drafting a letter which I would copy to some of the correspondents with a request that they write to their MP or a minister also writing letters to selected Tory MPs. When we first met, GKY gave me two files ‘write-ins’ and ‘parliamentary correspondence’. Later he gave me a list of MPs (about 20) and a list of correspondents (about 70). The only correspondent whose name I recall is Bee Carthew, another former SIS officer. Generally ‘correspondents’ were Tory Party members active in various parts of the country. I would circulate a draft which the correspondents would use as a basis for their own letter to MP/Minister/PM etc. They would send us a copy of any response they received. GKY gave general guidance as to what was wanted, but didn’t dictate timing, or subject matter, wording or targets for the letters. I felt it was strange that I, an unknown, was given such an important task. I felt he just wanted to create an impression of activity and organisation.
In January 1984 BBC broadcast ‘Maggie’s Militant Tendency’ which concerned, inter alia, relations between MPs and Tory Action. Neil Hamilton and Harvey Proctor sued for defamation and in September 1986 the BBC subpoenaed me to produce documents re: Tory Action in order to support their case. I telephoned GKY that night to tell him what had happened: he advised me to speak to the BBC’s solicitor. The next day my briefcase disappeared on the train. I put it on the rack at Crystal Palace station and it wasn’t there when the train arrived at London Bridge.
I resigned from the Tory Action Committee in 1988 and ceased to have anything to do with the Tory Party shortly afterwards.
The Committee
The other members of the committee were:-
Eric Lancaster left the committee soon after I joined but was at the Tory Action reception at House of Commons hosted by Harvey Proctor in 1987. He was a JP and was involved with ‘Tory Trade Unionists’.
Dr C Michel-Titus I saw him only once. He was a Romanian émigré journalist who had been expropriated by the Romanian government and was receiving compensation in the form of cases of Romanian wine and spirits.
Robin Davies most active member of the committee after GKY himself. He worked for the historian David Irving for a while. He leftin 1984 after the BBC broadcast. He edited Round Robin, subject to GKY’s oversight
Merrie Cave the sole female member of committee. She joined after the 1986 case. Another JP, formerly a school teacher in Islington. Now editor of the Salisbury Review.
M R ‘Mike’ Wheddon youthful, quiet and modest, very loyal to GKY. Active in Brent East Conservatives.
Phillip Rankin a lawyer, worked for Shell in London after coming down from Liverpool. One of the more assertive members of the committee.
Gerald James author of In the Public Interest and of ‘arms to Iraq’ fame. His name appeared on old Tory Action stationery (in the files) from earlier in the seventies. I’m not sure what he did, but he seems to have been heavily involved in the early years of Tory Action. No connection with Lawrence James mentioned above.
Committee meetings were informal and held at West End clubs, usually over lunch, although one was held at Brent Conservative Association (on 1 November 1980). They were called by GKY, no minutes were taken, there were no agendas and talk usually rambled over a number of different subjects. GKY was definitely the dominating force. There were normally no initiatives from others.
Organisation & Activities
The address of Tory Action was PO Box 850, London W14, an address that GKY controlled. All committee correspondence used this address. GKY forwarded mail addressed to individual committee members at the Box number, although I believe he may have opened and read it before sending it on. Apart from the ‘write-ins’, Tory Action circulated its newsletter Round Robin and held very occasional receptions at the House of Commons.
I was surprised by the ‘threadbare’ nature of the organisation. Apart from GKY it seemed to consist of just a few ordinary individuals, making up the ‘committee’. TA didn’t have ‘members’ but ‘correspondents’. GKY controlled everything by holding the files, having the reputation, knowledge and contacts; and the stationery, address and money. He also had the time, being the only member of the committee who didn’t have a full-time job.
Finances
There was no subscription expected from members. GKY paid most expenses lunches, publicity, printing and distribution. He said it came ‘out of his own funds’ and ‘Tory Action runs on a shoestring.’ He also said one edition of ‘Round Robin’ had been paid for from Romanian government funds. This seemed to imply that Dr Michel-Titus had acted as a conduit for the money. Other money was received via someone called Lt. Colonel Douglas Kennedy, about whom I have no knowledge. In 1980 I was made a signatory for TA’s bank account with Clydesdale Bank, but never signed a cheque and didn’t have a chequebook in my possession: it was just in case GKY fell sick or died. No accounts were ever distributed. GKY would sometimes send me copies of his letters to the bank, usually instructing a transfer from Tory Action’s account to his own personal account reimbursing his expenses.
Personality, ideas, attitudes
GKY was narcissistic to a degree. He probably had courage in saying what he thought, even if it made him unpopular. He was likeable, if you got on with him, always interesting and you felt you could rely on him. GKY was a Eurosupremacist; at one time his ideas would probably have been fairly ordinary, probably no different from, say, H. G. Wells. He joined the right when such ideas could no longer be held by people on the left. Why did he believe in the superiority of Europeans in spite of genocides, two world wars, etc? I believe he worshipped power and for him the global power of European culture meant that it must be right. He was a liberal and believed that liberalism belief in freedom, rights, democracy, equality of women was essentially a European idea, linked to a ‘European structure of mind’ and protected by a homogeneous community which was threatened by immigration.
GKY’s aims
But who was he trying to impress? The ‘correspondents’ themselves, the party leaders or both? Or the ‘anti-Thatcher’ element in the party? He claimed that pro-Heath elements wanted to stage a comeback through the constituencies. GKY did not want people to join the National Front (NF). He didn’t like the NF (contrary to what was thought by Searchlight and the BBC). It may have been one of his aims to discourage the ‘flaking away’ of right-wing elements from the Tory Party into the NF, by making them believe that they could have some influence through Tory Action. Certainly the tone of the Round Robin suggested that. He wanted MPs to feel that the party was behind Thatcher. I believe that much of what GKY said and did was disinformation. He wanted to create the impression he led a large, powerful group in the Tory Party, which wasn’t true.
Until ‘New Labour’, the Tory Party dominated twentieth century British politics by never having any serious rivals on the right. Contrast the Liberal and Labour parties and at times, the SDP and Nationalists, who split the centre-left vote between them. But there was always a risk of some ‘flaking away’ of support on the right of the party, especially on the issues of immigration and the EU (EEC). There was the National Front (some of the ‘correspondents’ had been involved with it) and there was Enoch Powell who might have mounted a challenge to the Tory Party and tried to lure activists away. I was present on one occasion when GKY said he had met Powell and that he thought him ‘mad’. He also took a different view of ex-NF people in the ranks of Tory Action. When challenged about this by a committee member he said that what appeared to some as ‘entryism’ was in fact a ‘return to the fold’.
I think that, by using his reputation as a former spymaster (who sometimes appeared in the press and on TV) and by giving the impression that he and they could wield influence in the Tory Party and had links with numerous MPs, he persuaded these people to remain in the party and, in effect, neutralised them.
Another possibility is that he was worried about his reputation. In October 1986 he told me that when he died Chapman Pincher would allege that he was another Soviet ‘mole’. This seemed to worry him a lot and may partly explain his outwardly right-wing stance.
To understand GKY you must understand that in the end he could find almost no one worth listening to. He surrounded himself with ordinary people and young men (like myself) because they listened to him and didn’t try to tell him anything or argue with him. He believed in the reality of Soviet subversion because of his experiences with George Blake, whom he had trusted.
He had been so highly educated, been to so many places, met so many important people (and seen through their pretensions, seen their fallibility as well as their capability); above all knew so many secrets, had participated in so many plots, that the rest of the human race seemed to be made up of uninformed innocents. To him, there was no one who could question his judgements and that trapped him increasingly in a world of his own. And this isolation of thought made him more than a little mad and angry as time went on. At the end of his life he was unhappy, feeling that the future was grim and that he had failed in what he had set out to achieve.
In the early years of Lobster, former MI6 no. 2, George Kennedy Young, loomed large in the imagination of the section of the British left which was interested in the political activities of former intelligence officers. His activities with Unison in 1973-5 remain unclear but here John Andrews describes the group which succeeded it, Tory Action. Lobster 19 contained an autobiographical sketch by Young, in which he refers to Tory Action but not to Unison.