Authors: Nick Barratt
As a result, Drummond’s attempt to recruit members for his secretariat from the ranks of the British Diplomatic Service were treated with suspicion, as indeed were his requests for access to sensitive British political information that might assist the work of the League. Curzon suggested that he should perhaps request them ‘informally’ but, when he did this in 1920, Hardinge refused on the grounds that he could not release sensitive documents. It was a stance that gradually softened on the grounds of expediency – the League moved permanently to Geneva in November 1920 and was seen as a ‘clearing house of ideas’ from which Britain would equally benefit. It is therefore possible that ‘informal’ King’s Messengers such as Oldham were used to transport documentation to League meetings that the regular King’s Messengers, with their closer allegiance to the Foreign Office, would not feel so comfortable in delivering. Oldham would become a regular visitor to League meetings in Geneva over the next decade.
Back home, Oldham also played a prominent role inside the Foreign Office as fears of Bolshevism continued to increase. Lenin died on 21 January 1924 and power transferred to Joseph Stalin, who spent the next few years consolidating his position. Britain formally recognised the USSR on 1 February 1924 and agreed to lend it money, with a motion placed before Parliament for an Anglo-Soviet trade agreement. This endorsement was primarily a consequence of the general election held on 6 December 1923 that saw Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour party take power, albeit in a hung Parliament and despite gaining 67 fewer seats than the outgoing Conservative administration.
Given the 19th century roots of the Labour movement among the underrepresented working classes and its professed socialist ideals, it is no surprise that the new government was keen to make common cause with the USSR without embracing the communist ideology of revolution as an agent of change. Labour preferred instead to follow the democratic parliamentary
route eschewed by the Communist Party of Great Britain. This was Britain’s first taste of socialist rule, but it did not last long. Minority government had proved hard enough in the past, let alone when undertaken by an inexperienced party reliant on the support of Liberal opponents who seemed willing to give Labour enough rope with which to hang themselves.
Despite demonstrating a level of competency thought beyond them by their political rivals, the Labour administration was brought down by its handling of the Campbell case – the intended prosecution of John Ross Cambell under the 1917 Incitement to Mutiny Act for publishing a letter in
Worker’s Weekly
that encouraged soldiers not to fire on their fellow workers in the event of class war in Britain. Although the Attorney General recommended that Campbell be brought to trial, the Labour government withdrew the prosecution. This sparked a vote of no confidence which MacDonald lost and a new election was held on 29 October. Suspicions of Bolshevik elements existing in socialist parties were heightened sharply when a letter appeared in the
Daily Mail
a few days before the vote, purportedly from Grigory Zinoviev, Head of the Executive Committee of Comintern and its British representative, Arthur MacManus. The letter was addressed to the Communist Party of Great Britain and exhorted them to instigate a proletariat uprising in British industrial cities. The letter caused an outcry, least of all from Zinoviev himself who strenuously insisted it was a fake. He indignantly claimed that:
The forger has shown himself to be very stupid in his choice of the date. On 15 September 1924, I was taking a holiday in Kislovodsk, and, therefore, could not have signed any official letter.
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He had a point; it has since been proven that the letter was indeed fabricated, most probably by an intelligence source working outside the UK. It was leaked to the press and Conservative Party central office with the complicity of MI6 – either Desmond Morton or one of his associates, including Major Stewart Menzies, who later admitted sending a copy to the
Daily Mail
. Either way, the damage was done. Although it is doubtful that the letter impacted on the core Labour vote, it certainly damaged the Liberals who had supported the
MacDonald regime. A decisive Conservative victory ensued, bringing Stanley Baldwin back to power. The trade agreement with the Soviets was swiftly cancelled a few weeks later.
