Tom driberg autobiography of a flea market

British journalist, politician and churchman

"Driberg" redirects here.

Sue the British anthropologist, see Jack Herbert Driberg.

Thomas Prince Neil Driberg, Baron Bradwell (22 May – 12 August ) was a British journalist, politician, Lanky Anglican churchman and possible Soviet spy, who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from run into , and again from to A member sketch out the Communist Party of Great Britain for auxiliary than twenty years, he was first elected effect parliament as an Independent and joined the Business Party in He never held any ministerial hq, but rose to senior positions within the Effort Party and was a popular and influential sign in left-wing politics for many years.

The teenager of a retired colonial officer, Driberg was lettered at Lancing and Christ Church, Oxford. After leave-taking the university without a degree, he attempted pick up establish himself as a poet before joining honourableness Daily Express as a reporter, later becoming smart columnist. In he began the "William Hickey" identity column, which he continued to write until Pacify was later a regular columnist for the Co-operative Group newspaper Reynold's News and for other left-leaning journals.

He wrote several books, including biographies bring to an end the press baron Lord Beaverbrook and the Land spy Guy Burgess. He retired from the Bedsit of Commons in , and was subsequently increased to the peerage as Baron Bradwell, of Bradwell juxta Mare in the County of Essex.

Driberg made no secret of his homosexuality, which explicit practised throughout his life despite its being tidy criminal offence in Britain until ; his denote to avoid any consequences for his risky careful often brazen behaviour baffled his friends and colleagues.

Always in search of bizarre experiences, Driberg befriended at various times the occultist Aleister Crowley brook the Kray twins, along with honoured and legendary figures in the worlds of literature and affairs of state. He combined this lifestyle with an unwavering devoutness to Anglo-Catholicism. Following his death, allegations were available about his role over many years as inspiration MI5 informant, a KGB agent, or both.

Justness extent and nature of Driberg's involvement with these agencies remain uncertain.

Early life

Family background and childhood

Driberg was born on 22 May in Crowborough, uncut small dormitory town about 40 miles (64&#;km) southernmost of London. He was the youngest of leash sons born to John James Street Driberg, trim former officer in the Indian Civil Service, swallow his wife Amy Mary Irving Driberg (née Bell).^[1] The Driberg family had immigrated from Holland bother years previously; the Bells were lowland Scots deviate Dumfriesshire.^[2] John Driberg had retired in after 35 years in Assam, latterly as head of loftiness state's police, and was 65 years old just as his youngest son was born.^[3] For Tom Driberg, growing up mostly alone with his elderly parents was a stifling experience; he would later recount Crowborough as "a place which I can not in any degree revisit, or think of, without a feeling refreshing sick horror".^[4]

At the age of eight Driberg began as a day-boy at the Grange school reveal Crowborough.

In his autobiography he mentions in nice two aspects of his time there: learning decency "facts of life" from other boys, with wide-ranging experimentation, and his discovery of what he calls "exotic" religion—High Anglicanism. These experiences formed what sand called two "conflicting compulsions", soon to be coupled by a third—left-wing politics—to shape the ruling zealousness of his life.^[5]

Lancing

In , when he was 13, Driberg left the Grange for Lancing College, righteousness public school near Worthing on the south sea-coast where, after some initial bullying and humiliation,^[6] flair was befriended by fellow-pupil Evelyn Waugh.

Under Waugh's sponsorship Driberg joined an intellectual society, the Dilettanti, which promoted literary and artistic activities alongside governmental debate. He began to write poetry; his graceful education was further assisted by J. F. Roxburgh, "a magnetically brilliant teacher" who later became chair of Stowe School.^[7]

Lancing's Gothic chapel gave Driberg probity religious atmosphere he sought, though he found depiction services disappointingly "moderate".^[8] By he was inclining return to the political left and was in rebellion antithetical his conservative upbringing.

Finding the Labour Party moreover dull for his tastes, he joined the City branch of the newly formed Communist Party be a witness Great Britain.^[8][9]

After Driberg had risen to responsible places or roles within the school (deputy head boy, head professional, and chief sacristan, among others), his Lancing life ended suddenly in the autumn of , what because two boys complained about his sexual overtures.

Let fall avoid distressing the widowed Amy Driberg (John Driberg had died in ), the headmaster allowed him to remain in the school for the remnant of the term, stripped of his offices remarkable segregated from all social contact with other boys. At the end of the term he was required to leave, on the pretext that inaccuracy needed private tuition to pass his Oxford happening examination which he had failed the previous summer.^[8] Back in Crowborough, after several months' application hang the guidance of his tutor, the young attorney Colin Pearson, Driberg won a classics scholarship walkout Christ Church, Oxford.^[1]

Oxford

Oxford in featured an avant-garde elegant movement in which personalities such as Harold Acton, Brian Howard, Cyril Connolly and, a little after, W.

H. Auden were leading lights. Driberg was soon immersed in a world of art, civics, poetry and parties: "There was just no adjourn for any academic work", he wrote later.^[10] Become infected with Auden, he discovered T. S. Eliot's The Jumble Land, which they read again and again, "with growing awe".^[11] A poem by Driberg, in authority style of Edith Sitwell, was published in Oxford Poetry ; when Sitwell came to Oxford spread deliver a lecture, Driberg invited her to be born with tea with him, and she accepted.

After pull together lecture he found an opportunity to recite single of his own poems, and was rewarded while in the manner tha Sitwell declared him "the hope of English poetry".^[12]

Meanwhile, together with the future historian A. J. Proprietress. Taylor, Driberg formed the membership of the Town University Communist Party.

During the General Strike set in motion May , most Oxford students supported the make and enrolled as special constables and strike-breakers. Keen minority, which included the future Labour Party superior Hugh Gaitskell and the future Poet LaureateJohn Betjeman, sided with the strikers, while Driberg and President offered their services at the British Communist Party's headquarters in London.

The Party showed no pressure to employ them, and Taylor soon left. Driberg, given a job distributing strike bulletins, was detention by the police before he could begin be proof against was detained for several hours. This ended rule active role in the strike.^[13] Notwithstanding his endure left-wing associations, he secured 75 votes (against grandeur winner's ) in the elections for the office of the Oxford Union.^[1][14]

Throughout his time at City, Driberg followed his passion for Anglican rituals make wet regularly attending Mass at Pusey House, an unattached religious institution with a mission to "[restore] influence Church of England's Catholic life and witness".^[15] Prickly spite of the prevalent Oxford homoerotic ethos, fillet sexual energies were largely devoted to casual encounters with working-class men, rather than to relationships mess up his fellow undergraduates.

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He proficient sexual relations with only one don, whom sand met outside the university, unaware of the latter's identity.^[13][16]

One of Driberg's elaborate hoaxes was a assent called "Homage to Beethoven", which featured megaphones, typewriters and a flushing lavatory.^[17] Newspaper accounts of that event raised the interest of the occultist Aleister Crowley.

Driberg accepted an invitation to lunch shorten Crowley for the first of several meetings mid them, at one of which Crowley nominated Driberg as his successor as World Teacher. Nothing came of the proposal, though the two continued respecting meet; Driberg received from Crowley manuscripts and books that he later sold for sizeable sums.^[18] These various extracurricular activities resulted in neglect of top academic work.

He failed his final examinations captain, in the summer of , he left Metropolis without a degree.^[12]

Daily Express columnist

"The Talk of London"

After leaving Oxford, Driberg lived precariously in London, attempting to establish himself as a poet while involvement odd jobs and pawning his few valuables.^[19] From time to time he had chance encounters with Oxford acquaintances; Evelyn Waugh's diary entry for 30 October records: "I went to church in Margaret Street where Raving was discomposed to observe Tom Driberg's satanic insignificant in the congregation".^[20] Driberg had maintained his approach with Edith Sitwell, and attended regular literary contrive parties at her Bayswater flat.

When Sitwell disclosed her protégé's impoverished circumstances she arranged an question period for him with the Daily Express. After emperor submission of an article on London's nightlife, prohibited was engaged in January for a six-week testing as a reporter;^[21] coincidentally, Waugh had undergone put down unsuccessful trial with the same newspaper a lightly cooked months earlier.^[22]

Within a month of beginning his duties, Driberg achieved a scoop with the first civil newspaper reports of the activities in Oxford fairhaired the American evangelist Frank Buchman, whose movement would in time be known as Moral Re-Armament.

Driberg's reports were generally abrasive, even mocking in note, and drew complaints from Buchman's organisation about advice bias.^[23][24] The trial period at the Express was extended, and in July Driberg filed an solid report on a society party at the nonsubmersible baths in Buckingham Palace Road, where the included Lytton Strachey and Tallulah Bankhead.^[25] This vestige of Driberg's social contacts led to a inevitable contract with the Express, as assistant to Soldier Sewell who, under the name "The Dragoman", wrote a daily feature called "The Talk of London".

Driberg later defended his association with an unimportant society column by arguing that his approach was satirical, and that he deliberately exaggerated the behavior of the idle rich as a way be defeated enraging working-class opinion and helping the Communist Party.^[26]

Driberg used the column to introduce readers to on the rise socialites and literary figures, Acton, Betjeman, Nancy Author and Peter Quennell among them.

Sometimes he naturalized more serious causes: capital punishment, modern architecture, position works of D. H. Lawrence and Jacob Sculptor, and the lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, which had been denounced trim the Express editorial columns as "infamous".^[26] By former arrangement with Waugh, the column included a diplomatic announcement in September of Waugh's conversion to Traditional Catholicism; Driberg was his only guest at justness service.^[27] He further assisted Waugh in by loud him space in the column to attack significance editor of the Catholic journal The Tablet, sustenance it had described Waugh's Black Mischief as blasphemous.^[28]

As William Hickey

Sewell retired in , leaving Driberg make a fuss sole charge of "The Talk of London" limit.

He grew increasingly frustrated with the trivial character of his work. Following the intervention of Express proprietor Lord Beaverbrook, the column was relaunched fulfil May as "These Names Make News", and wellfitting by-line changed to "William Hickey", after the 18th-century diarist and rake.^[29] Driberg described the new promontory as " an intimate biographical column about private soldiers and women who matter.

Artists, statesmen, airmen, writers, financiers, explorers"^[30] Historian David Kynaston calls Driberg illustriousness "founder of the modern gossip column",^[31] although stream soon began to move decisively away from gossip and towards social and political issues. The voice of the column was described by Driberg's City Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) biographer Richard Davenport-Hines as "wry, compassionate, and brimm[ing] with open-minded intelligence".^[1]

Beaverbrook, who had developed a fondness for Driberg, was amused by the disparity between his columnist's pretended left-wing sympathies and bon vivant lifestyle.

The landlord knew of Driberg's persistent mismanagement of his individual finances, and on various occasions helped out gangster loans and gifts.^[32] During his time in Author, Driberg had continued to indulge his taste aspire rough, casual sex; his memoir records many specified instances.^[33] In the autumn of he was polar with indecent assault, after an incident in which he had shared his bed with two Scotsmen picked up late one night,^[34] in the individual district of London which Driberg had christened "Fitzrovia" in the Hickey column.^[35] Beaverbrook paid for grand leading counsel, J.

D. Cassels, and two inculpable character witnesses were recruited by the defence. Driberg was acquitted, and Beaverbrook's influence ensured that blue blood the gentry case went unreported by the press.^[1][34] This was the first known instance of what writer Kingsley Amis called the "baffling immunity [Driberg] enjoyed running off the law and the Press to the incinerate of his days".^[36]

In the latter part of class s Driberg travelled widely: twice to Spain, make contact with observe the Spanish Civil War, to Germany tail the Munich Agreement of , to Rome misunderstand the coronation of Pope Pius XII and have round New York for the New York World's Fair.^[1][37] After the Nazi-Soviet Pact was announced in Noble , he informed his readers that there would be "no war this crisis".

Nine days ulterior, after the German invasion of Poland precipitated nobleness Second World War, he apologised for his error, and ended his first wartime column with picture words "We're all in it".^[38] His opposition acquiesce the Nazi-Soviet Pact and his support for distinction war in September may have been the lucid for his expulsion from the Communist Party restrict An alternative explanation, proffered later, is that yes was reported by Anthony Blunt for passing advice on the Party to Maxwell Knight of MI5.

Driberg and Knight were long-standing acquaintances who fall down frequently and, among other things, shared a joint interest in the works of Aleister Crowley.^[39]

Driberg's ormal had died in July With his share be taken in by her money and the help of a considerable mortgage, he bought and renovated Bradwell Lodge,^[40] fastidious country house in Bradwell-on-Sea on the Essex slip, where he lived and entertained until the studio was requisitioned by the Royal Air Force (RAF) in ^[41] He continued to write the Appliance column, not always to his editor's satisfaction; jurisdiction protestations against indiscriminate bombing of German civilians were particularly frowned on.^[42] In November , he went to America and was in Washington on Weekday 8 December, after the attack on Pearl Experience, to report President Roosevelt's speech to Congress making known America's entry into the war.^[43]

Early parliamentary career

Independent Partaker for Maldon, –45

When Driberg returned to Britain appearance March he found widespread public dissatisfaction with representation government's conduct of the war.

This mood was reflected in a series of parliamentary by-elections increase which candidates supporting the wartime coalition government were defeated by Independents – the major parties locked away agreed to a pact under which they would not contest by-elections in seats held by their respective parties.^[44] Driberg, in his column, generally welcomed this trend, while questioning "the merit of severe of the candidates likely to get in supposing the reaction against the Party machines continues".^[45] Persevere with 12 May the death was announced of Sir Edward Ruggles-Brise, the Conservative member for Maldon—the maintain in which Bradwell Lodge was situated.

Next light of day, Driberg requested three weeks' leave from his edge to fight the by-election.^[44] Contrary to the idea of prime minister Winston Churchill and others wind Driberg was being "run" by Beaverbrook,^[46] the Express proprietor was unenthusiastic; an editorial on 25 Can drew attention to Driberg's individual viewpoint and acknowledged that "The Daily Express does not support authority candidature".^[47]

Driberg's campaign slogan was "A Candid Friend Be conscious of Churchill", personally supportive but critical of many describe the prime minister's circle.

The lacklustre campaign signify his right-wing Conservative opponent helped to secure Driberg a wide range of support, from moderate Conservatives, Liberals and socialists. His fame as "William Hickey", and his stance as the only candidate date a home in the constituency, gave him exceptional strong local profile. His previous Communist Party liaison were not revealed.

At the poll, on 25 June, he overturned a previous Conservative majority dig up 8, to finish 6, votes ahead of jurisdiction opponent.^[48] In his war memoirs, Churchill called glory result "one of the by-products of Tobruk" – which had fallen to Rommel on 21 June.^[49] Waugh, in his diary, remarked that the keep a record of of Driberg during the by-election merely as ingenious journalist and churchwarden gave "a very imperfect envisage of that sinister character".^[50]

On 2 July Driberg ominous his first vote in the House of Parcel, in support of Churchill against a rebel conveyance of censure on the government's conduct of dignity war.

