The Peer and the Gangster

A Very British Cover-up

Daniel Smith

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780750997522, 9780750993296
• eBook ISBN: 9780750995764
• Edition: 2
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern British History
• Index: History

'His book is both lively and engrossing, and provides the clearest and most comprehensive account yet of this extraordinary saga.' - Peter Parker, The Spectator

'Daniel Smith tells the story of Boothby, the Krays and Goodman in a rollicking tone that carries conviction and reads well.' - Richard Davenport-Hines, The Times

'Daniel Smith explores the conspiracy of silence surrounding Sir Robert Boothby . . . A sensational item or allegation on every page.' - Roger Lewis, Daily Mail

In July 1964, the Sunday Mirror ran a front-page story headlined: PEER AND A GANGSTER: YARD ENQUIRY. The newspaper reported that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police had ordered an investigation into an alleged homosexual relationship between 'a household name' from the House of Lords and a leading figure in the London underworld. Lord Boothby was the Conservative lord in question, and Ronnie Kray the infamous gangster. The report threatened a scandal even more explosive than that of the Profumo affair the previous year. Yet within a couple of weeks the story had been killed off.

In The Peer and the Gangster, the full saga of the cover-up and its far-reaching consequences is revealed, and exposes how eminent figures from the political firmament, the Security Service, the Metropolitan Police, the legal profession and the media saw to it that the Sunday Mirror's story was crushed almost as soon as it emerged.

1

The Nation’s Favourite

It was 13 October 1963 and Lord Boothby was in a lift heading down to the lobby of the BBC Television Centre in London’s White City. He was accompanied by a producer and old friend, John Irwin. There was nothing in the air to suggest anything out of the ordinary. But as the lift doors opened and he stepped out, an imposing figure emerged from the shadows. For a moment Boothby was disorientated, then he recognised his assailant. It was Eamonn Andrews. ‘Lord Boothby, we’re on the air – sound and vision. In fact and at last, tonight’s the night – This is Your Life!’¹

That episode of This Is Your Life – the long-running and always celebratory biography-themed show – ought, perhaps, to have marked Boothby’s transition into something like quiet retirement. Born in 1900, he had been a fixture of British public life throughout a tumultuous century. His friends had died in the trenches of the First World War. His maiden speech in the Commons was witnessed by his political hero, David Lloyd George, then still in his pomp. He was Churchill’s ally in the 1930s and his foe for much of the rest of the time. And in the 1950s he had earned a reputation as one of the hardest-hitting and most effective backbench voices in the House of Commons, warning against British aggression during the Suez Crisis, championing the European project and fighting for gay rights. Moreover, he was perhaps the first British politician to really ‘get’ the power of radio and television. There had been plenty of talented parliamentary communicators among his generation, but no one who quite understood as he did how you might go about becoming a political personality via the airwaves. He was, after all, the man Winston Churchill used to refer to, not altogether warmly, as ‘The Hon. Member the Star of Television’.²

By his own admission, Boothby got away with much in his life thanks to his ability to charm. A significant component in this was his voice – a feature that never failed to impress those who met him. He possessed a velvety rich baritone and in his youth there was talk that he might become a singer. As a student at Oxford, he encountered Freddie Grisewood, who taught him the secrets of voice production. It was a skill he put to good use wherever he went, captivating individuals in personal conversation, commanding the attention of his parliamentary colleagues and winning giant audiences on the radio and television. It was as a regular panellist on the political discussion show Any Questions? – helmed, as chance would have it, by Grisewood, who had forged a successful career as a BBC broadcaster – that Boothby first became a regular interloper into parlours and drawing rooms throughout the nation.

The transition from politician to personality came naturally enough. To go with the voice, Boothby had long ago developed a distinctive fashion style. The sumptuous hair – which retained its lushness even as it greyed – was typically set off by a well-cut suit complete with carnation in the buttonhole. His mind, meanwhile, overflowed with anecdotes, often caustic and always fascinating, about the famous and notorious – tales he needed little encouragement to share. Cutting a dash and with a reputation for having been either eyewitness to or key player in many of the landmark events of the century – in 1959, he was asked to host a series of films giving a retrospective on the century to date³ – little wonder he was a natural favourite with radio and television audiences and producers.

