A large lady - a huge heart

Anna Harper arrived in my office breathless, having climbed three flights of stairs [the lift, as usual, being out of order]. Her condition was not surprising, as she weighed all of 18 stone: she was never less while I knew her, and told me that she had been up to as much as 22 stone. Her obesity arose, she said, from scoffing copious quantities of cream buns and other junk food to assuage unhappiness during a stressful period of her life. Today’s New Labour universal nannies would have strongly disapproved of her for that. And for many other reasons as well.

Anna, who lived in Brighton, was in London for a meeting of a drugs prevention agency on whose committee she sat, and had come, “guided by the Lord”, to find out what the Albany Trust was up to. I was not immediately enthused, as other members of that committee included a notoriously puritanical – indeed, pharisaical - member of parliament and others who would almost certainly have strongly disapproved of our work. However, Anna’s visit proved to be the prelude to a warm and loving friendship that we both came to value immensely.

Anna, who was a few years older than me, had an innate sympathy with the young, and especially with the young in trouble. She owned a grand Regency house in one of Brighton’s posher squares [on the cliffs above where the Marina is now]. She let out part of the house, and one of the flats was empty so she used it to house young dropouts and drug addicts who had originally been found camping out on the beach by her step-daughter. Anna was a natural listener, and spent hours with her young guests learning about their lives and problems. She was guided in all things by her strong Christian faith, which was of the unorthodox ‘new testament’ variety: she was never afraid to wade into situations where she believed Jesus would have involved himself. She was a practical Samaritan.

Through this initial contact with the world of illegal drug users, Anna became a dedicated campaigner for the humane understanding and treatment of drug abuse. Now and then, almost inevitably, she was conned as a ‘soft touch’ but this did not deter her and she was gleefully proud of the fact that a Brighton magistrate in whose court she had appeared as a witness for one of her ‘tenants’ had described her as “the most dangerous woman in Brighton”!

Anna’s family were – like my own great-grandfather – upmarket hardware merchants and ironmongers, in Baker Street I believe, and she claimed they had originated the concept of garden centres. Her husband, Hughie, was delightful but extremely forgetful because of alcoholism. He was always cheerful, and used to appear every now and then and command everyone to “BE HAPPY!” Anna once telephoned me and wailed that she had just been weeping with her head on the mantelpiece because Hughie had forgotten that they were temporarily staying in London, and after having a drink or three too many with some former business friends had hailed a taxi and told the driver to take him “home”. When the driver enquired where home was, Hughie gave him their Brighton address, so the taxi careered down to the coast and Anna – who had very little money at that time – was called by a frantic Hughie who said he owed a £50 taxi fare and what should he do?

I often used to visit Anna in her lovely house, and these occasions were always interesting and usually involved some unexpected happenings. I once spent a holiday with Anna and Hughie in a Cornish cottage, where she involved herself in a séance with some local mystics [which I didn’t join]. She had a large motor caravan, and from time to time used to tour the country with Hughie, going wherever the Lord led them.

After Hughie’s death, Anna sold the Brighton house and took a post as warden of a Christian retreat centre in Hampshire. I stayed there with her several times, and on one occasion my mother accompanied me. She and Anna got on famously. Although not the most organised of people, Anna was ideal as a wise and comforting ‘listening post’ for distressed and lonely people.

But alas! her physical problems of chronic overweight and diabetes took their toll, and she died suddenly in September 1983 aged only 63. The owner of the retreat house wrote to tell me, saying she was sure that the celestial trumpets were blowing for Anna, who would be receiving a great welcome in Paradise. However that may be, I only know that I still miss her irreplaceable friendship, and in my mind’s ear I can after quarter of a century hear her voice saying, as she answers the telephone, “Oh, how nice to hear you!”

Dear Anna, rest in peace.

Another old friend

This month is the centenary of the birth of Harford Montgomery Hyde, historian, prolific author, Ulster Unionist MP, and champion of homosexual law reform and many other liberal causes. In the last decades of his life he and his wife Robbie were good friends of mine, and I have happy recollections of many hospitable visits to them at their lovely historic homes at Rye and Tenterden.

I reprint the following memoir by kind permission of the author, Jeff Dudgeon. [Published in The Belfast Telegraph with three photographs on 14 August 2007]

The life and campaigns of Montgomery Hyde, author and Unionist MP, born 100 years ago today

by Jeffrey Dudgeon

It will be surprising to many, and perhaps distressing to some, that the MP who led the campaign in the House of Commons to effect the 1957 Wolfenden report on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution was the Ulster Unionist writer and campaigner, Harford Montgomery Hyde. He was to pay a heavy political price for his bravery.

