Broker is broken

Llew Gardner

Maundy Gregory Purveyor of Honours Tom Cullen (The Bodley Head £3.00).

To my knowledge I have only met two outand-out rogues and have ever after remained amazed that either ever succeeded in fooling anyone for a minute. Both seemed to have come direct from Rent-a-Villain. Yet both were conners and fool people they most certainly did. The first was an elderly cleric who wore his shabby and benign corruption ac openly as his dog-collar, but convinced an Old Bailey jury in a famous 'fifties criminal trial that the police case was suspect. The Reverend, to no one's great surprise, was later convicted of perjury but had served his purpose. The other was a rather grander rogue who succeeded in destroying the promising career of a young Minister in Mr Attlee's post-war Government. Again the question arose: how on earth did anyone meeting Sidney Stanley ever imagine that he was other than what he so plainly was — a self-seeking hustler whose power fantasies should have fooled no one but himself?

When I met Stanley the events that had brought him notoriety and poor John Belcher to ruin were long in the past. Yet he still played Walter Mitty. The man who knew everyone. "Hello Martin," he said arm outstretched in greeting on the beach at Tel Aviv, "it is good to see you again." I had never met him before and there appeared little point in saying that my name wasn't Martin. A rogue, and how anyone could have thought otherwise remains a mystery. The same surely goes for J. Maundy Gregory, the clergyman's son who made a good living as honours broker in Lloyd George's last years as Prime Minister. The Welsh Wizard was busy filling his political coffers with as much loot as he could get and was none too fussy where it came from. Gregory, like Stanley in later years, knew almost everyone and anyone he didn't know he would claim that he did. Kings and politicians dined at his table and exchanged confidences. Yet even from the description provided by Mr Cullen's limping prose it seems extraordinary that anyone should have failed to recognise Gregory for the shady character he certainly was.

The detective who pursued Gregory and finally brought him to trial had no illusions. Mr Cullen quotes ex-Supt Arthur Askew: "I have met many villains in my lifetime but none whom I distrusted more than Maundy Gregory. There was an air of the bogus about him. He was too well-dressed, used too much oil on his hair, wore too many rings — one, a green scarab ring, had belonged to Oscar Wilde, or so he said. I said to myself, 'Hello, here's a crook, if ever I saw one'." The superintendent's method of deduction may be open to doubt. After all, to brand as crooks all those who wore too much hair oil would have been to condemn half the heroes of the Battle of Britain.

It may be, of course, that many of those who did business with Gregory, and whose offspring sit in the House of Lords today delivering occasional judgements on the declining moral life of the nation, knew full well that he was a crook and didn't care. So long as he delivered the goods they were happy. The trouble was that Gregory went on taking money when he could no longer deliver.

For a time, of course, he most certainly could deliver. Lloyd George had established a tariff for the sale of honours and Gregory, the honours salesman, sniffed out the fattest cheque books among those who sought the

prestige of a title. He had been introduced to the Coalition Chief Whip for this purpose by Lord Murray of Elibank, who had recovered sufficiently from his own involvement in the

Marconi scandal to once again have the ear of the Prime Minister.

A Knighthood, Gregory could explain, was a comparatively cheap affair. For a mere £10,000 the self-made man with a socially

ambitious wife could become a Sir and his woman a Lady. Baronetcies, which could be handed down, were priced at £40,000. Mil

Cullen doesn't quote the going price of a seat in the Lords but says "quite a few of the seventy-three baronies Lloyd George created are suspect, as are some of the Lloyd George viscountcies."

What kind of people paid for the peerages? The journal, The Banker, declared in 1927:

"Many are gross illiterate profiteers, doubtful in their reputations, vulgar in their lives, who: to the shame of honour and decency, were shovelled into the House of Lords, created baronets and knights, merely upon the strength of the money they had obtained in preying upon England in the most awful crises of her affairs."

It couldn't last and it didn't. In 1922 Gregory approached Sir Joseph Robinson, 3

pioneer of the South African gold rush, with the offer of a barony, a seat in the Lords to be the ermine of his life. Sir Joseph bit and duly

paid over 00,000 having knocked Gregory

down from 00,000. The barony appeared lp the Birthday Honours and cited Sir Josephs entitlement as "National and Imperial Ser

vices." But Sir Joseph was a crook with a conviction for fraud to his discredit. GregorY,

and therefore Lloyd George, had gone too far.

The political storm broke. Sir Joseph was persuaded to decline his title (although when the matter was first raised he thought he vvas

about to be screwed for more money) and Lloyd George's decline became inevitable. As

a sidelight on Gregory's methods Mr Cullen

reports that on being called to the Chief Whip's Office to account for Sir Joseph's

money (not unreasonably the South African, was asking for a refund) Gregory replied: "Ot course I know what has become of it. I have spent it."

Even after the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act of 1925 had put an effective stoP to the honours racket, Gregory went on, making money from those he could still 'con

into believing his influence had not waned. And he diversified in the manner of a good businessman, into the sale of Papal Honours. After all, Count of the Holy Roman Empire has a better ring to it than, say, Lord Brass

Turnings of Muckcaster. Gregory also became a night-club owner 'who was not above recorking his wine, an anti-Bolshevik and an anti-Semite and, Cullen suggests, a blackmailer.

Superintendent Askew got his man in the end. In 1933 Gregory was convicted under the Honours Act. His plea of guilty and his silence about his past activities and associations being part of a deal struck with the establishment. He even obtained a 'pension' of £2,000 a year paid by a group of noble lords and knights who felt the money well spent so long as Gregory kept his mouth shut about their own rise to honours. Agreed exile followed and he died in France in 1941.

That he was a rogue is without doubt. That he was quite the rogue Mr Cullen suggests is open to question. His book makes a somewhat fevered effort to convict Gregory of the murder of his friend, the former actress Edith Rosse who died somewhat conveniently leaving Gregory £18,000 when he most needed it. Superintendent Askew remains convinced that Gregory murdered Mrs Rosse. But then he would. Never trust a man with too much oil on his hair. And some of our present politicians must wish that today's rogues would oblige with so conspicuous an identification of their calling.

Llew Gardner is the presenter of the Thames Television series People and Politics.