On This Is Your Life, Eamonn Andrews was typically effusive, summing up Boothby as ‘Peer of the Realm, Titan on Television, Man of Independent Spirit’. One of the guests recalled him on the campaign trail ahead of the 1924 general election, when he’d fought for the seat of East Aberdeenshire. A picture was painted of the youthful Old Etonian dressed in knickerbockers, telling the assembled group of hardy farmers and fishermen exactly what needed to be done and how he would go about doing it. ‘Who’s this raw boy who thinks he knows it all?’ the guest had wondered at the time, only to have been won over during the subsequent thirty-plus years of Boothby’s service as local MP.⁴

Sir Compton McKenzie – writer, social commentator and co-founder of the Scottish National Party – came on to confirm what a grand chap Boothby indeed was, while his former neighbour, Noel Coward, commended him for his tireless condemnation of Hitler in the period when the government had instead pursued appeasement. Someone else recalled Boothby receiving the Legion d’honneur and celebrating the next day at Versailles by devouring a huge ice cream cornet. Andrews, meanwhile, knowingly pointed out Boothby’s reputation as someone rather fond of the company of women, before introducing the MP Jennie Lee, who suggested she had been asked to appear as she was the only woman the BBC could find who had never been in love with him. Here was Boothby laid out for the nation – the Establishment figure with a devilish streak of rebellion, a man of integrity and culture who nonetheless couldn’t always resist the finer things in life. Boothby for his part maintained an air of surprised delight, mixed with the usual bonhomie. It was all tremendously good fun.

Boothby was now 63 years old. He had the public adoration, the plaudits, the titles. He had done his bit in public life. His most productive days were surely behind him. So why not head into the sunset? It was a case of both nature and necessity. On the one hand, Boothby was a show-off. Rarely could he resist making himself the centre of attention, whether at a family gathering or on a panel show. He continued to speak with regularity in the House of Lords after his ennoblement in 1958 and found it hard to turn down an invitation for a television or radio appearance. Moreover, he could not afford to. Despite having fingers in numerous entrepreneurial pies, he was no good with money. His lifestyle did not come cheap and he had appearances to keep up. There was a staff to pay, fine wine to buy, entertaining to be done. And his expensive tastes extended to a passion for gambling that ensured he was rarely out of debt to someone or other.

He needed the BBC’s patronage to keep his head above water. His problems were compounded by the fact that the Beeb had recently become rather less willing to employ him as extensively as they once did. Several on-air comments – delivered with Boothby’s characteristic off-the-cuff good humour – had caused problems for the broadcaster, most notably a costly run-in with the newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook. He had taken umbrage at Boothby’s assertion on a 1962 episode of Any Questions? that given the chance, he would pass ‘an Immigration Bill to keep out the Canadians [of whom Beaverbrook was one]’ since they ‘have done nothing but damage to this country’.⁵ Boothby claimed with some justification that he had been speaking with tongue firmly in cheek – he was, in fact, on reasonable terms generally with Beaverbrook – and argued that he would probably never had said anything of the sort if he had not been wined and dined rather too well by the BBC beforehand on the occasion of the programme’s 500th episode.⁶ Nonetheless, the saga rumbled on at great expense and no little embarrassment to the BBC. It was clear that the Corporation would now have to accept legal responsibility for anything said in its live broadcasts, which immediately made Boothby a less appealing guest than he had previously been.

Eamonn Andrews even hinted at the trouble Boothby represented in his introduction to the This Is Your Life episode. Boothby was, he said, ‘not only larger than life, and to the ladies, twice as handsome, he’s a compound of all the qualities that make us here in This Is Your Life quake in our shoes. Unpunctual, unpredictable, and with more than a touch of fire and brimstone. Hold on to your hats …’⁷

To the world at large, then, Boothby was the lovable elder statesman of British politics. Funny and charismatic, he could be wise and avuncular, indiscreet and irreverent, not to mention ferociously iconoclastic, and sometimes all at the same time. It was a heck of a trick to pull off. His political career was at once one in which he could point to a remarkably consistent record of having been on the right side of history, while remaining largely unstained by the sort of climb-downs and compromises that tend to attach to those who hold high office. All this had turned him into that rarest of things – a household name from the House of Lords who was not an ex-Prime Minister. But such a level of fame meant that when the Sunday Mirror came calling with their story about gangsters and peers in 1964, Boothby did not have much of a hiding place. Admittedly, Viscount Montgomery, hero of El-Alamein, briefly considered suing on the basis that he believed the British public would assume the allegations referred to him.⁸ But once Monty was out of the picture, there were few other obvious targets on which the finger of suspicion could alight.

The situation was critical for Boothby. While he might have been able to bat away aspects of the tabloid story that would not stand up to scrutiny, he knew his life could not bear too much close examination. Perhaps if there had been a country pile, a dutiful wife, a couple of grandchildren and a bounding Labrador awaiting him somewhere, he would have exited the scene quietly and without too much fuss. But there was none of that. Instead there was his manservant, Gordon Goodfellow, and his flat – 1 Eaton Square, in the heart of Belgravia – that served as his gateway to the capital’s exotica; to the exclusive gentlemen’s clubs, the high-rollers’ casinos, not to mention the after-hours dives and the nightclubs where, if you searched hard enough, you could find whatever sort of companionship you desired.