Hyde was the author of nearly fifty books. Although he wrote rapidly he was a thorough and accurate historian. His biographical subjects included Lawrence of Arabia, Roger Casement, Stalin and Edward Carson but it was those works on spying or sexual topics which were most successful, one particularly popular being The Other Love, a history of homosexuality in Britain and Ireland.

The centenary of Hyde’s birth is 14th August while another 2007 anniversary is the quarter-century since Northern Ireland ended imprisonment for gays - fifteen years after England decriminalised.

Hyde’s background was upper class Belfast. He attended a Yorkshire public school. His father, James was a linen merchant and Unionist councillor for Cromac. Although his mother came from a Protestant Home Rule background, all were involved in the 1914 gun running, the 7-year old Harford being a dummy casualty for first aid practice. He attended Queen's, gaining a first class history degree, and then Oxford for law.

Why did Hyde take up such apparently unpopular causes? And how did an apparently conservative province elect him?

Many wondered if he had gay relationships, but he replied that his feelings “were always distinctly heterosexual.” He certainly knew many gay people, particularly at Oxford. There he occupied Oscar Wilde’s rooms, something that concerned his father who feared he might follow in his footsteps. Marrying three times also rather indicates heterosexual preference; one wife would have been sufficient cover.

As to religion, Hyde wrote, “For a time, I admit I was greatly attracted to the Roman church, especially the ritual, so much more appealing to my aesthetic sense than the dull Protestant services. But already at Queen’s I was beginning to have doubts about all religious beliefs.” In the Commons, he always affirmed rather than take the oath. Indeed this lack of belief enabled Hyde to break from many related conformities.

Hyde’s first employment was with the 7th Marquess of Londonderry whose wife Edith was a famous London political hostess. From 1935-9, he was their librarian, researching and writing on the family, with books such as Londonderry House and its pictures, The Rise of Lord Castlereagh, and The Strange Death of Castlereagh who committed suicide in 1822 when Foreign Secretary.

In 1939, he married Dorothy Crofts, a Cheshire-born actress, later a fashion shop proprietor. The Dublin raconteur and Senator, Oliver St John Gogarty proposed the toast at the London wedding. Lt. Col. Hyde, as he became, had a good war, mostly in intelligence but continued writing. He was attached to Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force in 1944, and was later seconded to the Allied Commission for Austria where he ensured the death penalty was abolished.

After the war, he was legal adviser to British Lion Films then run by Sir Alexander Korda, and in 1948 published The Trials of Oscar Wilde, a precursor of three more Wilde books. In 1945 he applied for the South Belfast Unionist candidature and was unfortunate to lose by one vote. In 1950, North Belfast selected him. His maiden speech was on the unenforceability of Northern Ireland maintenance orders in Great Britain, and the consequent problem of border-hopping husbands.

Hyde did involve himself in Northern Ireland affairs at Westminster. In an economy debate in 1957, he managed to break the convention that the province was not discussed and drew attention to Ulster industry’s difficulties including the IRA’s 1956-62 campaign, and the “more than 200 incidents caused by illegal organisations.”

He first raised the question of Roger Casement’s diaries in 1956 when the government declined to depart “from its policy of silence,” and later when it only admitted that certain “confidential documents” of Casement’s existed. In 1959, he was the first researcher to view the diaries when finally released.

In June 1958, Hyde courageously led a campaign to get the Commons to note the Wolfenden report but only managed to say, “This is a most valuable social document” before the Speaker cut him off. In November, when the government conceded a full debate, he made a wide-ranging speech and demanded equality for the homosexual and the prostitute. He quoted a letter from a young man who had been gaoled and after release informed on, losing his new job. He also pointed out “three popular fallacies” exposed by Wolfenden; that “male homosexuality always involves sodomy”; that homosexuals are “necessarily effeminate” and that most relevant court cases “are of practising male homosexuals in private.” The government however ignored the reformers, declared decriminalisation too unpopular, and shelved the report.

As a convinced abolitionist, Hyde was co-sponsor in 1956 of a bill to abolish hanging. It passed in the Commons but was defeated in the Lords. Such liberal views during an IRA campaign were beginning to attract opponents who also made the traditional complaint that he neglected his constituency. The Unionist Party was however broader and more urbane than is often realised. Nonetheless, Dr Ian Paisley, then a member of North Belfast Unionists, recalls proposing a motion to Grand Lodge condemning Hyde for listing King William as a homosexual and working to deselect him.

Challenged in 1959 by Air Marshall Sir George Beamish, an Irish rugby international, Hyde made extensive efforts to be reselected. Addressing his Shankill branch he was questioned for two hours on the death penalty and Wolfenden. Henry Holmes, the Shankill’s Stormont MP defended him saying, “Although he has sponsored one or two unpopular causes I do not believe these are sufficient grounds for discarding him.”

Hyde was noted as a Suez rebel but declared subsequent events proved him right. Backed by favourable editorials in The Belfast Telegraph and the London press, he pleaded “guilty to being the best known of the Ulster MPs.” He went to the January selection meeting with an endorsement letter from Lady Carson (which read suspiciously as if he had written it himself) and won by 77 votes to 72, a result “greeted with prolonged applause”.

Hyde’s enemies however fought on. Although ratification was normally a formality, he unwisely chose not to return from a parliamentary tour of the West Indies “to promote trade and business contacts,” and lost by 171 to 152 votes. His second wife Mary wrote to him in Jamaica: “So that’s that. I’m sorry darling. Perhaps it’s for the best. No more politics. No more Belfast politics. Oh bliss.” The one antagonistic letter he received (from Worthing), stated “Ulster has no time for an advocate for homosexuality” accusing him of “gallivanting in the sunshine.” Unionism’s failure since to send a consistently liberal voice to Westminster remains a dangerous deficiency doing it considerable damage, not least with Labour governments.

Hyde managed to keep his first divorce out of the Belfast newspapers, only telling his constituency association on his remarriage. This apparently passed without comment, as “a fait accompli.” That 1952 dissolution had been alimony-free since Dorothy had taken up with Wilfred “Biffy” Dunderdale of MI6, a key component in Ian Fleming’s character, James Bond. However Hyde was beset by money problems after his 1966 divorce from Mary Fischer. He married lastly his secretary Rosalind Roberts (Robbie). She had no connection with Northern Ireland but apparently became more outspoken in her Unionist views than Hyde.

After leaving parliament in October 1959, he became Professor of History and Politics at the University of the Punjab in Pakistan for two years, taking the opportunity to research Ulstermen who had worked in India.

Leo Abse, a Welsh (and Jewish) Labour MP, was finally successful in effecting homosexual law reform in July 1967. Hyde later noted dryly, “As usual the Northern Ireland Members, including my successor, went into the No Lobby,” voting against even English homosexuals being emancipated.

Although never ceasing to be a Unionist, Hyde blamed Lord Brookeborough for fossilising Northern Ireland in the 1950s. He supported the Anglo-Irish Agreement despite his concern over the Republic’s claim to jurisdiction not being dropped. None the less, when ambition required it, he had joined both the Orange Order and the Freemasons, saying the one was an essential prerequisite to becoming a Unionist MP and the other an undoubted assistance.

Hyde received some public recognition in 1984 when awarded an honorary degree by Queen’s. On frequent visits to Northern Ireland in later years, Hyde stayed with his sister Diana and occasionally at Mount Stewart. He worked assiduously up to his death on 10 August 1989 survived by his third wife Robbie. He chose a non-religious cremation. “Harford was not a believer,” explained Tim Brinton MP, at the funeral, although, as he confusingly added, “He was an Ulster Protestant.” Northern Ireland, the gay community, and the world generally owe a lot to this determined and courageous Ulsterman. It is important that his considerable contribution be remembered.

Jeffrey Dudgeon was the successful plaintiff in a case against the UK at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg which resulted in the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Northern Ireland. He is the author of Roger Casement: The Black Diaries.

A great man

I have known some distinguished people in my life. One who stands head and shoulders above the rest as a truly great man was the first Lord Brabazon of Tara [1884-1964]. I met him only once, in the late 1950s, but my vivid impression of this man’s larger-than-life personality, and deep humanity, has never left me. [A Kodachrome colour photograph of John Theodore Cuthbert Moore-Brabazon (1884-1964), taken by JCA Redhead (1886-1954) during World War Two is reproduced above.]

I was at that time very involved in campaigning for reform of the cruel and unjust laws which criminalised all male homosexual behaviour. Lord Brabazon, I knew, was sympathetic, because he had made a moving speech in the House of Lords in favour of reform. Also, as a pioneer of motoring – as of aviation and many other innovations and sports – he had been a friend of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu’s father, and it was the prosecution of Lord Montagu for homosexual offences which had resulted in calls for reform which led to the appointment of the Wolfenden Committee. Their report formed the basis of our campaign.