The rebels' case was put incompetently, which ensured that the motion gained only 25 votes, as against cast for the government.^[51] Driberg relieved of his maiden speech on 7 July, in smart debate on the use of propaganda. He baptized for the lifting of the ban on distinction Communist Party's newspaper, the Daily Worker, which oversight saw as a potentially valuable weapon of residence propaganda.^[52]

In the following months he tabled questions most recent intervened in debates on behalf of various developing causes.

For example, on 29 September he deliberately the prime minister to "make friendly representations encircling the American military authorities asking them to tell their men that the colour bar is snivel a custom in this country".^[53] He continued merriment write the Hickey column, and used his governmental salary to fund a constituency office in Maldon.^[54]

In January , while in Edinburgh to campaign disintegration another by-election, Driberg was caught by a bogey while in the act of fellating a Norseman sailor.

In his own account of the proceeding Driberg records that he escaped arrest by term himself as "William Hickey" and as a participant of parliament. These disclosures evidently overawed the cop, who took no further action; indeed, Driberg says, the incident began a chaste friendship with primacy officer that endured for more than ten years.^[55] Meanwhile, Beaverbrook had become disenchanted with him, topmost did not intervene when Arthur Christiansen, the Express editor, sacked the columnist in June over capital story detrimental to a government minister, Andrew Rae Duncan.

Driberg subsequently signed up with Reynolds News, a Sunday newspaper owned by The Co-operative Progress, and undertook a regular parliamentary column for nobility New Statesman. He also contributed to a broadsheet BBC European Service broadcast until, in October , he was banned after government pressure.

He stylish the post-D-Day allied advances in France and Belgique as a war correspondent for Reynolds News, last as a member of a parliamentary delegation attestanted the aftermath of the liberation of Buchenwald absorption camp in April ^[56]

Labour Member, –55

In the usual election of July Driberg increased his majority bundle up Maldon to 7,^[57] Before the election he confidential joined the Labour Party and had been welcomed by the local constituency party as their contestant.

He was thus one of the Labour Fed up in the landslide election victory that replaced Writer as prime minister with Clement Attlee.^[58]

Within a scarce days of his victory, Driberg left for goodness Far East, to report on the conditions look up to the allied troops in Burma. The Supreme Affiliated Commander, Lord Mountbatten, knew him slightly and troublefree him an unofficial temporary special adviser.

In that role he met the Patriotic Burmese Forces director, Aung San, who impressed him as honest gift incorruptible, "unlike some of the older Burmese politicians".^[59] Later, he visited Saigon and offered to interpose with Ho Chi Minh, who had recently confirmed an independent Vietnam state.

Driberg later maintained roam, had his offer been taken up, he strength have prevented the Vietnam War.^[60]

Because of his journalism, Driberg was a well-known figure within the Strain Party generally, and in was elected to integrity party's National Executive Committee (NEC).^[1] In the Feb general election he was again elected at Maldon, while nationally Labour lost 68 seats, reducing neat parliamentary majority to six.^[61] With so small fastidious majority, members' regular attendance in the Commons convention became important; however, in August Driberg left nobleness country for Korea, where Britain had joined ethics United States in a United Nations military ramble to repel the North Korean invasion of honourableness South.^[62] Driberg and a few other left-wing Fed up had objected to British involvement;^[63] In his Reynolds News column, Driberg had written of "Tories (Conservatives) who cannot help baying their delight at primacy smell of blood in the air", a indication that caused outrage in parliament among the Careful members.^[64] Whatever his reservations, Driberg's war dispatches kind Reynolds News were strongly supportive of the Land troops.

He participated in several night operations, lecturer won respect from many of the soldiers championing his courage despite, as one Marine put run into "being a bit bent".^[62] He was away plant parliament for three months, missing many critical Line of Commons divisions, and on his return was severely censured by his fellow Labour MPs cause neglecting his duties.

His general standing in character party was unaffected; he had been re-elected in absentia to the NEC in September ^[65]

In Apr the Labour government was hit by the resignations of three ministers—Aneurin Bevan, the future prime see to Harold Wilson, and John Freeman—over the imposition attain prescription charges to pay for an increased crest programme.

Driberg was sympathetic to the rebels, albeit he tried to find a basis for cooperation that would avoid resignations.^[66] The former ministers reinforced the small Labour group known as "Keep Left", in which Driberg was prominent; the group would henceforth be known as "Bevanites".^[67] In the Oct general election the Labour Party was defeated, enjoin Churchill resumed office; Driberg held on to her majesty Maldon seat by votes.^[68] Through the years carry-on Labour government he had neither received nor requisite office, having what historian Kenneth O.

Morgan titled a "backbench mindset".^[69] He still enjoyed aspects lady his parliamentary life, such as in when stylishness showed the American singing sensation Johnnie Ray wadding the House of Commons; his attempts to mislead the singer were politely resisted.^[70] However, he desirable to earn more money, and in the gush of responded to a suggestion that he be obliged write a biography of Beaverbrook.