Boothby was a man split in two. There was the Boothby who craved attention from a public that generously lavished their affection on him in these, his later years. Then there was the Boothby of the secrets and lies, the man who guarded his private life with a keenness that verged on ferocity. In his 1962 memoirs, My Yesterday, Your Tomorrow, he insisted somewhat preposterously – and presumably to throw any interested parties off the scent – that ‘I have had no private life at all.’⁹ In fact, even though London and a few other of the UK’s metropoles were really starting to swing by 1964, they still had a way to go to catch up with the type of fast living that the nation’s upper classes had been perfecting for centuries. For real dissolution, the Eton-and-Oxford man was always likely to have a head start on the up-and-coming cats of Carnaby Street.

Boothby understood that better than most and so had constructed for himself a precarious house of cards. For all that he gave to the public, he was clear that their access to his inner life must be restricted. In 1975, Elaine Grand suggested to him in a televised interview that it was an illusion that the public knew him. ‘Yes,’ Boothby replied. ‘I don’t think you do know me altogether. Not very well, anyway.’¹⁰ But there had already been a couple of close shaves before the ‘Peer and the Gangster’ headline – unfortunate dealings with the police seized upon by a Fleet Street pack who enthusiastically reported proceedings with a nudge and a wink. And now the Sunday Mirror was taking things several stages further. Unchecked, they would topple his house of cards and he lacked both the time and opportunity to rebuild. The choice was stark: shut down the story or face ruin. And Boothby was nothing if not a survivor.

2

Death of a Story

When the Sunday Mirror story broke, Boothby was not in the country. He was holidaying in Vittel, north-eastern France, with an old friend, Colin Coote, the urbane editor of the Daily Telegraph. Coote had worked wonders in his fourteen years at the helm of the Telegraph, adding not far off 50 per cent to its circulation. But he was a man who knew how to enjoy himself, too. With Boothby, he shared a profound love of good food and fine wine (and, when in England, golf too). Vittel was an ideal destination to unwind, away from the hurly-burly of their London lives.

Nonetheless, the ‘Peer and the Gangster’ headline did not evade them for long. The air mail editions of the British papers arrived cross-Channel over the next few days, and they settled down to explore the Sunday Mirror’s chatter about Mayfair parties, dubious visits to Brighton and ties to clergymen. The Sunday Mirror also alleged that several people aware of the alleged relationship between the peer and the gangster had been subject to blackmail. Moreover, Scotland Yard was set to unleash an all-out offensive against the criminal parties involved.

The pair had great fun trying to guess who the peer in question might be. It was a conversation that entertained them even on the flight home. Boothby arrived back in London on Friday the 17th and promptly got on the phone to Tom Driberg, a fellow MP who had started out as a journalist and had retained his links to Fleet Street. If anyone would know who was the subject of the story, Driberg would. But imagine Boothby’s horror as Driberg told him, ‘Sorry. It’s you.’¹

This was roughly the train of events as Boothby told it. It bore little relationship to the truth, however. The moment he saw that headline, Boothby must have known he was in trouble. Even before he read the contents of the article – a good deal of it admittedly some way off-beam – he could have been in no doubt that he was the peer and Ronnie Kray the mobster in question. The Lords might not have been a cradle of virtue, but he was well aware that there were only a limited number of members actively associating with underworld figures. And those who could be described as household names …?

The Sunday Mirror’s revelations were, unsurprisingly, quick to cause consternation in Downing Street. In the days that followed, Boothby’s name was ever more frequently proffered as the man in question in countless private conversations around Fleet Street and Whitehall. It was clear that here was a story that was not going away. No. 10, moreover, was conscious that the Conservatives were not in a position to easily withstand a scandal such as the one implied.

In power since 1951, the party had in recent times been buffeted by a series of debilitating and embarrassing tales of official wrongdoing. In 1962, it had been John Vassall, a relatively junior civil servant at the Admiralty, who found himself in the eye of the storm. Vassall was just short of his 38th birthday when he was arrested in the September that year, charged with treason after passing secrets to the Kremlin over several years. A rather sad and lonely figure, his story followed a classic Cold War blueprint. In 1952, he had found himself working at the British embassy in Moscow, where he routinely struggled to deal with the complex social interactions of diplomatic life. His sense of isolation was exacerbated by the fact that he was homosexual, too. Moscow was every bit as uninviting to the gay community as post-war England. Nonetheless, Vassall fell in with a Polish colleague who offered to serve as his guide through the Russian capital’s gay demimonde. But it was a classic honeytrap. Vassall drank too much at a party and was photographed in a series of compromising ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue
• 1 The Nation’s Favourite
• 2 Death of a Story
• 3 The Lost Boys
• 4 Shooting Star
• 5 Other Men’s Wives
• 6 Czechmate
• 7 The Other Side of the Tracks
• 8 Recalibration
• 9 A Fearful Stigma
• 10 The Gambler and the Boxer
• 11 Dangerous Liaisons
• 12 Under Surveillance
• 13 Twice Bitten
• 14 Cover-up
• 15 Cross-Party Co-operation
• 16 Thin Ice
• 17 The Tightrope Walker
• 18 Over-Mighty Barons
• 19 Collateral Damage
• 20 Compromised
• 21 Aftermath
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography