DOUBLE-BARRELLED TRAITORS OF 1942

Andrew Roberts opens the files

on the Nazi Fifth Column in south-east England

ONE OF THE last great enigmas of the second world war has been unwrapped this month with the release in the Public Records Office of the files on the Nazi Fifth Column in Britain. Now that the Ministry of Home Security's top secret Information has been made public under the 50-Year Rule we can finally tell the extent of the danger Britain faced in her darkest hour from people who the authori- ties feared would aid the Germans should Britain be invaded.

, Although the list — of 82 names — includes the usual combination of thugs, dotty grannies and perverse loners who make up most extremist organisations, it also has a greater than expected number who come from the landed gently, a class Often characterised as the backbone of England.

Dated March 1942, the 'Suspect List Region III' was compiled by the South- Eastern Regional Commander in Tun- bridge Wells in 1940 and kept up to date throughout the war. Had the invasion alert been signalled to police stations, armed Special Branch officers would arrest and detain the 82 potential traitors. Although I.n 1943 Churchill called this policy of Internment without trial 'in the highest degree odious', the dangers these Nazi sympathisers posed overrode any legal niceties about habeas corpus. In May 1940 over 1,000 members of the British Union of Fascists had already been interned under Regulation 18B (1A). Yet for various reasons these other 82 either escaped that fate or had since been released. Reading the files kept on them, full of facts gleaned from detailed surveil- lance and the interception of their mail, it IS hard to understand why any of them were allowed to remain at large. Here is Major Basil V. de Lanche Mac- Dona of Brighton who wrote to congratu- late Hitler on invading the Rhineland and Was. a friend of the 'anti-War, pro-German, a„nt.1-Communist and anti-American' Brigadier Conway-Poole. He took out an advertisement in the Times a month before War broke out accusing Churchill of plot- ting t. This week I spoke to his widow, now 91 and living in Putney. She told me that a large number of her husband's ex- army friends on the south coast supported his militant anti-war stance. 'He had fought at Ypres under his friend General Fuller and never wanted another war. There is nothing sinister about it. It is the first time I've heard they would have arrested him. It is such a surprise to me.'

Major-General J.F.C. Fuller was consid- ered by MI5 'an obvious leader (in the absence of Mosley) of the fascist element in this country. We think he may covet a position not dissimilar to that of Marshal Petain.' In 1942 Fuller had called for 'a coup d'etat by Mosley'.

Donald Plunkett, a former partner in the law firm Plunkett and Leader, was the solicitor to the German Embassy who had fallen in love with Nazism when running his firm's Berlin office in the Thirties. There were a number of distinguished Great War veterans on the list. Major James Hamilton Davidson-Houston, a for- mer King's Foreign Service Messenger, had written to Julius Streicher before the war. When the police raided his house they found a eulogistic poem by Goebbels to him. He advised his neighbours that should German parachutists land the best response was to give the Nazi salute and say 'Heil' to them. The authorities also thought it significant that 'his daughter is a great friend of the Mitford family'.

Captain Guy Bigge-Wither and his wife Dolly also appear in the file, as do a sur- prising number of people with double-bar- relled names. The home of Horace Skipton-Kennedy of Lancing contained a plywood stencil of a circle and flash for use in fascist wall-graffiti. According to his file, 'he told two antique dealers that he would be willing to help German parachutists landing in this country'. Captain Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers was a West Country landowner and ardent fascist known to the authorities since 1930. In the 1937 Nurem- berg rally, he expressed his admiration for the Nazi system of government and con- tempt for the British. He was interned in 1940 but released two years later.

A surprisingly large number of the 82 were nurserymen or market gardeners. Could it have been a weakness for the Teu- tonic forest myths? Few were more zealous than Harry Denbigh of Churt, Surrey, who, according to a local shopkeeper/informer, 'made a special point of celebrating Hitler's birthday and other outstanding dates of Nazi history'. Even during the blitz and Battle of Britain he and his daughter Mar- garet, who wore a swastika emblem, made no secret of their affiliations. Eventually the local people of Churt smashed his greenhouses.

There are almost as many women on the list as men, foremost amongst them the first wife of William Joyce. Lady Haw-Haw was alleged to 'have stronger pro-Nazi views than her husband. Her attitude is said to be vitriolic.' The 82 were of all ages, from Bevis Bullen of Worthing aged 20 to septuagenarian veterans of the Boer war.

'Do you mind? This conversation is private.' One was an agent for a beret-selling com- pany, another, who rejoiced in the name Eric Shufflebottom, was a bank manager in Horsham, while William Horsfield man- aged theatres. Many, like Swiss-born Henry Mowbray-Hafner, were watched by MI6 when abroad, and in several files it is noted that the suspects attended pre-war Nazi Party Day rallies when visiting Ger- many.

A few attempted to hide their affilia- tions, but most were fairly open about them to begin with. Only one couple, Mr and Mrs Erich Kralert, actually wrote to the authorities saying they had come to the Conclusion that they were fascists and therefore desired to be interned.

Although the Denbighs worked for Gen- eral Fuller, who knew Pitt-Rivers, who was friendly with the interned BUF leader Captain Robert Gordon-Canning, who had aMilitary Cross like Captain Joseph Thomas, generally the potential Fifth Col- umn was a disparate group. It could not nave posed any threat in the event of inva- s!°n, for all of Harry Denbigh's talk of get- ting 'a small gang together to protect Ourselves in the event of anything happen- ing'. Even if they had escaped arrest it is unlikely that characters as eccentric as ,Pitt-Rivers, who, according to his file, was loquacious, slurs his Rs, flicks his bushy eyebrows when excited, war wound left thigh, walks with two sticks, usually wears

Pe', would have survived long under Cover.

Chie group MI5 watched very closely which did seem to act together centred on P. 1114 Farrer, a former intelligence officer 1,11 the Great War. It consisted of Professor aencourt, General Fuller, George Drum- mond, the South African millionaire Sir trederick Hamilton, Prince Henry of Pless and Captain Archibald Maule Ramsay MP (the last two of whom were interned). This shadowy group which existed on the fringe the establishment was also connected With an anti-Semitic organisation Farrer had set up with a Nazi journalist called Thorst, correspondent of the Volkischer Seobachter. A former private secretary to tbile Lord President of the Council and rrory Seal in the 1920s, Farrer was a friend °h! Mosley's and 'is alleged to have said at ,Is dub [the Carlton] that it would be a uairined good thing if Hitler won the war and England lost'.

These files, of course, include only those People who came to the notice of the

llee or intelligence services, usually LlIrough something they had publicly said raj done. For example, Norman Piggott, of je.nglefield Green in Surrey, told a police- !tan in October 1941, 'Your time's pretty '41ort now. When Hitler has finished with b ussia he'll soon put you where you ,e1Ong, and the sooner the better.' For all wC know, there may well have been scores will°re Nazi sympathisers too intelligent to

ar swastikas or taunt policemen. And no es could be kept on them.