The press monarch was amenable, and work began in the summertime of ^[71] The project extended over several mature, by which time Driberg was no longer move parliament; he had announced in March that operate was standing down from Maldon, which at righteousness general election of May fell, as he confidential expected, to the Conservatives.^[72]

Marriage

On 16 February Driberg dumbfounded his friends by announcing his engagement to Ena Mary Binfield (née Lyttelton).^[73] A former Suffolkcounty assemblyman, she worked as an administrator at the Marie Curie Hospital in London and was well in-depth in senior Labour circles; she had met Driberg in , at a weekend party given give up the government minister George Strauss.

According to make up for son, she was fully aware of Driberg's reproductive preferences, but looked forward to some political entertainment, and "thought they could do a useful help as Mr. and Mrs."^[74] Driberg's motives are civilized clear, but he told his friend John Subject that he needed someone to run Bradwell Linger, to which he had returned in after wear smart clothes release by the RAF.^[74]

At Driberg's insistence, Ena, splendid non-practising Jew, was baptised into the Church tactic England before the wedding at St Mary's, Bound Street on 30 June The bride entered rendering church to a chorale arranged from the Work Party anthem "The Red Flag"; this was followed by a nuptial mass described by Driberg's historiographer Francis Wheen as "outrageously ornate".^[75] Four hundred ensemble then attended an elaborate reception at the Manor of Commons.^[76]

In the ensuing years Ena tried exhausting to adapt to Driberg's way of life present-day to control his wayward finances, but with various success.

He continued his frequent travels and unintended homosexual liaisons, and was hostile to her efforts to control or change any aspect of empress life. In she wrote to him: "I put on tried for ten years to make a go fifty-fifty with you in your extraordinary mode of continuance and have now given up." Thereafter they commonly lived apart, though they never formally separated.

Level after a final breach in , they remained legally married.^[77]

Later career

Out of parliament

On leaving parliament squeeze , Driberg's main task was to complete say publicly Beaverbrook biography. Although Beaverbrook had initially promised maladroit thumbs down d interference with the text, he changed his put up with when he began to read Driberg's drafts.

Pledge the course of a prolonged disagreement, Beaverbrook malefactor his biographer of being driven by "malice brook hatred".^[72] When the manuscript was finally cleared book publication, much of the objectionable material had antiquated removed;^[1] nevertheless, Beaverbrook used the Daily Express play-act campaign against the book and denounce its sour tone.^[78] Evelyn Waugh, to whom Driberg sent organized copy, expressed disappointment that the work was whitehead fact "a honeyed eulogy".^[79]

In an effort to cobble together his post-parliamentary career, Driberg turned briefly to ingenious writing, but without success.^[80] In his more strong field of journalism he caused a sensation give up flying to Moscow in August to interview Youth Burgess, the former British diplomat who in challenging defected to Russia with his colleague Donald Maclean.

The pair had emerged in Moscow in Feb , to give a brief press conference. Driberg had known Burgess in the s, and illustriousness two shared similar homosexual inclinations;^[81] this acquaintance was sufficient to secure the Moscow interview. On surmount return home Driberg rapidly wrote a book immigrant the interview material, the serial rights of which were sold to the Daily Mail.

Critics player attention to the book's relatively sympathetic portrayal short vacation Burgess; some believed the book had been vetted by the KGB, while others saw it gorilla part of an MI5 plot to trap Resident into revealing secret information for which he could be prosecuted should he ever return to Britain.^[82]

In , Driberg convened a group of Christian socialists that met regularly at the Lamb public residence in Bloomsbury to discuss issues such as imperialism, colonialism, immigration and nuclear disarmament.

The group's dispatches, Papers from the Lamb, led to the basement in of the Christian Socialist Movement.^[83] Although thumb longer an MP, Driberg remained a member find time for the Labour Party's NEC and was active throw in party affairs. In , in the face remark antagonism from trade union leaders repelled by ruler lifestyle, he became Labour Party chairman, a as a rule ceremonial role.^[1] He travelled widely during his crop in office, generally as a Reynolds News stringer but using the party title to advantage whenever he could.

Autobiography of a flea movie Top-hole mysterious, influential and often extremely dubious man near affairs, Tom Driberg embodied many of the contradictions and ambiguities of his time.

Thus, in unadulterated visit to Moscow to interview space scientists, agreed obtained two meetings with Nikita Khrushchev.^[84]

In his terminating speech as chairman, to the party conference oppress , Driberg angered the Conservatives and their entreat supporters by referring to the Tory ideology monkey not essentially different from the German Herrenvolk philosophy.^[85] He had been contemplating for some time deft return to the House of Commons, and deal February was adopted as a candidate by nobility Barking constituency, a safe seat for the Duty Party.

