Stonehouse

This is the definitive biography of John Stonehouse, Labour cabinet minister and Privy counsellor, spy for the Czech State Security (StB), and convicted fraudster. Stonehouse rose to Privy Counsellor and Cabinet Minister in Harold Wilson Labour government in the late 1960s, but then fell dramatically, committing fraud and betraying his wife and family through an affair with his secretary, Sheila Buckley, before faking his own death off a Miami beach in 1974. He was soon apprehended, though, in Australia, where he was initially thought by the police to be Lord Lucan, that other notable fugitive from justice of the time. As a British MP he was able to stay in Australia without a valid passport and he could not be extradited. When Stonehouse eventually returned to the UK, he continued, much to the dismay of Wilson, to work as an MP for a full year before he faced trial at the Old Bailey for fraud in 1976. Stonehouse sacked his legal team and conducted his own defence - with calamitous results. He was subsequently imprisoned. Like some other ambitious politicians, Stonehouse had used his position to enhance his business interests and enrich himself. One of his business ventures, a bank, was set up to support the struggling and persecuted Bengalis of East Pakistan to help fund the breakaway nation of Bangladesh. But when he overstretched himself financially, by using other companies he had set up legitimately, to provide highly questionable and in some circumstances illegal funding to sure up the ailing bank he found himself on a descent to ruin and disgrace. At the same time there were a series of celebrated British spy trials brought about by the defection of the StB spy, Josef Frolik, who had also named Stonehouse as a spy, but without evidence the authorities did not pursue Stonehouse. Hayes has unearthed secret reports in the archives in Prague written by Stonehouse's former spymasters which reveal the full extent of his collaboration with the StB. Approached by agents of the Czech State Security (StB) in the late 1950's and early 60's, he became a spy for cash and to obtain the assistance of the StB in furthering his political ambitions. He has also gleaned much from interviewing family members and the lawyers conducting the trial as well as the trial documents and Government papers held in the National Archives and the Australian National Archives. By 1974, with his business and personal life fast spiralling out of control, Stonehouse's solution was to fake his own death. Using an elaborate plan of fake identities, he laundered large sums of money from his businesses enterprises to fund a new life. Staging an elaborate disappearance he was believed drowned off the coast of Miami. Informed by his own and his family's close ties to Stonehouse, Julian Hayes is uniquely well placed to have written the life story of this charismatic, but deeply flawed politician, reminiscent in many ways of the earlier Profumo Scandal of 1962. As a child, Julian met Stonehouse on many occasions. His father, Michael, as well as being Stonehouse's nephew and very close to his uncle, was also his personal lawyer. As one of Stonehouse's many relatives, friends and associates unwittingly drawn into his complex web of lies and betrayals, Michael Hayes remained devastated by his uncle's treacherous behaviour for the rest of his life.