In his House of Lords speech Lord Brabazon had courageously – even daringly – alluded to the ‘glamour of love’ which comes over two people and makes all things seem natural and normal. “And what we have to get into our heads, although it is difficult, is that that glamour of love is just as much present between two homosexuals as it is between a man and a woman. Perhaps that is a terrible thing, but it exists and we cannot get away from it. We are all born not all the same.”

To say this to his fellow-peers in 1957 struck me as incredibly brave and honest. It spurred me on to wish to meet him. A business colleague of my Father’s was a golfing friend of Lord Brabazon’s so, greatly daring, I asked for an introduction. Lord Brabazon invited me to call at his offices in Berkeley Square, where I told him of the work I was doing and asked for his support. He promised to do what he could to stimulate parliamentary action, and after my visit wrote to me:

“Thank you very much for coming to see me and for giving me the opportunity of having such an interesting talk with you.

“I have already tried to galvanize Frank Pakenham [later Lord Longford] into action and I ought to get hopping next week.

“Please remember that you will always be welcome here and that I can do all I can to help over this difficult question.”

Alas, I never saw him again but our only meeting is indelibly etched in my memory.

Subsequent to my visit, Lord Brabazon and Lord Pakenham saw the Lord Chancellor, Lord Kilmuir [formerly Sir David Maxwell Fyfe], an implacable opponent of reform, who held out little hope of constructive government action but did take on board some of out concerns about the operation of the existing law. Lord Brabazon kindly wrote me a detailed confidential account of this interview, concluding: ”although it is not very exciting, it does mean that the debate that took place is not just dead and buried.”

In my reply I said: “I do feel it is deplorable that there is still such a huge gap between the respective medical and legal ivory towers and a more everyday common-sense approach to the human aspects of these problems…..Thank you so much for all you have done and are doing.”

The following year, I wrote to Lord Brabazon again sending him examples of the ongoingly haphazard administration of the law and the inconsistency of sentencing policies being applied in different courts. He responded that “the examples in your letter made me boil with fury” and said he would again ask Lord Pakenham to go with him to the Lord Chancellor to urge at least administrative reforms. As I commented in Quest for Justice, “The vision of ‘Brab’ boiling with fury filled me with awe!” I still have the originals of his letters, with his personal signature, as cherished items in my files.

So who was this man, remarkable in his generation for compassionate wisdom? He tells his own story with inimitable verve in his autobiography The Brabazon Story [1956], penned by himself without any ‘ghosting’, and including some fascinating photographs. Coming from a distinguished Anglo-Irish family, he had the good fortune to be not only an outstanding sportsman but to have participated in and known personally the pioneers of the three great inventions that transformed the life of the twentieth century – the automobile, the aeroplane, and electricity. Even as a schoolboy at Harrow he was fascinated by that then rara avis the motor car, and at Cambridge, where he studied engineering, he became great friends with, and acted as mechanic for, the pioneer motorist the Hon. C.S. [‘Charlie’] Rolls, the co-founder, with Henry Royce, of the world-famous Rolls-Royce company. Motor racing became the great ambition of Brab’s life and with Rolls he drove in many of the famous pre-1914 races, winning the Circuit des Ardennes in 1907.

They both were also keenly interested and involved in early aeronautics – first ballooning, and then the development of aeroplanes. With hindsight, Lord Brabazon wondered – even in the 1950s! – whether it would have been better for humanity if flying had never been discovered, because technology had so outstripped political wisdom. But in those optimistic pre-1914 days the early pioneers believed that they were promoting something for the world’s good. Brab was among the earliest aviators, holding the Royal Aero Club’s first British pilot’s certificate [Rolls obtained the second]. He made the first flight by an Englishman in 1909, winning the Daily Mail £1,000 prize for the first all-English machine that could fly a mile. Very sadly, C.S. Rolls, having become a national hero by successfully completing the first cross-Channel non-stop return flight in June 1910, was killed the following month in an air crash at Bournemouth. He was only 33.