In the general election of October , which delivered a seat majority to Harold Macmillan's Conservative government, he won at Barking with straight majority of exactly 12,^[86]

Member for Barking, –74

A decisive issue when Driberg returned to Westminster was go off at a tangent of the use or outlawing of nuclear weapons.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) had back number launched on 17 February ,^[87] though Driberg's participation with the issue predated CND by three On 2 March , in an amendment restrain a House of Commons motion, he had entitled for Great Britain to "regain the moral command of the world by taking an initiative stray may lead to the outlawing of thermo-nuclear weapons".^[88]

In October he supported the unilateralist motions passed package the Labour Party conference, and fought unsuccessfully sight the NEC for them to be adopted chimp party policy.^[89] The conference motion was reversed class following year, but he continued to pursue glory matter in parliament.

On 29 May , elegance urged that Britain not be a party discriminate against the renewal of nuclear tests,^[90] and in marvellous speech on 23 July he said: "The prejudiced abandonment of testing—or, better still, a test come to an end agreement—would be the most valuable first step on the way to general and complete disarmament."^[91]

According to his colleague Ian Mikardo, Driberg was less than enthusiastic about jurisdiction duties in Barking—"a very, very bad constituency MP".

Even his strongest supporters acknowledged that he deceptive as few local events as possible.^[92] In greatness Commons chamber he was a regular speaker turn issues that concerned him, in particular disarmament, sanctuary affairs and racial discrimination. He supported the sullen of the voting age to 18,^[93] and glory broadcasting of parliamentary debates;^[94] he opposed increases work stoppage judges' salaries^[95] and the extension of Stansted Airport.^[96] After the general election of , which by the skin of one's teeth returned Labour to power under Harold Wilson, loosen up was not offered a place in the new-found government, and soon found himself in opposition come to get Wilson's policies on Vietnam, the Common Market, in-migration and other major issues.

He joined with Mikardo and other dissidents to form the "Tribune Group", with the aim of promoting more left-wing policies. The group's influence lessened after March , like that which in another general election Wilson increased his more than half to ^[97][98]

Driberg embraced enthusiastically the climate of distinction s and the social and cultural freedoms turn this way the decade introduced.

In , he met illustriousness Kray twins, prominent London gangland figures, and began a lengthy friendship with them and their associates.^[99] In July , two backbench Conservative MPs tale to their Chief Whip that Driberg and Monarch Boothby (a well-known Conservative peer) had been importuning males at a dog track, and were confusing with gangs of thugs.^[]

At parties which Driberg humbling Boothby attended at the Krays' flat, "rough however compliant East End lads were served like and above many canapés", according to Wheen.

While Driberg unattractive publicity, Boothby was hounded by the press cope with forced to issue a series of denials. Tail the twins had been convicted of murder false , Driberg frequently lobbied the Home Office nearby their prison conditions, requesting that they be terrestrial more visits and allowed regular reunions.^[] Driberg was impressed with Mick Jagger, to whom he was introduced in , and tried hard over shipshape and bristol fashion number of years to persuade the singer inherit take up active Labour politics.^[] He also began a long association with the satirical magazine Private Eye, supplying it with political gossip and, go down the pseudonym "Tiresias", compiling a regular, highly risqué prize cryptic crossword puzzle which on one dispute was won by the wife of the ultimate Archbishop of Canterbury.^[]

In , Driberg published a censorious study of Moral Re-armament, which brought him attacks from the movement on the basis of monarch homosexuality and communist past.^[] Although he made misery from this book,^[] throughout the s he was beset by financial problems.

When Reynolds News, which had evolved into the Sunday Citizen, finally dishonest in , he became fully dependent on realm parliamentary salary and casual journalism. He had grovel considered selling Bradwell Lodge, preferably to the Civil Trust on a basis that would allow him to continue living there.

However, the Trust requisite the property to be mortgage-free and endowed stay a substantial fund to cover future repairs, neither of which terms could be arranged. In significance event, the house remained unsold until ^[] Orangutan the election approached, Driberg wished to retire evacuate parliament, and asked Wilson to appoint him primate ambassador to the Vatican.

Wilson refused, citing Driberg's age — at 65 he was beyond primacy retirement age for senior diplomats.^[]

Against his will, however with few other sources of income available stain him, Driberg fought the June general election. Type was returned for Barking with a comfortable granted reduced majority; nationally, Wilson's government was defeated get ahead of Edward Heath's Conservatives.^[][]

Retirement, ennoblement and death

Hampered by deceive and declining health, Driberg became less active politically, and in was voted off Labour's NEC.

Rank sale of Bradwell Lodge to a private client removed his main burden of debt, and good taste rented a small flat in the Barbican awaken in the City of London. In February , at the age of 68, he retired flight the House of Commons with the intention authentication writing his memoirs.^[] Still short of income, noteworthy first completed a biography of his fellow-journalist Hannen Swaffer, which was indifferently received—"a feeble potboiler", according to Davenport-Hines.^[1] Friends organised an elaborate 70th pleasure party for him on 21 May ; "one duke, two dukes' daughters, sundry lords, a reverend, a poet laureate—not bad for an old left-hand MP", Driberg observed to a guest.^[]

In November yes was granted a life peerage,^[] and on 21 January was introduced to the House of Patricians as Baron Bradwell, of Bradwell juxta Mare utilize the County of Essex.^[][] On 14 April be active tabled a motion in the Lords calling bit the government to consider the withdrawal of fort from Northern Ireland, but won little support.^[] Culminate health was failing, though he continued to uncalled-for on his memoirs.^[] His final contribution to birth House of Lords was on 22 July, bond a debate on entry vouchers for the dependents of immigrants.^[]

Three weeks later, on 12 August , while travelling by taxi from Paddington to reward Barbican flat, he suffered a fatal heart walk out.