Throughout 1924, measures were taken within the Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service to tighten security – just in case. Oldham was charged with the task of ensuring official safes were distributed to consulates around the world; his handwritten notes can be found within the National Archives in some of the few official papers preserved from the Communications Department. A memo survives from April 1924 in which a certain confidence bordering on pomposity is displayed in the way that he comments on the fact that ‘the Treasury have misread our letter’, before reiterating his point to demonstrate that any consular officer in charge of holding cipher code books should have ‘combination lock safes’ regardless of their status and that security should trump economy if an existing safe was not deemed to be of sufficient standard.
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However, he was clearly in a position of trust; in May 1924 he compiled a revised list of holders of the
Government Telegraph Code
(1922), mainly because ‘a considerable number of additions and corrections have been made since the volume was compiled’. His draft was stamped for approval by Hubert Montgomery, Chief Clerk, on the direction of Mr Ramsay MacDonald – who had assumed the role of Foreign Secretary as well as Prime Minister.
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There were also changes in personnel within the Foreign Office, in particular a new Head of the Communications Department. There had been regular change at the top with each incumbent lasting around two years apiece, including the steady Howard Smith and more flamboyant Duff Cooper who left to further his political career. On 19 May 1925 the decision was taken to promote from within and one of the King’s Messengers, Harold Eastwood, was given the position – much to the delight of Antrobus:
Not only was the new head thoroughly acquainted with the departmental work, but he was temperamentally well qualified for the post… he adopted, and rigorously adhered to, the traditional Foreign Office principle of giving orders and trusting to the loyalty of his staff to see that they were carried out.
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His deputy was Commander Ralph Cotesworth, who had also risen through the ranks – moving from the Royal Navy into the Foreign Office as a temporary clerk, before becoming one of the new King’s Messengers after the war.
Cotesworth had one advantage over Eastwood in that he had a thorough and expert knowledge of the technical side of the work, the use and management of the ciphers and codes.
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Under the Conservative regime, fears of the communist threat deepened as relations with Germany normalised. The Locarno Treaty was signed at the Foreign Office on 1 December 1925, with Germany admitted to the League of Nations amid real hopes of lasting international peace. This was hailed at the time as a major diplomatic coup and the discussions that took place between 5 and 16 October in Locarno, Switzerland, were important for fixing the borders of to the west of Germany but leaving those to the east open to further interpretation. The Soviet Union was excluded from discussions, exacerbating feeling within the isolated country that it was being undermined from the west and heightening paranoia over German territorial interest.
Oldham was the man in the Foreign Office to whom responsibility was delegated for organising transport to and from Lorcarno. He reserved the requisite number of berths from the Sleeping Car company – a special coach of 16 together – when the British delegation left on 3 October, at the cost of £108.6.7. Only 11 people actually travelled, necessitating a great deal of work for the home messenger service to sort out the logistics. Oldham was forced to dip into his own pocket to the tune of £3.5.11 to cover some of their expenses which he claimed back from the office.
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At least he was not in charge of the refurbishment of the suite of rooms which were especially redecorated for the signing of the treaty in December once the conference had concluded – that was expenditure on an altogether different scale.
Meanwhile, steps against Bolshevism were being taken back home. On 14 and 21 October 1925, MI5 raided the headquarters of the Communist Party of Great Britain, seizing various documents and arresting officials including Albert Inkpin (who had been charged during an earlier raid in 1921),
Tom Bell, Ernie Cant, Harry Pollitt, Bill Rust, Arthur MacManus and, once again, J R Campbell. The following year, Soviet intervention was blamed for inflaming tensions between the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and the government over the miner’s dispute, which led to the General Strike.