In the 1914-18 war Brabazon made an important contribution to aerial photography, and in the post-war years was closely associated with Lord Trenchard in developing the Royal Air Force as an independent branch of the armed forces. He was an MP for many years, being Winston Churchill's Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Air Ministry in the early 1920s, and holding office during the second world war as Minister of Transport and later of Aircraft Production. He was a keen golfer and winter sportsman, doing [and sometimes winning] the Cresta Run frequently into his seventies. He was also an enthusiastic yachtsman. He relates his experiences and memories of all his sporting, political, and business activities and friendships with great gusto, dispensing some sage advice along the way. In his ‘Afterword’ he warns against having a one-track mind:

“Take to your heart as many subjects as you can, especially if they are original and new...The fun of being in at the beginning of any new development will remain with you all your life, however big and specialised the subject may become…As you go through life, many disappointments will come your way. Have as many interests and hobbies as you can gather together. Then the whole castle of life will not come tumbling down when something goes wrong; only an outhouse falls.”

Words of wisdom from a remarkable man.

A long friendship

Antony Grey writes:

I heard today of the death of one of my oldest friends. Henri Methorst was 98. I and my partner first met him in the early 1960s when we frequently visited Amsterdam, which in those days was a beacon of freedom for homosexuals from all over the world. Apart from ‘gay tourism’, Amsterdam was then an extremely pleasant city – much more so than is the case today, from what I can gather. The Dutch are a friendly and hospitable people, and there were no visible ethnic or religious tensions: the post-WW2 immigrants were almost entirely from the Dutch East Indies, and blended easily into the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city.

I did not go to Amsterdam merely for pleasure. I was then already actively engaged in the campaign to reform the cruel and primitive British laws penalising all male homosexual behaviour, and there was much to be learned from the Dutch about attitudes and tactics. During the war, Holland – like all countries occupied by the Germans – had the equally backward German penal code foisted on it by the Nazis, and homosexuality was driven underground. But even before the war ended a small group of courageous Dutchmen were planning a postwar campaign for what would later be known as gay liberation. One was a leading radio and television actor, Niek Engelschman, who [under the name of Bob Angelo] took the initiative in bringing together a nucleus of like-minded people in a discreet literary reading circle which after the war emerged as the COC [‘Cultural and Recreational Centre’] – still after 40 years Holland’s leading gay rights organisation. One of Bob’s foremost helpers was Benno Premsela, an architect and member of one of Amsterdam’s leading business families. Another was Henri Methorst.

When we first visited Amsterdam we naturally paid an early call on the COC, where we received a warm welcome from Bob, Benno, and Henri who were all extremely interested in and supportive of our work in England. They had proceeded, wisely and correctly, on the principle that gay freedom was a human rights issue, and that if society was ridding itself of Nazi repression, homosexuals should claim a share of the action. Between the end of the war in 1945 and the early 1960s they had achieved a remarkable degree of success. The COC had clubhouses in several Dutch towns, and had achieved a measure or royal patronage: Queen Juliana’s portrait hung prominently in the COC Amsterdam clubhouse, a spacious place with an excellent bar and restaurant and – amazingly to British eyes – a dance floor where male couples partnered each other.

Because of his professional life, Henri Methorst was especially interested in the international aspects, and held office in the international gay organisation established under the COC’s auspices. Henri was a top-level international conference interpreter – a brilliant linguist speaking several languages who frequently flew around the world providing simultaneous translation services to governmental and other important events. He ran his own consultancy in partnership with his wife, who remained a close friend and colleague after he ‘came out’ as gay and began leading a separate personal life.

When we met Henri he was in his early ‘50s: affable, alert, interested in a wide range of topics, and with a well-stored and penetrating mind. Conversation with him kept one on one’s toes. He was also very kind. Coming from a well-to-do family, he had an extremely pleasant apartment in a nineteenth-century house near Amsterdam’s Vondelpark, and he generously lent this to us on two or three occasions when he and his partner went south for their Mediterranean summer holiday. This was most welcome, enabling us to relax more than was possible in hotels, and allowing us to take our car with us a couple of times so that we were able to see a good deal of the Netherlands.

It is more than twenty years since I last saw Henri, but he had the old-fashioned concept of friendship as a permanent link that was more than just a matter of “out of sight out of mind”, and we continued corresponding once or twice a year until his death. In his later years he settled happily into a sheltered home for retired artists near to Amsterdam, from whence he wrote in great contentment of his busy mental life, his supportive family and friends, and his continued enjoyment of playing chamber music well into his nineties [he was a fine musician]. Although sad that yet another old friend has ‘dropped off the tree of life’, I can scarcely be surprised at such a great age, and I think Henri was extremely fortunate to have lived so long and so well. The news of his passing has brought back many pleasant and interesting memories.