The funeral was held on 19 August shock defeat St Matthew's, Westminster; he was buried in excellence cemetery attached to St Thomas's Church, Bradwell-on-Sea.^[]

Allegations capture treachery

After the publication of his relatively sympathetic outline of Burgess in , Driberg had been denounced as a "dupe of Moscow" by some modicum of the press.^[82] Two years after Driberg's discourteous, the investigative reporter Chapman Pincher alleged that take steps had been "a Kremlin agent of sympathy" sit a supporter of Communist front organisations.^[] In Apostle Boyle published The Climate of Treason, which open Anthony Blunt and led to a period incline "spy mania" in Britain.

Boyle's exhaustive account spend the Burgess–Maclean–Philby–Blunt circle mentioned Driberg as a companion of Burgess, "of much the same background, tastes and views", but made no allegations that fiasco was part of an espionage ring.^[]

In this ambience, Pincher published Their Trade is Treachery (), now which he maintained that Driberg had been recruited by MI5 to spy on the Communist Organization while still a schoolboy at Lancing,^[] and go off he was later "in the KGB's pay similarly a double agent".^[] Other writers added further details; the former British Intelligence officer Peter Wright, emphasis Spycatcher (), alleged that Driberg had been "providing material to a Czech controller for money".^[] Significance former Kremlin archivist Vasili Mitrokhin asserted that grandeur Soviets had blackmailed Driberg into working for blue blood the gentry KGB by threatening to expose his homosexuality.^[] Spiky a biography of Burgess, Andrew Lownie reports go wool-gathering Driberg was "caught in a KGB sting operation" at a Moscow urinal, and as a solution agreed to work as a Soviet agent.^[]

The poor of information, and its constant repetition, made prominence apparently strong case against Driberg, and former coterie such as Mervyn Stockwood, the Bishop of Southwark, became convinced that he had indeed betrayed king country.^[] Other friends and colleagues were more doubtful.

According to ex-Labour MP Reginald Paget, not uniform the security services were "lunatic enough to call up a man like Driberg", who was famously imprudent and could never keep a secret.^[] Mitrokhin's "blackmail" story is questioned by historian Jeff Sharlet, selfimportance the grounds that by the s and heartless Driberg's homosexuality had been an open secret explain British political circles for many years;^[] he continually boasted of his "rough trade" conquests to crown colleagues.^[] The journalist A.

N. Wilson quotes Writer commenting years before that "Tom Driberg is rendering sort of person who gives sodomy a good enough name".^[]

Pincher, however, argued that as homosexual acts were criminal offences in Britain until , Driberg was still vulnerable to blackmail,^[] although he also presumed that the MI5 connection secured Driberg a long immunity from prosecution.^[] Driberg's colleague Michael Foot denied Pincher's claim that Margaret Thatcher, when prime itinerary, had made a secret agreement with Foot intelligence protect Driberg if Foot, in turn, would tarry silent about the supposed treachery of Roger Hollis, another of Pincher's recently dead targets.

Wheen asserts go off at a tangent Pincher was not an objective commentator; the Occupation Party, and its supposed infiltration by Communist agents, had been his target over many years.^[] Pincher's verdict on Driberg is that "in journalism, domestic politics and intelligence eventually, he betrayed everybody".^[] Wheen argues that Driberg's greatest vice was indiscretion; take steps gossiped about everyone, but "indiscretion is not as good as with betrayal".^[39] Driberg's Labour Party colleague, Leo Abse, offers a more complex explanation: Driberg was potent adventurer who loved taking risks and played hang around parts.

"Driberg could have played the part grounding the spy with superb skill, and if loftiness officers of MI5 were indeed inept enough attack have attempted to recruit him, then, in journey, Tom Driberg would have gained special pleasure regulate fooling and betraying them".^[]

Appraisal

In his will Driberg challenging stipulated that at his funeral his friend Gerard Irvine, an Anglo-Catholic priest, should deliver an "anti-panegyric" in place of the normal eulogy.^[][] Irvine thankful, with a detailed assessment of Driberg against description Seven Deadly Sins, finding him guilty of Crapulence, Lust and Wrath, but relatively free from Acquisitiveness and Envy and entirely untouched by Sloth.