This was a period of general economic hardship, exacerbated by the re-adoption of the gold standard in 1925 and falling wages in many industrial sectors including coal mining. Initially, the government agreed to support the miners by providing a nine-month subsidy of their wages – a decision known as Red Friday, as it seemed to be a victory for the working classes. However, when they subsequently accepted the recommendation of a Royal Commission to introduce widespread change and greater national control, the Miner’s Federation of Great Britain refused to accept them and a lock-out of miners ensued on 1 May 1926. The TUC then called a general strike from 3 May onwards in support of the miners and targeted transport workers, dockers, foundry workers and printers to cause maximum disruption. The Tory press saw industrial action as tantamount to revolution, but the
Daily Mail
was unable to produce an editorial to that effect as their printing staff would not print it. Incidentally, King George V refused to condemn the strikers as ‘revolutionaries’ with the comment, ‘Try living on their wages before you judge them.’
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The strike lasted until 12 May and affected all government departments including the Foreign Office. With transport largely paralysed, alternative arrangements were made to ensure key staff could get into work.
On the Monday evening before the strike, a skeleton staff of men and women went home for their clothes after office hours and returned, some with great difficulty, prepared to sleep on the floor in the office for as long as they were required to do so. Fortunately, owing to offers of hospitality, all the women were, by the end of the week, sleeping out in various houses, but the men slept at the office during the whole period.
Arrangements were made to fetch as many as possible of the rest of the staff by cars, but a large proportion were left to find their own way to the office. Except in one or two cases where
there was literally no means of transit whatever to bring them the 30 miles or so to London, the whole staff made every effort to attend regularly, some walking distances of eight or nine miles each way – five miles being quite a common occurrence, both for men and women.
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Those with cars were expected to provide transport for their colleagues – and it is with some surprise that we find Oldham listed amongst those who were giving lifts in an early form of car pool. He had been assigned the Enfield, Barnet and Finchley region where his parents lived and provided transport to shorthand typists Miss Grace Madeline Painter and Miss Florence Dorothy Good, along with Miss Hilda Emily Holdway and Mr Rance from the Chief Clerk’s Office (though he was only able to provide the service one way after 10 May).
More specifically, Oldham was involved in ensuring that the King’s Messenger service continued to function so that diplomatic bags containing correspondence and suchlike could be safely transferred to the relevant ports before they were taken to embassy and consular staff overseas. On 10 May, he drew up a report showing how certain of the bag services have been maintained by the use of cars supplied and driven by volunteer friends of members of the Communications Department.
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This was a clear reference to the trust mentioned by Antrobus – not just within the department, but extended to friends and acquaintances. Given the ongoing security risk, plus potential unrest at the ports:
It was considered desirable that the drivers should be accompanied by guards, who would also help as porters etc, and in the case of each messenger on the Bucharest and Constantinople journeys it has been necessary to send two cars.
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By this method, services were maintained for Newhaven to Paris, Dover to Bucharest and Constantinople, Harwich to Brussels and trips to Southampton for services to Washington and South America, for example. Various members
of the Communications Department, such as Thomas Kemp, were involved as well. All volunteers received a letter of thanks on behalf of the Foreign Secretary, Sir Austin Chamberlain, signed by Hubert Montgomery. However, some staff found themselves out of pocket and wanted to claim back their expenses, including Ernest Oldham. His request, received on 29 June, was rather unusual:
Encloses a statement of expenses incurred during the strike and enquiries how much is due in respect of his car. Explains that he was working late on several nights and had to have dinner, which cost about 5/- a night at his club. Enquiries whether he can claim any allowance for that.
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There are several points of interest here. Leaving aside the question about how a permanent clerk on £150 a year could afford a car which would have cost his annual salary or more, it is clear that Oldham had designs on stepping up in the world. He was perhaps mindful still of his humble background compared to some of his colleagues – possibly the factor that had tipped the balance against him when applying for the Diplomatic Service. One way to gain standing was to become a member of a London club, a reliable badge of honour among those who had gone to university or worked in the City. St James and Pall Mall in particular were at the heart of club-land, where over 200 establishments vied to attract members. At the very top, leading establishments where ministers would talk politics, such as the Carlton Club, would have prohibitively long waiting lists and recommendation rules for potential applicants, so many junior or specialist clubs were formed at more affordable prices.