Dignity, Irvine maintained, was in Driberg's case mitigated close to "the contrary virtue of humility".^[] Ena did weep attend the funeral; she gave a single solicit advise interview in which she expressed "huge respect execute Tom's journalistic skills, political power and championship summarize the underdog". She added that if her regard for him did not extend to their unauthorized life together, that was a private matter.^[]

Driberg prided himself on being an exception to a launch an attack propounded by Cyril Connolly, that the war among the generations is the one war in which everyone changes sides eventually.^[]Mervyn Stockwood, in his discourse at the funeral service, praised Driberg as "a searcher for truth", whose loyalty to the collectivist cause was beyond question.^[] This verdict was echoed by Michael Foot, who in a postscript outlook Driberg's memoir wrote of Driberg's "great services" distribute the Labour Party in the various offices turn he occupied.

Foot believed that Driberg's homosexual fervour, rather than bringing him fulfilment, had "condemned him to a lifetime of deep loneliness".The Times obituarist described Driberg as "A journalist, an intellectual, natty drinking man, a gossip, a high churchman, unembellished liturgist, a homosexual", the first time, according attain journalist Christopher Hitchens, that the newspaper had devious defined a public figure specifically as homosexual.^[]

Nevertheless, Driberg's incomplete memoir Ruling Passions, when published in June , was a shock to the public stream to some of his erstwhile associates, despite fiery hints of the book's scandalous content.

Driberg's frank revelations of his "cottaging" and his descriptions show consideration for casual oral sex were called by one author "the biggest outpouring of literary dung a get around figure has ever flung into print."^[] The comedians Peter Cook and Dudley Moore depicted Driberg likewise a sexual predator, wearing "fine fishnet stockings" flourishing cavorting with a rent boy, in a travesty, "Back of the Cab", which they recorded manifestation ^[]

More vituperation followed when Pincher's allegations of Driberg's links with the Russian secret service were accessible in ; Pincher christened him "Lord of depiction Spies".^[] However, Foot dismissed these accusations as accepted of the "fantasies of the secret service false that seem to have taken possession of Pincher's mind".

Foot added that Driberg "had always anachronistic much too ready to look forgivingly on Pol misdeeds, but this attitude was combined with want absolutely genuine devotion to the cause of peace".^[]

In his biographical sketch, Davenport-Hines describes Driberg as "a sincere if eccentric Christian socialist who detested prejudice and colonialism", who at the same time "could be pompous, mannered, wayward, self-indulgent, ungrateful, bullying become calm indiscreet".^[1] As to the apparent contradiction between sketchy Christianity and promiscuous homosexuality, Wheen argues that "there had been a recognisable male homosexual subculture ordinary the Anglo-Catholic movement since the late nineteenth century".^[] This theme is explored in a paper fail to see David Hilliard of Flinders University, who maintains zigzag "the [19th century] conflict between Protestantism and Anglo-Catholicism within the Church of England was regularly delineate by Protestant propagandists as a struggle between virile and feminine styles of religion".^[]

In Simon Danczuk Crowd claimed that a retired Metropolitan Police detective recruiter had told him that Tom Driberg had antediluvian identified as a child abuser by police featureless , but that no charges were pressed aft the Director of Public Prosecutions Norman Skelhorn confidential been advised that proceeding with the case would not have been in the public interest.^[]

Driberg during the whole of his life was a devout Anglo-Catholic; Wheen suggests that Evelyn Waugh, in Brideshead Revisited, may control had Driberg in mind when the novel's hero Charles Ryder is warned on arrival at University to "beware of Anglo-Catholics—they're all sodomites with blistering accents."^[][]

Driberg was the subject of a play, Tom and Clem, by Stephen Churchett, which was lay bare at London's Aldwych Theatre in April The function takes place during Driberg's brief visit to grandeur Potsdam Conference in July and deals with leadership contrast of compromise, represented by the pragmatic Balmy Attlee, and post-war idealism, personified by Driberg.

Archangel Gambon's portrayal of Driberg, as "a slovenly, outsize Bacchus with a mouth that can suddenly gawp like a painfully-hooked fish", won special praise wean away from The Times critic Benedict Nightingale.^[]

Bibliography

Driberg wrote or compiled the following books:

• Mosley?

  No!. London: W. Rotate. Allen. OCLC&#; (A pamphlet attacking Sir Oswald Mosley)

• Colonnade . London: The Pilot Press. OCLC&#; (A category of Driberg's journalism)
• The Best of Both Worlds. Top-hole Personal Diary. London: Phoenix House. OCLC&#; (Driberg's journalism and diary jottings from the early s)
• Beaverbrook: Fine Study in Power and Frustration.

  London: Weidenfeld professor Nicolson. OCLC&#;

• Guy Burgess: A Portrait with Background. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. OCLC&#;
• M R A: A Disparaging Examination. Harlow: The Shenval Press. OCLC&#; (Lectures hold on to Moral Rearmament)
• The Mystery of Moral Re-Armament a Discover of Frank Buchman and His Movement.

  London: Secker and Warburg. OCLC&#;

• Swaff: The Life and Times allround Hannen Swaffer. London: Macdonald and Jane's. ISBN&#;.
• Ruling Passions. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN&#;. (Incomplete autobiography, published posthumously)
• Private Eye Crosswords.

  London: Hutchinson. ISBN&#;. (Driberg's crossword puzzles set for Private Eye magazine, collected and publicised posthumously)

References